Bug#500358: resolving X Server crashes on SPARC (bugs #488669 and #500358)
Gaudenz Steinlin writes:
> Hi
>
> Joss assigned me these two bugs[1] (currently merged) for the bug sprint[2]. As
> I lack proper SPARC hardware to investigate this myself, I need your help.
>
> The two bugs are about X Server Crashes on SPARCs with PCI ATI Mach64 cards. The
> most probable cause of the crash is an incompatible kernel change introduced with
> kernel 2.6.26. For #500358 I'm quite sure that it' caused by the kernel change.
> For #488669 I'm not quite sure if it's really the same bug, because the original
> reporter ran kernel 2.6.24 which predates the kernel change. For more information
> about the kernel change see: http://marc.info/?t=121247857800001&r=1&w=2
>
> If the crash is really caused by the kernel change, the real bug is in the X server.
> But to fix it, we would have to upgrade to xserver-xorg-core 1.5. I don't think that
> this is really an option. The other options would be to revert the kernel change or
> to release with a non-working X server for some SPARC machines. Unless of course we
> find someone willing and able to fix the X server in lenny to work with the kernel
> change. A simple backport of the changes in 1.5 doesn't seem to be possible.
>
> I would like you to test two things:
> 1. Install the kernel package from http://people.debian.org/~gaudenz/sparc
> and test if this fixes the problem. This is the same kernel as currently
> in unstable with the problematic change removed. Please also test this
> kernel if you are not affected by the change to see if the removal of the
> problematic change has any ill side effects.
> 2. Install xserver-xorg-core and xserver-xorg-video-mach64 from experimental
> and run this on a kernel 2.6.26 or later without removing the change. This
> should also fix the problem.
I'm the one who started the kernel thread mentioned above. I run Aurora
not Debian on my Ultra5 so I can't really test your Debian packages. However,
I have been using a private forward-port of a patch to revert the problematic
SPARC kernel change in the 2.6.26 and 2.6.27 kernels, and at least for me
reverting the change fixes the X server but hasn't caused any ill effects.
/Mikael
Reply to: