F17 video annoyances, old hardware

[stan]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:01:02 -0400
Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 2012/03/30 07:46 (GMT-0700) stan composed:
> 
> > - nouveau doesn't allow different resolutions on consoles and gui.
> 
> Must be something recent. It works for me pre-17, video= on cmdline
> for consoles, PreferredMode if necessary in xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d/
> for X.

My system must have received secret instructions from you. :-)  I
compiled the 3.3.0.8 kernel, and when I put it in the grub2 grub.cfg
file, I made the settings like:
      load_video
      set gfxmode=auto
      set gfxpayload=keep
      insmod gfxterm
and it worked - 1024x768 in consoles, 1280x1024 in X.  I tried those
settings with 3.3.0.1 and 3.3.0.5 stock fedora F17 kernels, and I only
got 1280x1024 on both every time. I did make one change, I removed the
xorg-x11-drv-nv package.  Perhaps it was interfering in nouveau's
search.  This is without an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, letting everything
do its thing automatically.

When this first started failing for me (F11?), I switched to nv and
have used it ever since.  As you say, it's possible nouveau has been
working for some time and I just never checked.  If it ain't broke,
don't fix it. :-)

After Michael's earlier response I checked the nv driver source code,
and there is no fallback from XAA for nv or riva in it, only for gl80.
And the fallback is EXA, so that is already in nouveau.  With the end of
XAA in the X server, the nv driver is obsolete.  When I tried to run nv
without ACCEL to bypass XAA, I received seg faults.  Nv should be
dropped from the repositories for F17.

Thanks for your response.