Fedora Core test3 on Latitude D800 [report]

[Mike A. Harris]

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Lauri Jutila wrote:

>> Hmm...  that is very very odd.  The mouse cursor is either 
>> "software" in which it uses generic X server code to implement a 
>> mouse cursor which gets drawn directly into the framebuffer, or 
>> it is a "hardware" cursor, which is implemented usually in the 
>> video hardware itself and overlaid on top of the framebuffer via 
>> the DAC or another mechanism, and requires special video driver 
>> support, which most drivers currently support.
>> 
>> Both the software and hardware cursor support shouldn't in any 
>> way depend on which kernel is installed.  If you are using Red 
>> Hat supplied open source video drivers, I would expect the mouse 
>> cursor to work identically regardless of which kernel is in use.
>
>My GPU is GeForce4 4200 Go w/ 64MB. I've been using open source Nvidia
>drivers that ship with XFree86 and with those drivers, I've had the
>problem.
>
>Here are three samples images:
>http://jutila.net/img/cursor-1.jpg
>http://jutila.net/img/cursor-2.jpg
>http://jutila.net/img/cursor-3.jpg
>
>I grabbed latest Nvidia's own binary drivers from their website,
>compiled and installed it, and lo and behold, the problem has
>disappeared.

For the record...  Nvidia maintains *both* drivers, so they'll 
ultimately be the one's that fix such problems.  ;o)

Question:  Are the cursors you're using, the ones that were in 
use when the X server started, or have you ran xsetroot or 
another mechanism to change the cursors while X is running?


>Could DRI cause this problem on my hardware? Anyway, if you need more
>information, just ask for it.

No.  DRI does not support Nvidia hardware in any way, and none of 
the DRI code is ever executed while using Nvidia hardware.  If 
the "dri" module is in the module section of the config file, 
then the X server loads the DRI extension.  The DRI extension 
doesn't do anything at all unless the video driver uses it, and 
neither of the Nvidia drivers use it.


-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat