Request for testers: Video hardware autodetection

[Mike A. Harris]

The latest xorg-x11-drv-* driver packages contain videoaliases
files for kudzu et al. to use for video card autodetection and
driver mapping.

The current PCI ID -> driver mappings were derived by converting
the old pcitable/Cards databases into a new database named
"videoaliases", and then subsequently dividing that into per
driver files, and including them in each driver package.

To that, I've added missing PCI IDs which were reported in bugzilla
and spotted in mailing lists, etc., however the data is not 100%
accurate and up to date with the current driver support.

In the longterm, the goal is to have these metadata files be
completely unnecessary, and have the X server know what to do
without any configuration.  In the mid-term, the goal is to
have the metadata files automatically generated at rpm package
build time, by a utility that can pull the data right out of
the drivers, however that's not easily doable with the current
ugly inconsistent state of the driver code.

So, for the shortterm, I'd like everyone to make a backup copy
of your xorg.conf, and to test the latest drivers with
"system-config-display --reconfig" to ensure that your video
hardware is autodetected properly.

If you have a video card which is assigned the "vesa" driver
from the above test, then it is either not supported by the
drivers, or we're missing a PCI ID to driver mapping for that
card/chip.  To determine if it is supported by the driver,
hand edit the xorg.conf and replace the vesa driver with the
native X driver for the particular vendor.  ie: "nv" for
Nvidia, "ati" for ATI, etc., and test to see if X starts up.

If the X server starts up ok with the native X driver, and it
did not get autodetected properly by system-config-display,
and you've confirmed you are using the absolute latest rawhide
video driver packages, then please file a bug report in
bugzilla against the proper xorg-x11-drv-? package for your
driver, and include the X server log and config file as
individual uncompressed file attachments.

Once I've got these confirmations, I'll update the driver
packages to reflect any additions needed.

Thanks in advance.



P.S. If anyone out there wants to go on a mission, and manually
inspect the source code of every driver, and try to determine
the PCI IDs supported by every one, please feel free to give
it a shot, however I must warn you that it is not very fun,
and quite tedious. ;o)


-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.