radeonfb: corrupted screen on bootup

radeonfb: corrupted screen on bootup

[Michael Buesch]

Hi,

I have a weird error with my PowerBook G4, which
has a radeon card. I am using radeonfb.
After bootup, the screen sometimes looks like it is melting.
I made a video to show you what is going on:
http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_boot.avi  (6.1 MB)

It does only happen sometimes. I could not find
a way to reproduce it.
If I start X after boot with a melting screen, X is also
melting:
http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_x_switch.avi  (6.6 MB)

But here comes the interresting part:
If I switch back into the console, the screen becomes
normal again and I can continue to work as usual.

I am suspecting some initialization routine bug.
It never happened when booting into OSX.

In X I use the "radeon" driver.

Please give some suggestions on how to track down the problem.

PS: I am very sorry for the big video files.
    I tried to install some video coding software to
    reduce the size, but it appears that installing
    video software on linux is a nontrivial task.
    I stopped after resolving the millionth
    dependency manually. :)

-- 
Greetings Michael.

Re: radeonfb: corrupted screen on bootup

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 21:18 +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a weird error with my PowerBook G4, which
> has a radeon card. I am using radeonfb.
> After bootup, the screen sometimes looks like it is melting.
> I made a video to show you what is going on:
> http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_boot.avi  (6.1 MB)
> 
> It does only happen sometimes. I could not find
> a way to reproduce it.
> If I start X after boot with a melting screen, X is also
> melting:
> http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_x_switch.avi  (6.6 MB)
> 
> But here comes the interresting part:
> If I switch back into the console, the screen becomes
> normal again and I can continue to work as usual.
> 
> I am suspecting some initialization routine bug.
> It never happened when booting into OSX.

It's a known issue. There is some black magic with the flat panel that
we don't have quite right... If I tweak the timings to get it right on
one machine (well, apparently, difficult to make sure if the problem
happens once every week), it will probably break anohter. I've been
trying to get ATI to tell me what should be done but to no avail so
far...

It's basically that sometimes, the LCD doesn't "catch" the signal.
Usually just turning it off/on fixes it (which is what a mode change
does, sometimes a console switch, or a blank/unblank... or turn the
backlight all the way down to blank the screen and back up).

Ben.



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Re: radeonfb: corrupted screen on bootup

[Bill Davidsen]

Michael Buesch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a weird error with my PowerBook G4, which
> has a radeon card. I am using radeonfb.

I had a similar problem, and solved it by using the "wrong" (aty128fb) 
module which makes me happy. Booted working 5-6 times now, which is a 
few weeks since I run for long periods.

> After bootup, the screen sometimes looks like it is melting.
> I made a video to show you what is going on:
> http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_boot.avi  (6.1 MB)
> 
> It does only happen sometimes. I could not find
> a way to reproduce it.
> If I start X after boot with a melting screen, X is also
> melting:
> http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_x_switch.avi  (6.6 MB)
> 
> But here comes the interresting part:
> If I switch back into the console, the screen becomes
> normal again and I can continue to work as usual.
> 
> I am suspecting some initialization routine bug.
> It never happened when booting into OSX.
> 
> In X I use the "radeon" driver.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   Obscure bug of 2004: BASH BUFFER OVERFLOW - if bash is being run by a
normal user and is setuid root, with the "vi" line edit mode selected,
and the character set is "big5," an off-by-one errors occurs during
wildcard (glob) expansion.

Re: radeonfb: corrupted screen on bootup

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> I have a weird error with my PowerBook G4, which
> has a radeon card. I am using radeonfb.
> After bootup, the screen sometimes looks like it is melting.
> I made a video to show you what is going on:
> http://bu3sch.de/misc/after_boot.avi  (6.1 MB)

I did not see the video (slow link here)... but if you turn off LCD
while keeping backlight on, you get very interesting "burning screen"
effect. I suspect that might be it. It will not damage anything.

								Pavel

-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html