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.
On 7 October 2012 22:59, Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com> wrote:
[Please could you use line-wrap in your mails? *They're very difficult
to read this way in my mail client ...]
On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 12:38:05PM +0100, o jordan wrote:
> I am keen too to get proper fixes and that is why bugs have been
> raised against all the appropriate packages. *However, a lot of the
> problems are long term ones, for example
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/725580 . *Some
> though are recent e.g.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/1058641
> . *The problems are not PowerPC specific, but the difference is
> non-PowerPC hardware has better fallback options, for example the vesa
> or proprietary drivers. *Neither of these things are available on
> PowerPC. *My proposal is just to create a useable fallback option,
> something that isn't automatically available at the moment on PowerPC
> for some nouveau users.
I'm sorry. *I know you're trying to get this fixed and I'm sympathetic.
But I don't want to end up in a position where I break something else as
a result, and I'm simply not willing to be held responsible for that
since this is not a field I understand well.
I'm not asking that you get the kernel or X teams to apply a proper fix,
necessarily. *All I'm asking is that you get somebody from those teams
to ack the proposed changes to the boot menu; that way I can have some
confidence that they won't cause some other problem that I have no way
to predict.
Get a member of the kernel or X teams to sign off on a proposed boot
menu change, and I'll apply it. *It would help if this could be as brief
as possible - while I appreciate that you've gone to a lot of effort to
provide many bug references, I'm afraid I simply don't have time to read
through lots of bugs on linux and xserver-xorg-*, given that this is not
my field and so it takes a lot of energy to understand long
back-and-forth threads! *The longer the mails, the less likely I am to
manage to absorb anything beyond the third paragraph or so, given how
much I have to do before the 12.10 release. *I think this may go for the
other developers in question - you really need to be as concise as you
can.
I'm afraid I am finding the long e-mails on many different but related
subjects frustrating and impossible to absorb properly.
> On previous versions of *Ubuntu I believe you could still use ubiquity
> in 16 colours. *Now it doesn't even work in 256 colours
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1040544 .
> Presumably the problem is in whatever widgety thing it uses.
Any problem with this is certainly in some underlying toolkit and should
almost certainly not be assigned to ubiquity.
> I think you could replicate the problem on non-PowerPC hardware by
> forcing a 8 bit colour depth.
This would be a good thing for somebody to test directly, then.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [cjwatson@ubuntu.com]
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