NetBSD 8.0 RC1 and X

[Robert Nestor <rnestor%mac.com@localhost>]

Trying to install NetBSD 8.0_RC1 on an HP 6200 system and ran into a problem I’ve never seen before.

Got the system installed with XDM, but X didn’t find all the possible screen resolutions.  I’m used to that, so I edited an xorg.conf file and that solved the problem.  I then tried installing netbsd-XEN3-DOM0 and the xen out of the xen48 packages.  The system comes up, again in a minimal X with XDM but again without my custom xorg.conf file I get just low screen resolutions.  With my custom xorg.conf file I get colorful screen confetti.

Digging a bit further I see that without Xen the X system is defaulting to the intel driver for the on-board graphics, but when booting up with Xen it defaults to the vesa driver.  The Vesa driver goes thru all the resolutions provided in my xorg.conf file (which work with the intel driver) and decides none are usable and defaults to the one that provides the colorful confetti.  I’ve tried disabling vesa in the boot.cfg but must not have gotten it right or it is being ignored when loading DOM0.

Going back several years it’s been normal for X to not provide all possible screen resolutions, even under other OSes.  It seems to be getting harder and harder to figure out what needs to go into the xorg.conf file to get this resolved and each new version of X seems to probe things a bit differently and try to attach the screen differently.  But I’ve never seen a situation where the same system/hardware comes up with one solution for X when booting normally and a different solution for X when booting up with Xen.

Anybody have some suggestions or ideas of how to get things working in both boot configurations?

Oh, one random thought.  This system is UEFI capable but I’ve installed NetBSD using the old Legacy BIOS.  Could that be the issue?  Should I go back and install using UEFI?

Thanks,
-bob