[NTLUG:Discuss] Keyboard beeps with SuSE 9.1

[Rick Cook]

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 18:48, Steve Baker wrote:
>
> So it looks like I have a work-around that's a lot better than
> restarting X - but it's still a mystery as to why upgrading from SuSE
> 8.0 to 9.1 and swapping out my nVidia graphics drivers for a newer
> release has caused this.
>

There are all kinds of arcane interactions between the kernel console 
framebuffer code and the kernel module portions of the binary X11 nVidia 
(or ATI) drivers that can cause all sorts of effects. Plus there are 
probably other untested interactions between the binary X11 drivers and 
the rest of the X11 code. Especially if your distribution has provided an 
updated set of X11 packages (like SuSE already has for 9.2).

During the build up of what little 3D code there is for ATI cards in the 
XFree86 code and its associated kernel dri module, if I attempted to use 
the ATI kernel framebuffer and the ATI Xserver at the same time, my 
machine would lock up solid. No keyboard, no network, no mouse. The only 
option was to cycle power.

Switching to the vesa console framebuffer fixed the problem. This was with 
code that was open source. No telling what kinds of arcane interactions 
there might be with specific machine configurations that nVidia had not 
tested.

As time has passed, the conflicts between the two have passed and I can 
now run radeonfb and Xorg radeon driver at the same time with no 
problems.

In the interests of "complete disclosure", my problems were all on a 
powerpc platform. Which reminds me, it's time to check out the Xorg nv 
driver again to see if I can get 3D without the help of a (non-existent 
for me) nVidia provided binary driver.


Rick