Installing F7/8 Live - GDM fails with old cirrus card (GD5480)

[Daniel B. Thurman]

Bummer...

At least with FC4/5, I was able to install install the OS with GDM
working, but with F7/8 Live support, it seems that my old Cirrus
Logic GD5480 crapped out.  Yeah I know, I am an oldie here but
never mind that.  Look - there is a pretty girl over there (points the
finger away from self)....  Ah, now let's continue shall we? ;-)

Well...

When I ran the F8 Live, the GDM failed to start up - it never got
that far at all - just flashed several times - I get it, time to Alt-F1,
log in as root, and edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

At least there was the cirrus entry, so it is recognized...

	[...]

	Section	"Device"
		Identifier	"Screen0"
		Driver		"cirrus"
	EndSection

	Section "Screen0"
		Device		"Videocard0"
		DefaultDepth	24
	EndSection

Ah, DefaultDepth 24!?!?	I guess you need to have the latest newfangled
videocards these days, or a newer computer than the one you had purchased
many years ago.  Sheesh, I must be getting really old...

Anyway, I updated the xorg.conf file as follows:

	[...]

	Section "Screen0"
		Device		"Videocard0"
		DefaultDepth	16
		SubSection	"Display"
			Viewport	0 0
			Depth		16
			Modes		"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480 
		EndSubSection
	EndSection


Yup! That seemed to do the trick.  I am able to get a sensible gui now and can get
back to installing F8.  Note, I was forced to provide the Modes as above otherwise
xorg takes the highest default resolution (over that of 1024x768 somewhere) and
restarts over and over till it gives up.

But here is a question for you (xorg) developer folks...  why is it that the videocards
are not searching for a resolution that works, i.e. should go all the way down to
1024x768, 800x600 or even 640x480 so that GUI screen can appear?

Bummer.

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