[Bug 13677] New: Fedora 8 / Xorg 7.3 - VT switch yields all-white screen on ATI Mobility 7500

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13677

           Summary: Fedora 8 / Xorg 7.3 - VT switch yields all-white screen
                    on ATI Mobility 7500
           Product: xorg
           Version: 7.3
          Platform: x86 (IA32)
        OS/Version: Linux (All)
            Status: NEW
          Keywords: regression
          Severity: normal
          Priority: medium
         Component: Driver/Radeon
        AssignedTo: xorg-driver-ati at lists.x.org
        ReportedBy: erez.hadad at gmail.com
         QAContact: xorg-team at lists.x.org


I have a laptop (Compaq Evo N1000v) with a graphics card of ATI Technologies
Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500] with 32MB memory. I'm running
Fedora 8, and the auto-installed X driver is "radeon".

The kernel version (although it updated several time with no improvement) is
2.6.23.8-63.fc8 and the Xorg server version is 7.3 (Xorg 1.3.0).

My problem is that whenever I switch from the default graphics mode
(1400x1050 at 60Hz) to any other mode, and specifically to text mode, the LCD
screen displays a white stain that expands and engulfs the entire screen,
making it completely white (kind of a fade-to-white effect). However, when I
switch back to graphics mode, the display is resumed perfectly with the graphic
desktop environment. The machine does not freeze or crash.

To make sure this is not a hardware problem, I ran X with the "vesa" driver,
and it worked smoothly for all mode switch operations, although this driver
yields (not surprisingly) lower performance in 3D, as I measured with the
glxgears app.

I attached the configuration and the log files of both vesa and radeon. One
thing I noted is that the radeon driver operates on all 3 outputs of the card:
the LVDS (which I believe is the LCD screen), the CRT (the external VGA
connector) and the TV (which is the external S-Video connector). I also
inserted "@@@@@" strings in the logs at the places where the mode-switch took
place. It seems that the "radeon" driver performs "RESTORE" operations on all
the outputs when it comes back to graphics mode. However, when it switches to
text mode, it does not "RESTORE" the LVDS, just the TV and CRT outputs (I
think). Can this be somehow attributed to the fade-to-white problem I mentioned
above? Alternatively, can anyone suggest a way to make the "radeon" driver work
properly?

Note that the "vesa" driver does not log any meaningful operation on the
graphics card at all during mode switch - just switch the Synaptics touchpad on
and off.

I have also tried various combinations (from man-pages and web sites) of both
radeon-specific and generic options in the xorg.conf. None of these
combinations solved my problem. Last but not least: the "ati" driver has the
same problem as the "radeon" driver.

Recent updates, thanks to Alex Deucher:
- The most recent git version has the same problem
- Reverting commit 80eee856938756e1222526b6c39cee8b5252b409 doesn't help (it's
a report about a similar problem on a BSD that got fixed using that version,
but not on my platform)
- On Fedora Core 2 (kernel version 2.6.10-1.771_FC2 and X server is Xorg
6.7.0-14) the problem does not occur. I also attach a zip of the logs/confs
there.
- This bug resembles bug 13533
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13533


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