[arch-general] "whitebox" on bootup after KMS kicks in

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Markus M. May <mmay at javafreedom.org> wrote:
> On 28.05.2011 21:41, Rogutės Sparnuotos wrote:
>>
>> C Anthony Risinger (2011-05-28 00:02):
>>>
>>> does anyone else experience<title>?
>>>
>>> i've been getting this for sometime -- on intel, nouveau, and radeon
>>> KMS drivers -- and it looks terrible.  after the module loads within
>>> initramfs, the space *within* the old resolution is pure white,
>>> surrounded by normal black.  i'm pretty sure the "whitebox"
>>> corresponds to the size of the previous resolution because it's
>>> different sizes on all my machines, and pretty small on my 1920x1280
>>> laptop (@ 15.5in ... awesome :-)
>>>
>>> anyways, long story short it turns back 2 black when written over
>>> (systemd/initscripts output) or cleared, so:
>>>
>>> echo -en '\e[H\e[2J'
>>>
>>> ... takes care of it.  i basically just did a `clear>  out`, looked at
>>> the codes, and made a small initramfs hook from the above.
>>>
>>> it works fine as is, but is anyone else seeing this?  it annoys me
>>> because i don't run getty on tty1, so it's there forever unless i
>>> clear right away.  not really a big deal, as it took longer to write
>>> this msg than fix it, but it started happening a few kernels ago IIRC
>>> and i'm wondering if we can just throw something like this into
>>> mkinitcpio (if `quiet`, or before output), because it looks terrible
>>> :-(
>>>
>>> i'll open a report unless someone feels like throwing it in there,
>>> it's a pretty simple change.
>>
>> No white boxes here with radeon KMS (built-in) under 2.6.38.3. Actually, I
>> can even see the "PCI Device Listing ..." table from the BIOS when I
>> switch to tty1.
>
> Hm, me is having the same problems, using Grub 2. This problem is only seen,
> if I do use the external Graphic card in the laptop I am using.
>>
>> No white boxes on another PC with radeon, Arch's kernel26 and initramfs.

thanks for input all ...

i see it on these cards:

(nouveau) nVidia Corporation G86M [Quadro FX 360M] (rev a1)
(radeon) ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4850]
(radeon) ATI Technologies Inc RS880 [Radeon HD 4200]
(i915) Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics
Controller (rev 03)

... just seemed weird to me that most others don't, and on such a wide
array of cards.  after installing arch under KVM for other reasons i
realized i'm running a little bit older version of syslinux -- as i
didn't actually reinstall it after pacamn upgrades -- so ill try that
too.  it doesnt happen under qemu, but im not using KMS in qemu
(though one does exist now:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2011-April/010396.html
:haven't been able to try it out yet tho).

meh, it doesn't matter in the end, i really just want to know if i'm
doing something to cause it ... since it literally happens on every
machine i own, and some at work.

if anyone is interested in the solution i use:

/lib/initcpio/install/clear
-----------------------------
# vim:set ft=sh:

install()
{
    SCRIPT="clear"
}

help ()
{
cat <<HELPEOF
  Clear the console immediately
HELPEOF
}
-----------------------------

/lib/initcpio/hooks/clear
-----------------------------
# vim: set ft=sh:

run_hook ()
{
    echo -en '\e[H\e[2J'
}
-----------------------------

... then add the `clear` hook before everything else ... yes, everything:

# grep ^HOOKS /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="clear base consolefont udev autodetect plymouth pata scsi sata
filesystems"

-- 

C Anthony