[gentoo-alpha] Re: radeon questions

["Måns Rullgård" <mans@mansr.com>]

Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> writes:

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Don Wilburn <bodhisattva@gt.rr.com> wrote:
>> Dear silent alpha list,
>>
>> I got X to work with my GeForce card and the nv driver.  It was functional,
>> but underwhelming.  So, I got a PCI Radeon card via eBay.
>> Specifically, it's a Visiontek 9250.  The lspci output calls it an RV280
>> 9200 PRO.  So far, I can't get X to work.
>> Like nouveau for my nVidia card, the kernel DRM radeon module won't load.
>> Running modprobe radeon fails and says "Exec format error."  The dmesg
>> output says something about "Relocation (type 4) overflow vs
>> radeon_resume_kms."
>> Question 1:  Does the kernel module work with any alpha, or is it just mine?
>
> It should work. My complete guess is that the module is too large.
> Maybe try building it into your kernel? I suspect that might make the
> problem more obvious.

Relocation type 4 is R_ALPHA_LITERAL aka "GP relative 16 bit w/optimization"
so it can easily overflow if things get large.  Building it into the kernel
should either work or fail to link at all, hopefully with a more elaborate
error message.

Also, which kernel version are you using?  Prior to 3.9, the kernel used
the -msmall-data option, which made it especially prone to this kind of
overflow.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mans@mansr.com