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Date:      Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:46:27 -0500
From:      Alex Goncharov <alex-goncharov@comcast.net>
To:        "Bruce M. Simpson" <bms@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        danallen46@airwired.net, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, alex-goncharov@comcast.net
Subject:   Re: Unhappy Xorg upgrade
Message-ID:  <E1LSWHr-0009TS-P7@daland.home>
In-Reply-To: <49819BD5.5040709@FreeBSD.org> (bms@FreeBSD.org)
References:  <6B7ABE80-35AB-4C44-B5A4-200E10DCC3AC@airwired.net> <E1LSP0B-0003Ds-H8@daland.home> <49819BD5.5040709@FreeBSD.org>

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,--- You/Bruce (Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:06:45 +0000) ----*
|     One theory is that somehow the mouse driver ioctls which are passed 
| to ums, are somehow hosing USB, although why that would be, I don't 
| understand. ums currently doesn't have driver instrumentation in that path.
| 
|     I pulled a fairly detailed IRC log of my collaborative debugging 
| session with Robert, please ping me if you need details of this.
`----------------------------------------------------*

Thank you for the detailed write up!  No help to me, though -- on my
Latitude laptop, there was no problem with any mouse: USB or the
built-in "pointing device".  It was the keyboard -- and, trust me, I
did try many variations of the machine configuration, and I did do a
lot of reading on various relevant topics (writing, too, as you have
seen :-()

As I mentioned elsewhere, my way of resolving the problem after a
one-and-a-half day's of struggle was to revert to the old X (on that
laptop).

On the topic of how this upgrade was introduced, I can't help but
refer to my recent experience helping to fix TWM:

,--- Eeri Kask (Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:21:17 +0200) ----*
| > I have used the new version of TWM for five days, using it less
| > intensively than usual. No problems in seen during my (light) use.
| 
| Hello Alex, no problem at all!  Improved solutions have priority over 
| promised deadlines.
| 
| Thank you for your time helping to improve TWM,  :-)
|
`----------------------------------------------------*

Eeri Kask and I worked together all past September on fixing TWM
crashes: I was willingly trying his multiple versions of the code, but
I knew what I was risking, could choose convenient times for building
and trying every new version (we tried about 30 of them) -- and I
could always go back to the previous version (or the original TWM from
ports).

I would be happy to try a new X on my machines, if it were labeled as
experimental, with an easy way to revert to the old X (while being in
the testing stage).  As it is, this upgrade brought a lot of problems
to unsuspecting people, at the time they don't quite choose, with
potential dangers not disclosed.

In honesty, this upgrade should have been presented this way, way
before the code was placed in the ports source tree:

 * We'll have a new X in ports soon -- there are multiple reports of
   problems with it on Linux.

 * We want to try it on FreeBSD -- but nobody is forcing you to do the
   upgrade.

 * If you, of your own free will, choose to upgrade, you may have
   hours and days of problems -- but heck, it was your choice.

 * If your problems cannot be fixed, you'll have to figure out
   something yourself.

 * If you choose not to upgrade, you are frozen with the pre-existing
   ports collection: there may be no automated ways to upgrade your
   packages, with the old X in place.  Of course, you can somehow get
   pieces on new ports, unrelated to X.

 * The choice is totally yours.

-- Alex -- alex-goncharov@comcast.net --





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