Bug#563238: Consoles (VT1-VT6) displays are scrambled when gdm is running

[Yves Lambert]

Package: gdm
Version: 2.20.10-1
Severity: grave

Hi,

When switching to consoles Ctrl+Alt+Fn, the display is scrambled and there is no 
way to read what is displayed by login or shell. It occures when consoles display 
is using svga and gdm is running. The displau keeps trace of what was 
displayed by X instead of displaying what was expected. I experiment this only with 
gdm running, not xdm or no dislay manager at all (eg. starting te X server from 
command line). I experiment this with 2 different nvidia video cards and an asus one 
so this problem does not seem to be bound to hardware.
It may be a regression bug that had been solved in some versions of gdm:
in some machine svga for consoles is enabled and I uninstalled gdm weeks ago, 
I don't remember I had the problem when I uuninstalled it, this is a slow machine 
with a small harddrive, I uninstalled gdm because I needed the room 0and xdm were 
sufficient.. when installing latest gdm, the problem has occured. On some 
other machine, on which I use gdm, I activated framebuffer days ago and I did not 
notice the problem until I upgraded to latest gdm.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR at euro, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR at euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii  adduser           3.112                  add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf- 1.5.28                 Debian configuration management sy
ii  gksu              2.0.2-2+b1             graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-session [x- 2.28.0-4               The GNOME Session Manager
ii  gnome-terminal [x 2.28.2-1               The GNOME terminal emulator applic
ii  kde-window-manage 4:4.3.4-3              the KDE 4 window manager (KWin)
ii  konsole [x-termin 4:4.3.4-1              X terminal emulator for KDE 4
ii  kterm [x-terminal 6.2.0-46               Multi-lingual terminal emulator fo
ii  libart-2.0-2      2.3.20-2               Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0       1.29.3-1               The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1          1:2.4.44-1             Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6             2.10.2-2               GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2         1.9.4-1                The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3       1.2.16-2               simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2  0.82-2                 simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdmx1           1:1.0.2-3              X11 Distributed Multihead extensio
ii  libfontconfig1    2.8.0-1                generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6      2.3.11-1               FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libglade2-0       1:2.6.4-1              library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0      2.23.1-1               The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0 2.26.0-1               A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgtk2.0-0       2.19.1-1               The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpam-modules    1.1.0-4                Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime    1.1.0-4                Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g          1.1.0-4                Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0     1.26.2-1               Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2        2.26.0-1               SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  librsvg2-common   2.26.0-1               SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1       2.0.89-4               SELinux runtime shared libraries
ii  libwrap0          7.6.q-18               Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6          2:1.3.2-1              X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6           1:1.0.5-1              X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6         1:1.0.3-1              X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6          2:1.1.1-1              X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxi6            2:1.3-1                X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1      2:1.1-1                X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2           2.7.6.dfsg-1           GNOME XML library
ii  lsb-base          3.2-23                 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  metacity [x-windo 1:2.28.0-3             lightweight GTK+ window manager
ii  mutter [x-window- 2.28.1~git20091208-1   lightweight GTK+ window manager
ii  terminal.app [x-t 0.9.4+cvs20051125-5+b1 Terminal Emulator for GNUstep
ii  wmaker [x-window- 0.92.0-8.1             NeXTSTEP-like window manager for X
ii  xfce4-session [x- 4.6.1-1                Xfce4 Session Manager
ii  xfwm4 [x-window-m 4.6.1-1                window manager of the Xfce project
ii  xterm [x-terminal 253-1                  X terminal emulator

Versions of packages gdm recommends:
ii  dialog                    1.1-20080819-1 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  gdm-themes                0.6.2          Themes for the GNOME Display Manag
ii  whiptail                  0.52.10-5      Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  xnest                     2:1.6.5-1      Nested X server
ii  xserver-xephyr            2:1.6.5-1      nested X server
ii  xserver-xorg              1:7.4+4        the X.Org X server
ii  zenity                    2.28.0-1       Display graphical dialog boxes fro

Versions of packages gdm suggests:
ii  libpam-gnome-keyring          2.28.2-1   PAM module to unlock the GNOME key
ii  locales                       2.10.2-2   GNU C Library: National Language (
ii  pm-utils                      1.2.6.1-3  utilities and scripts for power ma

-- debconf information:
  gdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/gdm
* shared/default-x-display-manager: gdm