Hi Folks,

anyone out there successful in using the new xorg "intel" driver module on a 965Q-based motherboard with CentOS 5.2? The old "i810" and "vesa" work fine, I am looking for anyone else with experience with the new "intel" video driver in 5.2.

The long of it:

I have a customer's Dell Optiplex 745 (Core2 Duo 6300, 965Q chipset with integrated video) connected to a 19" NEC 1760V. Graphical installs of CentOS 5.2 completely locks the system when X starts. Text install succeeds and creates an xorg.conf using the "intel" video driver. Starting X causes complete machine lockup (no network - no ping, SSH dead) requiring a power cycle. This happens 95% of the time. I immediately assumed hardware problems but it passes memtest86 just fine and works with other video drivers. BIOS was 2.3.1 and I upgraded to latest 2.6.1 - no change.

Unfortunately, a day of testing did not nail down a commonality of events to explain why the "intel" driver occasionally succeeds. Usually, it's after I've been in the BIOS menu so I suspect it is the video being in just the right state for it to succeed, but again it is not 100% reproducible. When the system locks up, no /var/log/X.0.log has been written or anything in the log files. I would like to build a kernel with sysrq key enabled to break into the kernel debugger on lockup, but I don't have the time as the hardware will be leaving soon.

Switching to the "i810" or "vesa" drivers succeed 100% of the time so I have a workaround: a text install and manual edit of /etc/X11/xorg.conf to "i810". My app is old-school 2D so graphical performance is not a concern of mine.

I've done searches of upstream Bugzilla, xorg, CentOS bugs, and the 'net in general and, while I find X display lockups with the "intel" driver, I do not find any complete system lockups. I'll file a bug against upstream but I'm trying to get a feel of what the scope of the problem is. I know there are folks using the "intel" driver successfully on other distros, so I'm trying to see if this is a CentOS problem, a RHEL problem, a Dell 745 problem, or just the one box I have (despite tests).

Thanks for any feedback, Ken Key