Bug#285081: xbase-clients: startx could try to fail back to vesa|vga if X does not start up because of a driver issue
Package: xbase-clients
Version: 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8
Priority: wishlist
I have thought on this issue while fixing a sarge installation in a Dell
desktop (I believe it was an OptiPlex 170L) which should use the i810
device driver. The problem with it, however, is that after a standard
Debian installation (sarge rc2 net install) even though the X configuration
discovered the i810 card and suggested the driver the 2.6.8 kernel would
not load the driver and X wouldn't work.
I offered the user an alternate possibility, that is, configuring X with
the vesa driver, it wouldn't have all the bells&whistles, but it would
probably work. And it did work, as it turned out.
Could it be possible (I'm not sure if this should be done by startx or if
this should be implemented in other tools, for example, gdm) to have X
failback to a "safe" configuration for VGA displays if it's unable to load
a given driver.
The startx could try to load the XF86Config-4 and, if a driver error was
detected (cannot setup the configured display) try to startup with an
alternate configuration in which the 'vesa' (or 'vga'?) driver is used for
the video card instead? (maintaining the other settings)
Doing that and providing some proper input (through log files, maybe
syslog) could avoid having users wonder why don't they get the fancy
graphics they are expecting and instead get thrown to an obscure shell.
Googling I've found this has also been asked for Red Hat [1] already :-)
Regards
Javier
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=102289
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