8.37.6 ati-drivers causing modular x11 to hang at start

Vespira · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 33 Location: Arizona, USA

i am running on a Presario V2000 laptop, AMD 64bit Turion CPU and ATI 200M Mobility video. I have a 2006 install of gentoo residing on one partition as i attempt to upgrade to 2007.0 the hardware is obviously identical between both installs, however the software is obviously newer versions.

the problem i have is that, despite using the same kernel and xorg configs, xorg crashes on a black screen and partially hangs the machine. it still responds to sysrq requests and capslock light turns on/off when pressed, but VTs cannot be switched to and ctrl-alt-backspace does not seem to bring the console back up.

a quick comparison of the two xorg logs show only minor and expected differences. the new install is dying like so...

torsti76 · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 8:04 pm Post subject: Same problem here (on Core 2 Duo)

Hi Vespira,

did you find a solution yet?

I have the exact same problem here with a Radeon X1600 on a Core2 Duo running on 64 Bits. After an upgrade some weeks ago, fglrx stopped working. Downgrading fglrx and XOrg doesn't help, it has to be some deeper change in the system.

Could you please try to start X without any surrounding, i.e. by simply typing:

startail · n00b Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 71

I tried to get back into gentoo again for being away for a while running an unmentionable OS.

What I had problems with was just the ATI drivers. I have a x1650 card, and when I installed the 8.37.6-r1 drivers I wasn't able to get X running. The radeon drivers did just fine, but had no Direct Rendering offcourse...

What I did was checking the bugzilla to see if someone had released any new ebuilds since AMD/ATI are up to 8.39.4 in their drivers. Someone had posted at Bug #183480.

I used the patch there called "Changes from ati-drivers-8.37.6-r1.ebuild needed to build ati-drivers-8.38.6".
Saved it up in /usr/local/portage/x11-drivers/ati-drivers and installed it.

It has been working since then

I hope this helps you

torsti76 · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 9:42 pm Post subject:

Hi startail,

without knowing this bug report. I did the exact thing to the ebuild, that patch does a long while ago, and installed 8.38.6 (and even 8.38.7, an "unofficial" release). Both with no luck.

Will try 8.39.4 now and see, if this works...

Thanks anyway!
Torsten
_________________
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful. - Murphy's Law No. 13 -

torsti76 · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 10:17 pm Post subject:

IT WORKED, FELLOWS!

I copied the original 8.37.6-r1.ebuild to

/usr/local/portage/x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.39.4.ebuild and changed it as follows:

torsti76 · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject:

Now, the last issue is resolved.

The file /etc/ati/control was missing, triggering the watermark.

Here's the complete patch to the ebuild:

Vespira · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 33 Location: Arizona, USA

i could not resolve this issue... what i had to do was

1) revert to ati-drivers-8.35.5
2) revert to xorg-x11-7.1 ..and xorg-server-1.1.1, and downgrade all the various extensions.. i probably did it the hard way

it then works fine...

BUT the problem i have now is that glxinfo reports direct rendering, but no texture_from_pixmap... ya know the important bit that allows compiz/beryl/etc to work >.< so while i get super fast (for this laptop) 3d GL rendering, i cannot get compiz up.

funny thing is on the old 2006 gentoo install, beryl runs flawlessly and glxinfo reports that there is no direct rendering... but it is definitely being 3d accelerated >.<)a

Vespira · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 33 Location: Arizona, USA

nevermind.. figured it out from remembering what i did last time..

had to do the whole LD_PRELOAD thing to point to the mesa GL libs...

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL/Troubleshooting#GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap_is_missing

once i pointed compiz at it, everything worked.

as a heads up, i ran into the black frozen screen again even after reverting to an old version... what i did to resolve was...

used eselect to point back to the xorg-x11 GL implementation
emerged mesa again
used eselect to switch back to ati
emerged xgl again
switched BACK to xorg-x11 via eselect
emerged compiz again
finally switched back to ATI via eselect
started xgl

xgl MUST be built against ATI GL implementation, but everything else needs to be built against the xorg GL implementation

now i just need to revert back to the current xorg and ati drivers and see what happens

Vespira · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 33 Location: Arizona, USA

and after a reboot it is back to doing the same thing, locking up on a black screen after DRI finishes loading...

the problem is that it is hit or miss.. it seems to fail about 25% of the time. i can just reboot and let the system fsck, then try again and pray... >.<

not sure what else to try at this moment, other than to write off 2007.0 as incompatible to this laptop.

tried a complete O/S reload with the same situation.

trolley · Apprentice Joined: 12 Jun 2002 Posts: 292 Location: Canada

I'm having no luck with my Sapphire X1600 Pro using any version newer than 8.35.5...I've tried 8.37.6 and 8.39.4 both with the same results. Using the xorg.conf that works with 8.35.5 X starts up then uses 100% of the CPU and leaves the screen stuck on the checkered (?) standard X background with a gray box instead of a cursor. I tried removing the xorg.conf and starting it again and used aticonfig to configure it, and then I get stuck at a black screen and X refuses to start period, but I can't see what error messages it's reporting and nothing at all is appearing in the log.

o5gmmob8 · Guru Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 465

Hi all,

I am experiencing similar issues on my computer - I am running the following:

torsti76 · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject:

@Walter: Obviously, you mixed some things up.

1. DRM is a part of the XOrg, i.e. OpenSource, drivers. While you compiled the drm modules into the kernel (or installed zthe x11-drm package), you chose one or more graphic cards to be supported by the module. That produced, in your case, the module radeon.ko. This module, at the time being, does NOT support newer Radeon cards (i.e. the X-Series).

thus,

1.a Forget about DRM first! ;o)

2. The ati-drivers, aka fglrx, come with their own kernel module, fglrx.ko. This module (and this module alone!) has to be loaded to get the driver up and running.

3. DRI should be your second concern, first of all try the following:
3.a Configure your kernel without ANY drm options.
3.b Uninstall x11-drm, if installed by emerge -C x11-drm.
3.c Run aticonfig --initial and choose very low level options (e.g. screen resolution 640x480, depth 16Bit, ...)
3.d Try to start X by simply typing X without any other option - if that doesn't give you the checkered X11-display, you're stuck. ;o)

4. If you got X running as described in 3., you can start finetuning your setup.

5. If you do everything as described in the documentation (/usr/share/doc/ati-drivers-<your version>/html/index.html), DRM should work out of the box, WITHOUT any additional modules. In fact, the fglrx module provides all the necessary interfaces for DRI directly to the driver...

Good luck
Torsten
_________________
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful. - Murphy's Law No. 13 -

o5gmmob8 · Guru Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 465

Thanks,

You sound extremely knowledgeable in that area - I will try your recommendations and let you know how it works out.

[EDIT]
I tried what you suggested and I get a blank screen where the keyboard still responds, before I was getting no keyboard response. It appears X thinks it's running as I do ctrl+alt+delete then hit the down arrow twice to get the reboot option selected. Then in about 30 seconds, it reboots. Before, I just had to kill the power.
[/EDIT]

Walter

o5gmmob8 · Guru Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 465

Hey,

I did another google search for the 6 billionth time and found the ATI wiki. That of course was my life saver. I have fglrx working, but unfortunately it's only working on VGA not DVI. My next step is to get it to be fully accelerated as I have a fast card that is running very slow right now.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ATI_Drivers#If_fglrxinfo_says_.22mesa3d.org.22_instead_of_.22ATI.22_after_A_SUCCESSFUL_modprobe_of_fglrx

The error I am having is DRI is not initialized: