lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Ron Mitchell <rm2892@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you all for allowing me in on some of the thinking that goes on behind some of these issues. It was a fascinating discussion, and finally I see what you're up against. 

Notwithstanding…...

I just installed today's PPC  build of  Lubuntu 12.10 from the live disk on my eMAC - the one with the wildly uncooperative Radeon 9200 graphics card. The result was a normal boot!.

No YABOOT arguments   were required. I just pressed return after "boot".

The live disk itself required a YABOOT command line  (Greg's). But the resulting install was fine. 

Has somebody somewhere been working some magic?

Ron Mitchell








On 2012-10-07, at 4:21 PM, Phill Whiteside wrote:

> Hi Adam and PPC guys,
> 
> I'm going to give you the honest truth. We are now too late to sort the issues out. 
> 
> I know that some of these bugs go back a long while, some are recent. I cannot see any help in my complaining to SABDFL over what has occurred after the changes after A3. 
> 
> I propose that PPC follows...
> 
> 
> (23:14:36) xxxx: That mail's very long and rambling, and doesn't really give me any concise statement of "this is broken; this is how we propose fixing it".
> (23:15:13) phillw: Thinking about this some more, the KMS option shouldn't be the default option on the live/desktop ISOs.  The crashes/freezes with radeon can take some time to appear.  It is quite conceivable that they could occur in the middle of re-partitioning, which would be bad.
> (23:15:13) phillw:  
> (23:15:13) phillw: The more you think about, the more appealing the Debian way of doing things is: Just rely on the user to add video=ofonly if they want KMS.  This is basically what the boot message says to do at the moment anyway, although it doesn't explicitly mention KMS.
> (23:15:39) phillw: what do you need from Debian for the fix to be proposed?
> (23:16:28) xxxx: You implied earlier that there was a patch to the driver and/or kernel as an option, not just the command-line change.
> (23:18:13) phillw: did you read the email? He accepts that he was probably mistaken on a previous fix?
> (23:18:50) phillw: Like I said, up until bug 1058641 I was happy for radeonfb just to be removed.  This is even though I was responsible for having it put back (along with aty128) into 12.04 -https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/949288 .  Incidentally, can I ask the kernel people was there a reason why CONFIG_FB_ATY was missed off.....something I probably should of done that at the time?!  Sorry!  I don't know anything about Mach64/Rage cards, particularly their current state in 12.10....will they use fbdev too now?  Can ubuntu-x confirm?
> (23:23:32) xxxx: So, uhm. Reading through that bug, two things jump out. video=ofonly isn't the default, and only when setting this option do things go pear-shaped.
> (23:24:01) xxxx: The fix for it is, currently, a custom Xorg.conf, or a custom radeonfb command-line. Neither of those can be done automatically for the user in any sane fashion.
> (23:24:46) xxxx: If real code fixes for this can't be found in time, I think the people really familiar with the issue need to sit down and write some CLEAR release notes we can include for people about how to work around this.
> (23:26:54) phillw: so, we're pretty screwed? sorry to use that word. If we can get release notes out, I'll support them & then we can look at a fix as a matter of urgency... would that be okay from the guy who is liasion between -release and -kernel?
> (23:28:18) xxxx: I think release noting is the only sane way forward here, other than fixing the actual bug. We can't be writing out custom X config files for everyone, nor custom framebuffer inits based on the resolution and refresh rate they may want.
> (23:29:19) phillw: As we are too late to fix the bug, would you object to release notes?
> (23:29:56) phillw: well, bugs...
> (23:31:27) xxxx: I don't object to release notes, no. This is what they're for. In this case, though, the instructions for "how to find your video card and write a custom X config" and "how to switch to using framebuffer-only graphics, and configure your kernel command-line appopriately" are a bit long for a release note, so nice, clear, step-by-step instructions on a wiki page would be great, and then a release note that briefly describes the problem and points to said wi
> (23:33:23) phillw: Oh, do not worry about that! I'm also a wiki person, to get a set of steps in for new people will be clear 1., 2., etc...
> 
> So, can I ask that you good people get the wiki area up for the release notes? We will go battle on in 13.04 :) 
> 
> For kernel & -x, the PPC team will be looking for the fix. Thanks for sticking with this arch :)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Phill.
>