[vox-tech] Crashing X (cool LCD effect :) )

[Bill Kendrick]

Melissa was doing something in Gimp last night (she was in the midst of
cropping a single-layer scanned image) when suddenly her LCD screen
looked like it was being microwaved or something.  (Looked kind of similar
to what my Zaurus LCD does when it's shutting down for a reboot.)

I checked logs, and one of the results of these crashes seems to be
some notifications regarding something called 'mtrr':

In /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog:

  Feb  3 06:03:57 hachinosu kernel: mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch [...]
  Feb  3 06:03:57 hachinosu kernel: mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel


That's about all I could come up with (I'm also sick, tired, and low on
blood sugar right now, so my brain's a bit slow)

The system is an IBM Thinkpad T-20.  lspci shows the video card as:

  01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV (rev 11)


XFree86 is version 4.2.1.1 (Debian 4.2.1-6 20030327121809...) from here:

  deb http://people.fsn.hu/~pasztor/debian woody xfree


It's a Woody box running it's build of kernel 2.4.18-686.



One of the other causes she mentioned of the crash was using Gimp and
movign a selection.  I've noticed on my own system that, under Gimp 1.2.3,
sometimes the selection tool goes a little nuts.  It starts drawing
XOR lines all over the place, and presumably some of them are extremely
long.  When I see Gimp start to do that, I quit immediately and restart.
If I don't, it can end up locking up X or crashing it.  Quite irritating. :^(

(I'm about to est a backport of Gimp 1.2.5 on my own system ;) )


Anyway, what's "MTRR" and is it related?


FYI, the XFree86 modules I'm loading are:

  extmod
  record
  xtrap
  speedo
  type1
  dri
  int10
  vbe
  glx
  GLcore
  wacom     [tho tablet isn't set up yet]



The Savage device stanza is as follows:

  Section "Device"
    Option     "SWCursor"     "true"
    Option     "UseBIOS"      "false"
    Option     "ForceInit"    "true"
    Identifier "Card0"
    Driver     "savage"
    VendorName "S3"
    BoardName  "Savage/IX-MV"
    BusID      "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option     "UseFBDev"     "true"
  EndSection


Ideas?  Suggestions?

Thx!

-bill!
bill@newbreedsoftware.com           "Hey Shatner, ya remember that episode of
http://newbreedsoftware.com/bill/   Space Trek where your show got cancelled?"