Strange Xorg problems - SOLVED

[Richard Danter]

Richard Danter wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a strange problem with starting Xorg after a boot on my Compaq 
> Presario 1800T laptop. First time I try to startx the screen is 
> corrupted, the mouse moves very slowly (if at all) and sometimes the 
> only way out is to kill the window manager by SSH'ing in from a remote 
> host.
> 
> What is odd is that the second time I run startx it works perfectly! 
> Same for all subsequent starts, so only the very first startx after a 
> boot has this problem.
> 
> Lookling through the logs I can see that there is a failure to open the 
> device /dev/dri/card0 first time, but it seems to work second time.
> 
> I managed to find some references to problems with dri by googling but 
> could not find any resolutions.
> 
> I have attached a dump from dmesg after starting X so you can see the 
> boot and drm messages. Also attached are logs from Xorg after both a bad 
> and a good start. I hope attachments are ok. One think I noticed from 
> the dmesg dump is that the graphics card is detected as an ATI Rage 128 
> Mobility LF, but Linux said it was an M3. Not sure if that is relevant.
> 
> I used to have RedHat Linux 7.2 and then 9 running on this machine and 
> never had any problems with X, was even able to play DVD's perfectly 
> using Ogle, so I am sure Xorg should work.
> 
> Does anyone know what is going on here? Have I made a mistake somewhere??
> 

I fixed it! It was simply a matter of adding r128_load="YES" to 
/boot/loader.conf.

Another newbie mistake I think. :)

Rich