[ILUG] screen death

[Peter Flynn]

I think I've resurrected my laptop disk, so I need to solve my final
XFree86 config problem. Screen rez is fine, 16-bit color is fine,
everyhting working except when I go for shutdown or (back with
runlevel startup at 3) to exit from X to commandline, it whites out
the LCD screen, which then seeps slowly to black (revealing all the
backing flaws in the LCD as it does so :-) and never comes up with
a prompt. I can see from the hard-disk LCD indicator panel that it's
doing a shutdown seemingly OK, it even beeps at the right point, but 
I hate leaving the screen go through this white-to-black cycle as it
looks really nasty, but I guess that powering off before shutdown is
complete is even more damaging.

What is it with the server (SVGA) that makes it incapable of just
closing down and exiting? If it's waiting for some kind of
confirmation from the chipset that something has occurred, can this be
disabled? It's not as if I'm trying to close one X session and start
another: this is going for a full shutdown.

All suggestions gratefully received.

///Peter