Xorg (i810) freezes randomly when using hardware accel

[Markus Hoenicka]

Hi,

I'm running FreeBSD 6.1 on a MSI260 subnotebook. It's a Centrino thing using the
915GM chipset. Xorg is running (mostly) alright using the current 6.9.0 ports.
However, I suffer from random freezes when running programs that apparently try
to use hardware acceleration. I see this e.g. when watching movie clips with
Xine. This is not a problem with the clips themselves. They run ok a couple of
times, then they randomly freeze X.

This happens only if I use the i810 driver. I can run X just as well with the
Vesa driver (without hardware acceleration). The frame rates are lower, but X
is rock solid. It also never freezes if I use only applications that do not use
hardware acceleration.

The real bad thing is that after the i810 driver freezes X, I can't access the
console anymore. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+backspace sometimes alters the frozen
display to a modern-art style random pattern, but the box does not react to
further keypresses, and the display never leaves graphics mode. FreeBSD is
still running happily underneath as I can log in from a remote box without a
hitch. The process list shows that all X-related stuff is gone, except a font
server.

My two questions:

1) is there anything I can do to prevent the crashes in the first place?

2) if it has to crash anyway, is there a magic incantation (even if I have to
log in remotely) to activate the console again? Having to reboot makes me feel
like running Windows.

regards,
Markus


-- 
Markus Hoenicka
markus.hoenicka at cats.de
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de