Suspend and slight video corruption

Suspend and slight video corruption

[John Goerzen]

Hello,

I'm trying to use suspend to disk in a MacBook Pro and am having an odd issue:

colors get corrupted -- but only slightly -- after a resume.  The screen
appears as if it just dropped from 24-bit color mode to 8-bit color mode
and is doing a poor job of dithering.

The problem is most easily visible with an image such as
http://debblue.debian.net/images/debblue/gdm-debblue.png.  Before a
suspend, it looks fine.  After a suspend, there are concentric circles
going out from the center with hard-edged color changes.  With many
things, this problem is not even noticable.  I wouldn't be surprised if
this has happened to many before without being detected.

This happens no matter what viewer I am using to display the image in X.
It also persists even if I restart the viewer, switch to the console and
back, etc.  But restarting the X server fixes it.

I tried running xinit /bin/false -- :1, but that hung the machine (it
does not hang the machine when run before a suspend).

I have tried both uswsusp and suspend2 and get the same results with
each.

This is a Debian etch system, kernel.org 2.6.18 (with the small
mactel-linux patches), booting without EFI, XOrg 7.0.0, ATI fglrx driver
8.28.8.

Is there any idea what is going on?  Any suggestion on how I could help
track it down?  I'm happy to gather whatever information would be
helpful.

I should also add that I tried using vbetool to save/restore state on
the commandline manually, but that didn't help.  (Trying to POST the
card manually after restore hung the machine.)  I wonder why the tools
such as powersaved offer to automate VBE for suspend to RAM but not
suspend to disk...

Thanks,

-- John

Re: Suspend and slight video corruption

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> I'm trying to use suspend to disk in a MacBook Pro and am having an odd issue:
> 
> colors get corrupted -- but only slightly -- after a resume.  The screen
> appears as if it just dropped from 24-bit color mode to 8-bit color mode
> and is doing a poor job of dithering.
> 
> The problem is most easily visible with an image such as
> http://debblue.debian.net/images/debblue/gdm-debblue.png.  Before a
> suspend, it looks fine.  After a suspend, there are concentric circles
> going out from the center with hard-edged color changes.  With many
> things, this problem is not even noticable.  I wouldn't be surprised if
> this has happened to many before without being detected.
> 
> This happens no matter what viewer I am using to display the image in X.
> It also persists even if I restart the viewer, switch to the console and
> back, etc.  But restarting the X server fixes it.
> 
> I tried running xinit /bin/false -- :1, but that hung the machine (it
> does not hang the machine when run before a suspend).
> 
> I have tried both uswsusp and suspend2 and get the same results with
> each.
> 
> This is a Debian etch system, kernel.org 2.6.18 (with the small
> mactel-linux patches), booting without EFI, XOrg 7.0.0, ATI fglrx driver
> 8.28.8.

You are using ati closed video drivers, experience video problem, and
expect us to help? Huh? Ask ATI.
-- 
Thanks for all the (sleeping) penguins.

Re: Suspend and slight video corruption

[John Goerzen]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 09:41:53AM +0000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > I have tried both uswsusp and suspend2 and get the same results with
> > each.
> > 
> > This is a Debian etch system, kernel.org 2.6.18 (with the small
> > mactel-linux patches), booting without EFI, XOrg 7.0.0, ATI fglrx driver
> > 8.28.8.
> 
> You are using ati closed video drivers, experience video problem, and
> expect us to help? Huh? Ask ATI.

I understand your position, and would be quite happy to be free of
fglrx -- X.org doesn't yet support this video card, so I have no other
choice.

As I'm sure you're aware, ATI doesn't provide any support for their
driver.  I was merely hoping someone may have seen this behavior
before -- anywhere -- and might have some hint or advice.  I was not
demanding anyone to help me with a non-free driver, and I certainly
understand why people may not be able to.  I was just hoping that
someone here may have some helpful wisdom for me, which I was unable
to elicit from quite a bit of googling.

-- John

Re: Suspend and slight video corruption

[Pavel Machek]

On Sun 2006-09-24 18:02:13, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 09:41:53AM +0000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > I have tried both uswsusp and suspend2 and get the same results with
> > > each.
> > > 
> > > This is a Debian etch system, kernel.org 2.6.18 (with the small
> > > mactel-linux patches), booting without EFI, XOrg 7.0.0, ATI fglrx driver
> > > 8.28.8.
> > 
> > You are using ati closed video drivers, experience video problem, and
> > expect us to help? Huh? Ask ATI.
> 
> I understand your position, and would be quite happy to be free of
> fglrx -- X.org doesn't yet support this video card, so I have no other
> choice.

You do not need X.org support. vesafb should work nice, for
example. Maybe even radeonfb.

> As I'm sure you're aware, ATI doesn't provide any support for their
> driver.  I was merely hoping someone may have seen this behavior

As I'm sure you're aware, we don't provide any support for
closed-source systems. Anyway, indicate that system includes closed
components in the subject line next time...
								Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html