Interesting (wierd) X-server video errors

[Terence Simpson]

Larry Hartman wrote:
> OK, I tried to install Beryl-KDE-xgl a couple weeks ago on my robust ATI 
> XPress 200M card....it failed.  I figured it would not go....
>
> I purged the whole lot and gave up on it.  No big deal.  I removed all of the 
> configuration files and sym-links that the instructions had me create.  No 
> big deal.
>
> At about the same time--I am unsure if this correlates with my attempt at 
> Beryl--I began getting an unusual error on the video.  When I switch to 
> virtual terminals ALT-F1-6/F8-9, I get a screen filled with vertical flashing 
> colored stripes.  The terminal still works, but is invisible to the user.
>
> I have the same symptoms with both the opensource and the ATI fglrx drivers, 
> which led me to believe this is an x-server issue.  So I reinstalled 
> X-server, no change.  Just to make sure that it had nothing to do with KDM, I 
> switched momentarily to GDM, then purged and reloaded KDM...no change.
>
> The good thing in all of this is that the KDM/KDE is still operational...so I 
> am not dysfunctional.
>
> Would like some advice to troubleshoot this....also presents another good 
> Linux learning opportunity.
>
> Larry
>
>   

Don't know exactly how/why this happened, but it sounds a lot like a 
problem I experienced when I used my video cards frame buffer device and 
X together. What will probably help is to disable the frame-buffer module.
I'm not sure what that module is, but you can start with "lsmod | grep fb"
then just add the name of that module to 
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer

Hope that helps,
Terence