Support for AMD A4-9120C ??

fargodwe · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2020 Posts: 5

I currently run linux Mint on an Acer Chromebook 315-2ht-47wg using firmware from mychromebox. The video on the APU and the sound are not supported. When I originally ran with Chrome OS it worked fine. I have been told that Chrome OS is based off of Gentoo linux. If that is the case does gentoo support the "C" (specifically for Chromebook) version of this APU?

If not, and if Chrome OS is based off of Gentoo linux, would there be some way to bring in the source code and needed support code from Chrome OS specifically dealing with a driver for my video and a driver for my sound?

Thank you for letting a dumb guy ask a dumb question!

fargodwe · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2020 Posts: 5

BTW - I mean if I go to gentoo in place of linux Mint.

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23100

As an initial bit of advice, you should not reply to your own posts. Doing so removes them from the list of unanswered posts, which may cause some people not to see the thread, and then not offer their input on your question. Instead, you should edit your opening post to add your additional remarks. In this case, since I am responding anyway, there is no point in removing your first response, since my post will also be considered an "answer" for the purpose of that search.

To your question:

Support for hardware is primarily dependent on the kernel, rather than a particular distribution (though in the case of video, you often need a userspace component too), so your question is more about whether the upstream Linux kernel, optionally extended with the few patches that Gentoo provides for the Linux kernel, can drive your hardware. Ideally, the answer would be an automatic "yes" since the support clearly exists in the ChromeOS kernel, but some distributions (particularly the more commercial ones) have a nasty habit of using custom kernels with functionality that is not available upstream. By license, they must provide to you the code used in the kernel they shipped - but they are not obligated to submit it upstream, nor to shepherd it through the ensuing review process, so it may only work with a specific, and usually badly outdated, kernel version. It may be of such poor quality or design that the upstream maintainers would refuse to merge it as-is even if it were submitted to them. (Historically, there were several critical components of Google's Android that had this problem.)

If this were my system, I would start by obtaining and posting the PCI IDs of the relevant components. Ideally, use lspci -nnk from inside ChromeOS (if you still have that installed, and if it actually has lspci installed). That will give us the IDs and the name of the kernel driver operating each piece of hardware. Knowing those driver names makes it much easier to find how to configure a custom kernel to match. (This assumes that your only problem is that the non-ChromeOS kernel(s) you used are not built with the right kernel driver. As Mint is a general purpose distribution, I would expect them to have plenty of optional hardware support, but perhaps you are lucky and they just excluded this one as too esoteric. The alternative is that they excluded it because upstream Linux has no driver for it, in which case this gets harder.) If you cannot get lspci inside ChromeOS, then run it from Mint (or Gentoo or any other open Linux you have easy access to).

fargodwe · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2020 Posts: 5

thank you for the reply. I'm sorry I didn't know to edit my original reply. Since I am currently running the firmware from mrchromebox the chromebook currently does not boot chromeos. I hope the following output from linux Mint terminal will be helpful.

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:53 am Post subject:

https://www.cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/DRM_AMDGPU.html

As you can see your VGA device 1002:98e4 is supported since kernel version 4.4.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

fargodwe · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2020 Posts: 5

Humm.....I even went so far as to try kernel 5.9 but to no avail. It says it's using amdgpu but it doesn't appear to be working. There are no multiple resolutions and the monitor islisted as unknown. As i remember it, in the older verions of the kernel this would work because i could use/install the old radeon/fglrx driver and x. It has not worked since amdgpu became the default. The latest docs I found said that amdgpu did not uspport the gpu because it is now the wrong GCN or something like that that would be supported. The docs indicate switch of some sort can be set for amdgpu to support older versions but i don't know what that switch is or how to use it. The dmesg in Mint shows the following around amdgpu and seems to deal with both the video and the sound:

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 12:18 pm Post subject:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon

Is your hardware mentioned here?
_________________
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fargodwe · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2020 Posts: 5

I know this is many months old and I apologize for that. I am very much a novice at all of this so I've been trying to read and make sense of some things but not real successfully. As best I can tell, my particular APU's GPU isn't on the list and it doesn't appear it is supported by AMDGPU.

So, being a complete novice at all of this I thought I would try installing GENTOO to the built-in microSD on my weird configuration still keeping my Linux Mint installation "safe" since it is on a removable microSD card.

I'm afraid since I left my days of midrange mainframes, minis and finally micros due to disability in 1996, my comprehension of things has declined terribly. So I see that to "install" GENTOO I am better off booting another distro's livecd and then doing something called a chroot to build GENTOO with what I need. There was a day when something like that would be a piece of cake - today no. I realize it seems to be more of a techie distro and I magically thought that wouldn't be a problem given my past experience. Nope.

So I'm reduced to being one of those dumb people who have to come here and ask for help. Is there something somewhere that might start on the outside with GENTOO and work it's way in so I can understand better? Same for some sort of guide where an idiot as I appear to be today can install GENTOO with wireless and a X desktop of some sort? I know these are ridiculous questions, I really do and I feel embarrassed by them. I just really want to get it installed and try building in some sound modules, etc., to see if:

(1) I can get video to work as it does in ChromeOS and as it used to work when the old Radeon driver was still available until AMDGPU replaced it but dropped support for some of the older GPU's.

(2) I can get sound to work as it does in ChromeOS but not with Linux Mint (or a couple of other distro's I tested)

ANY guidance would be so greatly appreciated. I'm not looking for someone to "do it for me". I want to get this working on my own as much as possible and I just need pointers for where to look for a more novice explanation of GENTOO and it's installation and building (apparently emerge?).

Thanking you in advance.

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23100

It's fine to let your thread sit for a while. Sometimes the people helping you will have lost interest by then, but there is never a guarantee someone will come back. I would suggest phrasing your apologies a bit differently next time. When I first read your most recent post, I thought you were an unrelated user resurrecting an old thread, not the OP come back to resume work.

The Gentoo installation handbook is intended to be a resource you can follow. It looks like https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page is the current entry point for the handbook. If you cannot follow it, please come here, describe what part you reached, and why you cannot follow it. Do you get an error that you're not sure how to resolve? Does it ask you to make a decision for which you feel you lack the information required to choose correctly? Is it unclear what you should be doing next?

As I wrote back when the thread was new, video/audio support depends mainly on the kernel, not the distribution. While it's possible that Linux Mint, or Debian, or Fedora, or ... would be unable to drive your video/sound cards due to decisions those distributions made about how to configure their kernel, it seems more likely that if they cannot drive your card, then your card is simply unsupported, at least in the kernel version(s) you tried. That leads to a question: if you cannot make this card work in Gentoo, would you still want to use Gentoo? It's fine if the answer is no. If the answer is no, then I suggest you cut your losses and use a distribution that is less trouble for you. There's no point to forcing yourself to use Gentoo if you don't want to use it. If you want to persevere with Gentoo anyway, that's fine too. We can help you try to get it working.