[CentOS] Hosed by 4.2 [solved]

Mon Oct 31 18:13:45 UTC 2005
Syv Ritch <centos at 911networks.com>

Syv Ritch wrote:

> 4.1 to 4.2 has been a total disaster.
> 
> I ran yum update, it went through and a couple of hours later I rebooted 
> and X froze with the screen just being just fuzz [regular rectangles, 
> orange, green...] and the keyboard froze. Could not do a 
> alt-ctrl-backspace, nor a Alt-F1-6 nor Alt-Ctrl-Del.
> 
> I have a ATI9200 with a Samsung 710N [It only works at 1240x1024 @ 60Hz, 
> it will not work at any other frequency]
> 
> This is the same hardware as I was running with 4.1.
> 
> I had to reinstall 4.1, now I cannot run yum update to get the security 
> updates, it tries to upgrade to 4.2.
> 
> 1. Is there a way to just get the updates for 4.1 and not 4.2
> 2. Any suggestion on what went wrong with X. It's not just the frequency 
> display because the keyboard also froze.

I have finally solved the problem.

The problem IS [present tense] X. X dies with the ATI card. I 
have tried changing the driver to ATI's, and still no dice. I 
ended cannibalizing an older PC and changing the video card to an 
nVidia GeForce2. Everything works well.

Something's wrong on how X talks or does not talk to the ATI9200. 
It's not the driver because it happens with both dri and fglrx, 
so ...