Re: NetBSD 8 on Old ThinkPad - strange mouse issues

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On 5 August 2018 at 07:31, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost> wrote:
> Hi David!
>
>
> On 02/08/2018 16:16, David Brownlee wrote:
>>
>> On 30 July 2018 at 18:53, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 2) with a little more heavy usage (I was removign packages, updating
>>> trees,
>>> etc) the tlp0 interface started complaining about timeouts. Only a reboot
>>> recovers!
>>> tlp0: transmit timeout
>>> tlp0: filter setup and transmit timeout
>>>
>>> That is pretty wacky...
>>>
>>> Can you edit your xorg.conf (or create one) and under the Section
>>> "Device" add:
>>>
>>> Option "HWCursor" "off"
>>>
>>> to see if that helps?
>
> I actually put it in the screen section, like this:
>
> Section "Screen"
>     Identifier     "Screen0"
>     Device         "Device0"
>     Monitor        "Monitor0"
>     Option         "SWCursor" "on"
>     Option         "HWCursor" "off"
> EndSection
>
> Nothing else, I had no xorg.conf
>
> and yes! I have a mouse now.

Excellent!

> Does this mean HW support for the cursor broke in a strange way?

Yes. I would expect it to be somewhere in the xorg code rather than a
kernel issue, but at least you have a workaround now!

>>>
>>> As a data point you could also try extracting a copy of netbsd-6 with
>>> X11 into a subdir, then chroot into it and try starting X from there.
>>> If it still has the mouse display issue then its a kernel issue,
>>> otherwise X11...
>
> Do I still need to do that or is the xorg.conf check enough? My hard disk is
> small :-P This is also why I upgraded in-place. I suppose that we know it is
> an X11 isse, or does HW cursor go through the kernel?

On x86 without drm the kernel pretty much hands control of the display
hardware to the X11 userland code, so its likely that code is driving
the hardware differently in the xorg code in -8 compared to -6. Its
even possible that -6 was using a software mouse cursor.

>>> Do you have a netbsd-6 dmesg to compare where the various devices
>>> attach to see if there are any differences for tlp or the cardbus?
>
> Unluckily, no, I did not save one and I don't have the old kernel. Perhaps I
> can dig up the old email where I got the suggestion and/or my old 6.x series
> conf file. One thing at a time :)

For the tlp driver you should be able to boot a -6 install image to
copy out the dmesg.

Regarding X11, could you nfs mount an extracted -6 install from
another box and chroot/start X from there? (tlp driver isues
notwithstanding).

David