Actually the driver provided by my vendor does not give us 3D accelaration. I have read the documenation that came with the driver.It says that it will provide 2D acceleration. Some months ago I had benchmarked the vesa and AMD driver and the AMD driver showed 30% more increase in performance as compared to Vesa driver. Therefore I would like to use the the vendor driver.

Again, thanks a lot for looking into this.

Try getting the newest X build you can and just try every driver comes with it. Benchmark to see if the difference persists. And try something like reset; or get any svgalib program and try running it in console as root after putting console into the visually locked state.

Sorry for replying so late. I got the svgalib program as you mentioned but I could not understand the part "try running it in console as root after putting console into the visually locked state." What does that mean exactly?

Is there any document where I can read how to use the svgalib program wrt my Debian System.

Once again thank you very very much for the help.

You switch to some unused console, login as root and run the named program. It will switch video modes, so it may help to get back at exit. Surely, you'll have to do everything without seeing what you type.

Where is that I did:

1. I did an apt-cache search svgalib and installed the packages related to svgalib.

2. Then I complied the C program called 'sample' from the official 'svgalib' website.
Here is the link for the C code:
http://www.svgalib.org/jay/beginners...ers_guide.html

3.The program compiled successfully and when I tried to run it after making it executable I got the following message:
It seems that the svga module is not loaded. I even tried restarting my system and tried it again but I got the same message as above.

So I have two questions:
1.Am I going into the right direction? The way I am imagining things are that after the sample programs works fine, all I need to do is call the sample program from a script when the machine restarts or shutdowns, and this way the sample program will try to force switch the screen into text mode.

2. If I am on right track, why I am getting those error messages?

Thanks

Did you go through their FAQ, by the way? maybe other settings eliminate the need for module.

No I did not find anything useful at the FAQ. Also what is the best way to install svgalib: through apt-get or download the source tarball manually and then compile it.

If apt-get is the best way to install, what packages do I need exactly to install svgalib as there are 15-20 packages related to svgalib.

I don't know - since I use LFS I do not have to choose here. Maybe try both..

Ok some good news. I was able to install the svgalib properly. I also tried the sample program on the svgalib homepage. I was able to compile the program successfully. Also when I try to run it from GNOME it switches into a text mode too with some mouse initialization errors(which I think I can take care of by configuring the svgalib.conf file)!

Now the real thing: What should I do now? In one of your post you said "You switch to some unused console, login as root and run the named program. It will switch video modes, so it may help to get back at exit."

Now if you remember my real problem is during reboot and shutdown. Should I run the sample program (which switches from Graphics mode to text mode) by a script during the shutdown or restart? I am not clear at this point as to what should I do now. Some detailed steps will be highly appreciated.

Dude, one more thing regardless of that fact if this fix works or not, I really appreciate your time and efforts and it is nice to see that experience members like you are ready to devote so much to the linux community. You are the best.

Long Live Linux

hello there and greetz to raskin.

even if your not yet shutting down in x, can you switch to your consoles (ctrl-alt-fn) with no problem? if just in case yes, then why not just immediately press ctrl-alt-fn before x starts to reset the mode. when switching back to console, the kernel can handle this properly if i am right.

also about svgalib, if you have figured it out how to run it blindly, and it doesn't work for you, you can also try fbset. you can browse the list of modes in /etc/fb.modes. that's only if you're still using a framebuffer driver in your console like vesafb.

No if I press ctrl-alt-fn my monitor goes out of range/blank. This was the basic problem i.e. the the amd driver did not switch from Graphics to Console(text) mode.

Svgalib has been setup properly but now the thing is I don't know what to do next. I installed svgalib to get of this problem. Now I don;t know what to do with svgalib to force my screen into text mode during restart or shutdown. Yes I am using vesafb during the console.

Thanks

try 'chvt n' where n is the number of the console. btw at system boot, do you see the messages? not a blank screen?

During the system boot, everything is fine. I get the vesafb text console with all the boot spam and then I get the GDM login manager. The problem is only when it has booted into Graphical mode using the AMD drivers, it cannot switch back to text console. I don;t care what utility I use, I just want that my users should not be puzzled when they try to restart or shutdown the machine staring at the blank screen while the rebooting process is going at the back stage.

chvt 'n' leaves me with the same output of blank screen as I expected.

How do I use svgalib or fbset(as suggested by you) to solve this
problem.

Thanks a lot dude for efforts to help me out. Much appreciated.

for fbset run a a terminal then type fbset. see the value next to mode? that's what you'll enter in the console. change to the console (the one with the bash prompt ready, example console 1) then type where value is the one you saw earlier. just type even if it's blank. be careful not to make a mistake.

next time if this works, you can make a bash script to automatically run the command in an easier manner. example fbreset. or even fbr.

Thanks konsolebox. Suppose if the fbset method works for me and I make a bash script which I execute during the Runlevel 6(restart or shutdown), what will the users see on the text console? Will they see regular shutdown/restart messages of servuces being stopped and filesystem being unmounted?

Thank you once again. I will try this as soon as I get back to my workplace.