Intel i815 graphics with F17

[RupertPupkin]

I just discovered this issue today when doing a clean install of F17 (32-bit) on an old Sony Vaio PCG-992L laptop. The install worked fine despite the laptop having only 256MB RAM (I used the "nomemcheck" kernel option mentioned in this thread to get around the 512MB memory requirement). But X failed to start after the reboot; the final error message was:

(EE): Failed to load module "xaa" (module does not exist, 0)

The xaa module is used by the DRI2 3D drivers. This laptop has the integrated i815 graphics chipset, which I found out is not supported by the DRI2 3D drivers in Fedora 17. The problem is that the intel video driver in F17 (xorg-x11-drv-intel) has DRI2 enabled by default, and there is no separate DRI1 driver any more. The old i810_dri.so driver was part of the mesa-dri-drivers-dri1 package, which is gone in F17. So the only way I could get X to start was by creating an xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-local.conf), with these contents:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier          "Device0"
    Driver              "intel"
    Option "DRI"        "false"
    Option "NoAccel"    "true"
    VideoRam            16384
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier          "Screen0"
    Device              "Device0"
    Monitor             "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth        24
    SubSection          "Display"
        Depth           24
        Modes           "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The key line is Option "NoAccel" "true". Otherwsie X would still refuse to run. This worked perfectly, much better than using the vesa driver (which could only do 8-bit color at 1024x768, and wasn't properly aligned on the screen).

Luckily I knew how to write xorg.conf files, but I can only imagine that some new users might not know how, which would make this a serious problem. Has anyone else encountered this problem, and if so did you find an easier solution? I hope there is an easier way, since otherwise this could be a nasty surprise for people upgrading to F17 from a working F16 system with that video chipset (and others not supported by DRI2).

[mikee]

Sometimes it's just better to stick with the old stuff..
Like "elm".

[RupertPupkin]

You again! Made me fire up elm:

[mikee]

But mine is 2.4!!!!

[Colors]

Thanks, i installed today f17 on my old Compaq Deskpro EN after i read your post. Before i used fedora 14. Anyway i can only say: operation successful, the patient is dead. The pc has 512 MB RAM and worked acceptable under fedora 14, but now is slowly, no sound and the video has some issues. The top black bar hides the icons with network, sound and keyboard although i can use them blindly. For now i will wait to see the benefits and the disadvantages.