Call for testing of vga16fb/usplash default resolution on i386 and amd64

[Adam Conrad]

As many of you may know, our default setup for usplash uses the vga16fb
framebuffer driver, which some people have had some issues with, we
believe because the default resolution (640x480) was overflowing a fixed
128k buffer on some video cards.

To address this, I have prepared kernels that drop the default
resolution and timings to what should be a more "standard" 640x400
framebuffer, and would appreciate as many people testing this as
possible.

If usplash doesn't quite work for you, I want to know if this fixes it.
if usplash currently works for you, I want to know that this doesn't
break it.

At the location referenced at [1], you will find rebuilt i386 and amd64
kernels of all flavours (dapper kernels only, if you're running breezy,
these WON'T WORK, so please don't try).

I would like you to mail the following feedback to me at
"adconrad at ubuntu.com".  Please do NOT mail your results to the mailing
lists, as this will generate a lot of useless traffic/noise that most
people who aren't me just plain don't care about.

1) Before doing anything else, make sure you have usplash 0.1-25 or
   later installed.  Anything older will not work.  Trust me on this.
2) Before installing the new kernels from the location below, I want you
   to reboot with you current kernel, remove any "vga=1234" stuff from
   you kernel command line, make sure "splash" is included in the
   command line, and tell me these 3 things:
  a) Did usplash work correctly for you?  If not, what happened?  Did it
     "wrap around" from bottom to top, was there an icky colour palette
     shift, did it just not work at all?  I'm only interested in
     graphics related bugs here, not other stuff like "it timed out
     because it was checking drives" or such.
  b) The output, at a console, of "lsmod | grep fb".  On my system, this
     looks something like the following, yours may differ:
     vga16fb                13768  1
     cfbcopyarea             4096  1 vga16fb
     vgastate               10208  1 vga16fb
     cfbimgblt               3104  1 vga16fb
     cfbfillrect             4352  1 vga16fb
     fbcon                  43584  72
     tileblit                2784  1 fbcon
     font                    8320  1 fbcon
     bitblit                 6464  1 fbcon
  c) In a console, type "dmesg | less", and find the bits about vga16fb,
     and paste these lines (may vary for you, but should be similar):
     [timestamp] vga16fb: initializing
     [timestamp] vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000
     [timestamp] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
     [timestamp] fb0: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device
3) Now install the kernel from below, matching your current default
   kernel (hint: use "uname -r" to see which one you're using, and
   install that one, such as 2.6.15-7-386, 2.6.15-7-amd64-generic, etc)
4) Give the same feedback as you did above for your old kernel.  Did
   usplash work, if not, how not, and what does dmesg look like for the
   new kernel?

Gather up all these results, and send them off to adconrad at ubuntu.com,
and if the results are positive, we'll be seeing this change in our
default kernels in dapper.

Thanks in advance,

... Adam Conrad

[1] http://people.ubuntu.com/~adconrad/kernel/