Xorg trouble in v3.5.0.785.g75f49 on Lenovo x230

[Francois Tigeot]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 03:50:06PM +0200, Roman Neuhauser wrote:
> 
> i installed DragonFly v3.5.0.785.g75f49-DEVELOPMENT (X86_64_GENERIC)
> on a Lenovo x230.  i cannot switch back to a vty after starting Xorg
> (ctrl+alt+Fx may beep, does nothing visible), and the screen does not
> clear after Xorg quits again: twm/xterm combination leaves a black
> screen with a white rectangle where the xterm was.  the machine is
> still usable through ssh, but to use the console again, i need to
> restart it.
> 
> i added xf86-video-intel-2.21.9, didn't help.
> i'm attaching an X server logfile and the output of pkg version.
> 
> any ideas?  what other information should i provide?

This is normal so far and a consequence of having recently added KMS/i915
support in DragonFly 3.5.
The virtual tty subsystem is not KMS-aware and cannot display anything
once the intel graphic GPU has been switched to a graphical mode.

The shell you started X from should still be usable after quitting Xorg
and if you type some commands blindly, they should run as usual. Running
startx again should restore a visible display.

X11 folks have decided the way forward with graphics is to use kernel drivers
for many low-level operations including changing video modes. KMS means Kernel
Mode Setting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_mode-setting

KMS support has been somewhat of an urgency lately since Xorg drivers are
slowly making it a formal requirement, starting with i915.
The first priority has thus been to make Xorg usable, the legacy console
still beeing available on boot if needed.

Our KMS kernel driver is mainly a port of the FreeBSD version and nobody
has had time to rewrite the needed console support yet.
Of all the *BSD projects, only OpenBSD has a working KMS console subsystem
as far as I know.

-- 
Francois Tigeot