[arch-general] Display issues with Linux 3.1

[hollunder at lavabit.com]

> hollunder at lavabit.com, Sat 2011-11-12 @ 22:42:57-0500:
>> I'm rather sure this is a new intel driver bug, I have the exact same
>> issue. My laptops chipset is slightly newer:
>> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960
>> Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 03)
>> 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960
>> Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) (rev 03)
>
> I finally figured out a fix for the blank screen during boot issue. I
> had not added i915 to the MODULES list in my mkinitcpio.conf, because
> later in the boot process, udev would kick in and load the driver
> automatically. But apparently this can cause a sort of race condition,
> where if modules happen to be loaded in a particular order by udev, this
> blank screen issue can occur. Loading the driver during early userspace
> avoids this problem entirely, since by the time udev starts up, the
> module has already been present in the kernel for a while.
>
> So if you don't already have i915 in MODULES, just add it and then
> regenerate your initial ramdisk. This seems to have solved the problem
> for me.
>
> I was inspired by a suggestion [1] in a bug report on freedesktop.org,
> which led me to this solution. The bug report is for a similar (but not
> identical) issue. The user reported that building a kernel with the i915
> driver statically included made his problem disappear. I tried this, and
> it worked. But this has essentially the same effect as including the
> module in the initial ramdisk, which is a bit easier to do. So there you
> go.
>
> [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22674#c11

Thanks Taylor,
I still consider this a bug because this didn't happen for years but seems
to happen every time I boot since 3.1.

Another workaround is to disable kms by booting with the nomodeset option.

Another new issue is that my mousepointer frequently flickers/disappears
and that xv video out in smplayer doesn't work anymore, but both of those
are with the nomodeset option, have yet to test with kms enabled again.