Re: [gentoo-user] ATI X trouble, again

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 5:15 AM, Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> Now all this X stuff is becoming really annoying. I struggled for days to
> get it to work again after the upgrade to 1.6. I have a Radeon HD3200 and
> tried using fglrx, radeon, radeonhd, vesa, or no xorg.conf at all. I got a
> blank screen only and no apparent errors in the Xorg log. So it seems X was
> running fine, apart from having a blank screen.
>
> I had similar problems when I started with this machine half a year ago.
> With every update of kernel, X or ati-drivers, I fear that my X will not
> work when I reboot. And half of the times this is true. For some three years
> before I had an old NVidia card, and experienced the same. But then I could
> just change driver from nvidia to nv and got X running, just without
> acceleration. What is quite annoying with my ATI card is that often I cannot
> go back to text mode then I try something new in my xorg.conf, and have to
> reboot. I know about Alt-SysRq-R, this works sometimes (but only once, not
> if I start X again), and sometimes it does not.
>
> The good news is, that with 2.6.31-tuxonice and ati-drivers-9.9-r2 suddenly
> all is working perfectly. For this time, let's see what the next update will
> do.
>
> But there is this machine of a friend which I just updated. She did not do
> this for about a year, mostly because she also had lots of troubles in
> configuring her X. She needs a working TV-out, which complicates things even
> more. And so she did not dare to change her working setup, I can understand
> this.
>
> Now I upgraded the machine, which was some trouble, too, many blockers and
> such. That's done, all is perfectly fine I think. But I did that from
> remote, now I tried to start X. Guess what happened. No apparent errors with
> radeon, radeonhd or without xorg.conf, but the screen just goes blank, the
> TFT enters suspend mode. With vesa, X hangs so I cannot go back into text
> mode and have to reboot.
> I replaced her TFT with a CRT monitor. Same result, whether I configure this
> monitor or not, when I start X it complains about bad frequencies.
>
> I did not try ati-drivers. Her card is a RV505 (Radeon X1550 Series) which
> is no longer supported by current ati-drivers. Older drivers might still
> work for a while, but only with kernels < 2.6.29. And I suspect the problem
> is not the driver itself, because radeon does not work, too, and I also had
> similar problems of a blank screen with an ATI card and different drivers.
>
> Today is her birthday, I intended to present her the updated PC with
> accelerated X and KDE4, but now she cannot use it at all.
>
> Any idea what do to now? Apart from buying a new graphics adapter, which
> might work, or might not work. Or trying more monitors. The xorg.conf and
> some log files are here, in case someone wants to have a look:
> http://wonkology.org/~wonko/tmp/tanja/
>
> Thanks,
>        Wonko
>
>

Hi Wonko,
   I have a couple of old Asus Pundit-R machines that I use for MythTV
frontends which had the same sort of problems - a specific ATI VGA
9100 IGP design built into the chipset and I needed TVout to drive the
TVs. I was stuck with very old kernels and an old ATI fglrx driver
made even more difficult as the Gentoo maintainers dropped everything
I was using from portage and I had to build my own overlays. It was a
mess.

   I did recently manage to get things running with new software and
the Open Source radeon driver. Maybe some of this will help you and
your friend. Feel free to contact me off-list if you need to.

   A couple of things to note:

1) I've never done any hal specific modifications on any of my machines.
2) You must choose an 800x600 default resolution for the Open Source
TVout logic to work as that's the only one they implemented.
3) If it matters my TVout is S-video

Hope this helps,
Mark

myth12 ~ # uname -a
Linux myth12 2.6.29-gentoo-r5 #6 PREEMPT Mon Jul 20 13:11:33 PDT 2009
i686 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.26GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
myth12 ~ #

myth12 ~ # emerge -pv xorg-server xf86-video-ati xf86-input-evdev

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies ... done!
[ebuild   R   ] x11-base/xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2  USE="hal ipv6 nptl
sdl xorg -debug -dmx -kdrive -minimal -tslib" 0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.12.4  USE="-debug" 0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev-2.2.5  USE="-debug" 0 kB

Total: 3 packages (3 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 0 kB
myth12 ~ #

myth12 ~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 9100 IGP Host Bridge (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 9100 IGP AGP Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc OHCI USB Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc OHCI USB Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc EHCI USB Controller (rev 01)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SMBus (rev 1a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Dual Channel Bus Master
PCI IDE Controller
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 434c
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP200 3COM 3C920B Ethernet Controller
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP150 AC'97
Audio Controller (rev 01)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 9100 IGP
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3Com 3C920B-EMB-WNM
Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 40)
02:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II
IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev 80)
02:0c.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-710/2/4 Cardbus
Controller (rev 02)
02:0c.1 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc CB710 Memory Card Reader Controller
myth12 ~ #

myth12 ~ # cat /etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that
automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
LIRC_DEVICES="streamzap"
VIDEO_CARDS="radeon mesa fbdev vesa"
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev"
PORTAGE_NICENESS=19
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--with-bdeps y"
USE="-X -jack -arts -apm -esd -cups -samba -i8x0 caps nptl nptlonly
audiofile ppds usb alsa cdr dvd dvdr dvdread mmx sse sse2 tcltk
sndfile flac lirc mjpeg threads "
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ "
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
myth12 ~ #


myth12 ~ # cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Module"

    Load        "dbe"   # Double buffer extension
    SubSection  "extmod"
      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection

# This loads the GLX module
#    Load       "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
#    Load       "dri"

EndSection

Section "Files"

    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"

EndSection


Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier  "Keyboard1"
    Driver      "kbd"

    Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"

    Option "XkbRules"   "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel"   "pc101"
    Option "XkbLayout"  "us"

EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "Auto" # Auto detect
    Option "Device"      "/dev/input/mice"
    Option "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5 6 7"

EndSection

Section "Monitor"

    Identifier  "My Monitor"
    Option      "PreferredMode" "800x600"
    HorizSync   31.5 - 57.0
    VertRefresh 50-90

EndSection


Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Standard VGA"
    VendorName  "Unknown"
    BoardName   "Unknown"
    Driver     "vga"
EndSection


Section "Device"
    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
    Driver      "radeon"
    Option      "ForceTVOut" "on"
    Option      "TVDACLoadDetect" "TRUE"
    Option      "TVStandard" "ntsc"
    Option      "monitor-S-video" "TV-monitor"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
    Monitor     "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth        24

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes       "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "800x600"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"

    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

# Section "DRI"
#    Mode 0666
# EndSection

myth12 ~ #


myth12 ~ # rc-update show
           alsasound |      default
            bootmisc | boot
             checkfs | boot
           checkroot | boot
               clock | boot
         consolefont | boot
                dbus |      default
                hald |      default
            hostname | boot
             keymaps | boot
               lircd |      default
               local |      default nonetwork
          localmount | boot
             modules | boot
            net.eth0 |      default
              net.lo | boot
            netmount |      default
                ntpd |      default
           rmnologin | boot
                sshd |      default
           syslog-ng |      default
             urandom | boot
          vixie-cron |      default
myth12 ~ #