XserverFailover

Revision 3 as of 2006-07-02 08:08:09

Clear message

Summary

The graphic driver used by Xserver should be set automatically to "vesa" if the graphic card is not properly detected (Knoppix already does that).

That should happen at least in the following cases:

1) During the installation of Ubuntu (when using the "alternate installer")

2) When booting Ubuntu's live installer (and this is where Knoppix can be taken as an example).

3) On an already installed Ubuntu: the system should be able to switch to a working backup (using "vesa" driver) of the xorg.conf every time the Xserver fails.

4) When "dist-upgrading" the driver should be set to "vesa", in order to prevent crashes of the Xserver due to the lack of the restricted modules of a kernel, etc.

Rationale

Preventing the Xserver from crashing is a crucial feature (something similar can be found Windows) for any GNU/Linux distribution.

One of the main obstacles which prevents GNU/Linux widespread is hardware detection. As far as graphic cards are concerned, it is quite obvious that their support is not as good as in Windows because their manufacturers' main market is on Windows. For this reason drivers supporting the latest graphic cards are not available on Linux at the same time as they are on Windows.

The only thing which can be done for now is attempting to achieve the best compatibility which is possible with Xserver 7.x.x and the Linux kernel. The opensource drivers (e.g. "nv" and "ati") do not support as many graphic cards as their proprietary counterparts.

Very often, using vesa driver (until the installation of the proprietary drivers) is the only way to prevent the Xserver from crashing.

Even though proprietary drivers (such as ATI or Nvidia's) are not installed in Ubuntu by default, they can cause several problems when unexperienced or average experienced users try to install them. If the kernel is upgraded or if the graphic card needs some tweaking, etc. the xserver might crash and the users would be left alone with the command line (which many of them deem "alien"). The Xserver should be able to (automatically) restore a functioning backup of the xorg.conf and use a compatibility driver (such as "vesa").

Upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu has caused so many problems also because of the proprietary drivers which were installed before the upgrade. Therefore setting the driver (automatically) to vesa after that kind of upgrade would not be a bad idea.

Use cases

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Comments

RoaldHopman : A forum thread for feedback on this spec : http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=201128

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