YJL

I did my weekly system update about 13 hours ago and finally needed to reboot about 2 hours ago. After reboot, I had no X window for almost one hour before I finally found the problem.

At first, I only noticed:

No screens found.

Trying to read forums posts in a 80x24 console using elinks, do you have any idea how hard it is? And it didn't resolve the issue. I tried to downgrade xorg-server, but not xf86-video-ati, which is the actual cause.

I stumbled across the release announcement of version 7.0.0, it says

This is the first KMS only release.  Major changes:
- - Enable 2D tiling by default on r6xx+ asics
  (requires mesa 9.0+).  If you are planning to
  ship xf86-video-ati 7.x with an older version of
  mesa, please disable 2D tiling.
- - xserver 1.13 support including prime
- - glamor support
- - SI support

KMS (Kernel modesetting) only, finally, something makes sense with another message:

[    76.379] (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.

When you put two and two together, it's Eureka! I know my system has no KMS and this must be it, I knew it and I was right.

I re-emerged libdrm with USE flag libkms and rebuilt kernel for necessary changes. Be sure to have framebuffer part done correctly and have firmware installed if you have newer cards, or you will get black console.

After reboot, I can run X again. Somehow, X looks even more beautiful than ever.

You can imagine that I wondered why I didn't get any message from emerging 7.0.0, there should be a small note or an eselect news, but nothing. KMS-only, that's quite a big change.

I guess I am probably a few people who would have encountered this issue, now everyone probably has KMS enabled already. I had been late for many years. Finally, I have KMS, too.

One hour loss, well, not too bad. If anything ever happens again to X Window, I will have 210x65 (1680x1050) console, pretty! But let's hope it won't come to that.

2012-11-21T02:37:36Z: I just noticed that when I booted into X, the memory usage is only 48MB, used to be 72MB. Don't know if that's because of KMS or new X stuff updates.

I have switched to Enlightment 0.16 for weeks, it has been my primary desktop environment. Earlier, I tried to use Compiz with Fusion Icon, but didn't get it worked. Therefore, I switched back to GNOME, same result.

After upgrading to 0.8.3 from 0.7.8 using Fusion repo (greatly thank leigh123@linux), I haven't run Compiz once. It didn't work anymore, I searched for answers on forum and I got the resolution in this page.

The error message I got is as follows when I tried to switch to Compiz window manager:

* Setting window manager to Compiz
 ... executing: compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp --indirect-rendering
compiz (core) - Fatal: Root visual is not a double buffered GL visual
compiz (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
compiz (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0

What I saw is windows without window decoration.

My xorg.conf has

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
    Option      "VideoOverlay" "on"
EndSection

The OpenGLOverlay has already turned off but I don't have the following settings

Section "Files"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/fglrx"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Once I added and restart X, Compiz is back on trail.