XOrg freeze that affects a lot of people

[Charles Goodwin]

On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 16:48 -0500, Randall Nortman wrote:
> FYI: I have the same symptom (not necessarily the same problem) with
> the open-source radeon driver shipped by X.org.  (I have not tried
> reducing the AGP bus speed, but I will.)  I think the issue here isn't
> about specific bugs in specific drivers, but rather about modifying
> the base code such that driver and hardware bugs are easier to
> diagnose.

Right... finally the debate synthesises to the topic I intended; the way
XOrg handles itself when a bad driver complains.  I've tried to stress
multiple times that although the problem does not stem from XOrg, the
end result is that XOrg locks up consuming CPU - i.e. the driver doesn't
lock up, the kernel doesn't lock up, the only process locking up is
XOrg.  So whilst the driver is the source of the bug, the end result
(i.e. the effect on the end user) is XOrg hanging.  Note that XOrg isn't
crashing, it's just getting confused because whatever operation it
expected of the driver did not work.  To me, and I'm sure to anybody
else (even those 'this is off topic' nay-sayers) at some point it could
surely be possible for XOrg to realise something went wrong and deal
with the problem gracefully.  There will (most likely) always be buggy
drivers.  Does that mean that the way XOrg currently behaves under the
influence of buggy graphics drivers is acceptable?

- Charlie

Charles Goodwin <charlie at vexi.org>