Re: Squeeze X broken on Inspiron 8500--how to report bug
On 2010-10-26 05:05 +0200, Brian Sammon wrote:
>> As I explained in that bug report, it's an incompatibility between the
>> Squeeze kernel and Lenny userland. Unfortunately, there is no way to
>> express this in package conflicts to ensure that it does not occur on
>> partial upgrades.
>
> Okay, so I'm clear:
> You're saying the Lenny xserver-xorg-video-nv is incompatible with the squeeze
> kernel?
With the nouveau.ko module, yes. You have to prevent that module from
being loaded, or use nouveau.modeset=0 to disable kernel mode setting.
> The thing that threw me off is that this incompatibility only manifests itself
> if the squeeze udev is installed. It doesn't occur with lenny udev.
Yes, but this means that Squeeze's udev works as designed and Lenny's
does not, because it actually *should* load nouveau.ko if you have an
NVidia card.
> Also... the Lenny xserver-xorg-video-nv is similarly incompatible with the
> lenny-backports kernel, but that's a tangent.
Well, the lenny-backports kernel had better stop shipping the nouveau
module, since it does not do any good without a suitable X driver.
> Also... if I upgrade xserver-xorg-video-nv to squeeze, then my situation
> improves to "X refuses to run", and I have to reboot to fix it.
The nv driver does not work correctly with kernel mode setting, that's
why the Squeeze version of nv refuses to load. The Lenny version of nv
does not, messing things up as you had noticed.
> I don't think I have a custom kernel/udev/boot configuration. Is this problem
> going to happen to everyone who tries to run squeeze on an Inspiron 8500?
> Everyone who tries to run squeeze on a nvidia system?
Not for people who have xserver-xorg-video-all installed and do not
specify a driver in xorg.conf. That's the default actually.
> Right now this looks like a "Squeeze doesn't really support the Inspiron 8500"
> problem. Is the Inspiron 8500 the type of machine that debian would like to
> support? Granted, it is pretty old.
>
> I wouldn't disagree at all with lowering this bug report to "feature request"
> or reassigning it to a different package, but it seems like the current
> situation for the Inspiron 8500 (and other nvidia systems?) is sub-optimal,
> and sub-optimal, to me, means "bug report".
>
> PS... I don't have xserver-xorg-video-all or xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
> installed on the machine. Is that a factor? Am I using the wrong X video
> driver?
Yes, you have to use xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (or -fbdev, that's the
only other option) if nouveau.ko is loaded and kernel mode setting is
enabled.
Sven
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