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, particularly chapters 8 and 9.)

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.

I finally started looking, and that’s not the case. It seems that the Airport Extreme chipset manufacturer, Broadcom, refuses to release Linux drivers or to release specs to allow anyone else to write Linux drivers.

I don’t expect it to do any good, but I signed my first online petition.

Ah, well, I can do almost everything under Mac OS, and for those occasions that I actually need Linux, I can always go solo or plug in a cable, though it does limit where I can hook it up.