Updating and configuring the siliconmotion driver in Debian

The vesion of this driver which is currently in the standard Debian repository has a problem, which in most cases causes X.org to fail with a “Segmentation Fault” error right after start-up. A patch fixing it is already available, but is not yet applied and the rebuilt package is not uploaded to the archive yet. For more details on this issue, see:

• http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=594684

If you want to get X.org to work without waiting for that fix, follow these steps:

First of all, add the anheng.com.cn repository to your apt sources and run apt-get update.

After that:

apt-get install xserver-common xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion

These packages (and possibly some more) will be upgraded from the newly-added repository at this point.

Set your X.org config to the following:¹⁾

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Card0"
        Driver          "siliconmotion"
        Option          "HWCursor"       "true"
        Option          "VideoKey"       "45000"
        Option          "UseBIOS"        "false"
        Option          "PanelSize"      "1024x600"
        Option          "AccelMethod"    "XAA"       # or "EXA"
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Screen0"
        Device          "Card0"
        Monitor         "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth    16                           # or 24
        SubSection "Display"
                Virtual   1024 600
		Depth     16
	EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Virtual   1024 600
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection        
EndSection

After you restart your Desktop Manager (e.g. /etc/init.d/gdm restart or /etc/init.d/slim restart ), X.org should start up successfully, using the new siliconmotion driver.

Regarding performance, in my experience 16-bit color mode is faster than 24-bit, and XAA is faster than EXA.