can't start X after upgrade

curmudgeon · Veteran Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 1741

I recently upgraded to the newest stable xorg-server and some of its components (yest, the drivers were rebuilt AFTER the xorg-server upgrade).

Now, attempting to start X just brings up a rapidly flickering screen with random colors.

I don't really know what is happening or why.

Here is a diff of the logs - the first one is the old (working) version:

lxg · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 12:19 am Post subject:

When looking into X.org's log files, you should always search for lines containing (EE). In your case, there's an error with some "modesetting" module. I must admit that I don't know what this module does, but a flickering screen could indeed be related to modline setting issues.

Without knowing to much about your xorg setup: The current way for setting up X ist to run without an xorg.conf file, and have things autoconfigured. Also, you should activate Kernel Modeline Setting (KMS) in your kernel.
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curmudgeon · Veteran Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 1741

lxg · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:01 am Post subject:

Yeah, I saw only after posting that you're a "Veteran" user, and one might assume that you have some experience with those things.

Well, if you're already on config-less xorg and on KMS, there appears to be some sort of regression. Would downgrading be an option for you?

Which versions of mesa, xorg-server and of xf86-video-intel do you use? I think there were quite a few updates in the last days, maybe you are running an incompatible combination (then again, in this case Xorg would refuse to start due to ABI incompatibility ...)
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lxg · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:02 am Post subject:

By the way, looking at the below linked post, there seems to be a kernel cmdline option that could help ...

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1184886#p1184886

maybe worth a try?
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VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

curmudgeon · Veteran Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 1741

wcg · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 588

FYI, I also get that

lxg · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:15 am Post subject:

Gusar · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:43 am Post subject:

xf86-video-modesetting is a genering modesetting driver that works on top of a KMS driver. It provides no acceleration whatsoever. It's intended as a fallback (like xf86-video-fbdev and xf86-video-vesa), or for hardware that has a KMS driver but no userspace driver (some server chipsets are like that, also gma500_gfx). It's not a big deal if it doesn't load. In fact, it's *good* if it doesn't, it means that your main driver works. Or you'll get an error message why the main driver didn't load.

wcg · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 588

[Speculation edited in favor of Gusar's more knowledgeable
post]
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TIA

curmudgeon · Veteran Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 1741

While the system started X with the nomodeset command line parameter, the display eventually returned to the flickering colors. I need to try to downgrade to get the system working again.

I have started with the video driver (often a source of pain), but that gave me:

lxg · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:13 pm Post subject:

In regard to your last post, this looks like the video driver uses header files from incompatible (i.e. too new) xorg libraries. I would recommend putting all packages to downgrade into one emerge command line and have Portage handle the package order.
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curmudgeon · Veteran Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 1741

Managed to downgrade to xorg-server-1.12.4 and THEN downgrade the driver. Only rebuilt xf86-input-evdev and xf86-video-intel, and NOW everything is working fine.