[gentoo-user] AMD Radeon R7 370 (Pitcairn) causing the bootup to hang

[Ashley Dixon <ash@suugaku.co.uk>]

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Hi gentoo-user,

I'm attempting to configure a mid-range video card: the Radeon R7 370.   Running
on the Pitcairn chipset and a member  of  the  Southern  Islands  family,  I  am
surprised at the complexity of setting up the Radeon driver in comparison to its
NVIDIA counterpart.

I followed [1] carefully.  Initially opting to compile AMDGPU into the kernel, I
emerged linux-firmware with the following files.  All of the relevant files were
added to the kernel's CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE string, using /lib/firmware  as  the
base directory.

        radeon/pitcairn_smc.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_ce.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_mc.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_me.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_pfp.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_k_smc.bin
        radeon/pitcairn_rlc.bin
        radeon/TAHITI_uvd.bin
        radeon/TAHITI_vce.bin

Unfortunately, upon booting, the kernel hangs with the following message.   This
seems to be rather common, with a similar  complaint  being  discussed  at  [2].

        fb0: switching to amdgpudrmfb from EFI VGA

As this all occurs pre-OpenRC, I am incapable of creating an S.S.H.\  connection
to the machine from my laptop.  When booting the kernel with the `nomodesetting`
parameter, the X server reports the following after  a  successful  kernel  boot
(created when executing `startx`): [timestamps omitted]

        (EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)
        (II) LoadModule: "vesa"
        (WW) Warning, couldn't open module vesa
        (EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
        (II) RADEON: Driver for ATI/AMD Radeon chipsets:
                ATI Radeon Mobility X600 (M24), ATI FireMV 2400,
                ATI Radeon Mobility X300 (M24), ATI FireGL M24 GL,

                [...]

                ARUBA, TAHITI, PITCAIRN, VERDE, OLAND, HAINAN, BONAIRE, KABINI,
                MULLINS, KAVERI, HAWAII
        (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms
        (--) using VT number 7

        (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.
        (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
        (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting
        (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
        (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
        (II) UnloadModule: "radeon"
        (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
        (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
        (EE) Device(s) detected, but none match those in the config file.
        (EE) 
        Fatal server error:
        (EE) no screens found(EE) 
        (EE) 

In a fruitless attempt to fix this, I opted to instead load AMDGPU as  a  kernel
module.  That did not go far either, as apparently a bug exists  in  the  Radeon
drivers which causes OpenRC to hang when setting the system  time  according  to
the internal clock [3]:

       Setting system clock using hardware clock [Local Time]
       [hangs forever]

Any help with this would be appreciated.  I'm moving away from NVIDIA due to the
requirement of proprietary drivers to get any decent performance, however now it
feels as though the AMD drivers, although open-source, consist of too many  bugs
(such as hanging the boot-up process for some reason or another) to  be  of  any
actual use.  Whilst I'm aware  that  is  obviously  not  the  case  due  to  the
popularity of their  cards,  I  am  bewildered  at  how  difficult  this  seems.

Cheers.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/AMDGPU
[2] https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1061750-start-0.html
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/9oax20/

-- 

Ashley Dixon
suugaku.co.uk

2A9A 4117
DA96 D18A
8A7B B0D2
A30E BF25
F290 A8AA


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