Bug#606288: xserver-xorg-video-intel: No longer finds display; does not allow VT switch (ThinkPad X200)

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 09:07:17PM +0100, Julien Cristau wrote:
> On Thu, Dec  9, 2010 at 11:01:23 -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 12:33:46PM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> > > Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org> (08/12/2010):
> > > > Doesn't look like it's actually attached?
> > 
> > Oops.  Attached.
> > 
> > > > Make sure you set
> > > > CONFIG_DRM_I915_KMS=y.
> > 
> > I don't have that set, but the standard Debian 2.6.36 and 2.6.32 kernels
> > don't seem to have it set either.  As far as I know, that just sets the
> > *default* for i915.modeset; xserver-xorg-video-intel installs
> > /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf which sets "options i915 modeset=1", so
> > that should supercede CONFIG_DRM_I915_KMS, shouldn't it?
> > 
> CONFIG_DRM_I915_KMS=y also adds module aliases to the driver so it gets
> loaded automatically by udev on boot.  The debian kernels are patched to
> have these aliases even without KMS=y.  The X driver used to call
> 'modprobe i915' itself, which was hiding that issue, but the last
> version changed to check for KMS before that.

Ah!  That makes sense.  And indeed, if I add i915 to /etc/modules, X
works just fine with the new kernel.

So, this seems like two separate issues, then:

1) xserver-xorg-video-intel no longer works automatically on upstream
   kernels.

2) If the intel driver doesn't work (such as due to the previous issue),
   and the vesa or fbdev drivers don't exist either, then the X server
   apparently goes out to lunch and doesn't manage to fail in a
   recoverable way.

- Josh Triplett