Fedora 7 Problems With Glint Video Driver

NOTE: This article is out of date and likely obsolete.

Just a warning for any Fedora Linux users preparing to upgrade to Fedora 7: Grab the Live CD first and make sure that all your hardware works properly. If not, see if the fix is available before you actually upgrade.

I upgraded a system with a Permedia 2 video card, which uses the glint drivers. The installer couldn’t launch the GUI, but I’ve run into that fairly often, so I just used the text-based installer without thinking much of it. The upgrade process itself went fine, but on booting into the new system, it was unable to launch X. I kept getting the following error:

X: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//glint_drv.so: undefined  
symbol: RamDacCreateInfoRec

I found a reference to the problem occurring in Debian, as Debian bug #423129, then followed that to Freedesktop.org bug 10906, which has been fixed. It turns out that the xorg X server moved some features from a pluggable module into the server itself, but didn’t keep them available for drivers that use them. I tested the patch with the X server SRPM from Fedora, and was able to run the system in graphics mode again.

Then I checked Fedora’s bug database, and found Red Hat bug 242800, filed just yesterday. I confirmed that I had the same problem, pointed them at the upstream bug, and reported that the fix worked for me.

For those who are comfortable with modifying and building SRPMs, you can grab xorg-x11-server-1.3.0.0-5.fc7.src.rpm from any Fedora mirror, then add the patch from that Freedesktop.org bug report to the SPEC file. That will give you a set of RPMs that will work with the card. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably better off waiting until Fedora has a chance to test the fix and issue an update, but if you want to learn, check out the RPM Guide)

Update (June 7): A fixed version, xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.3.0.0-8.fc7 has hit the testing repository.

Update (June 11): The fix has been released, so all you have to do is install/upgrade in text mode and run yum update after you’re done.