On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 10:21 AM Ashley Dixon <ash@suugaku.co.uk> wrote:

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

Did it load ok?

dmesg | grep -i drm.*firm

You should see;

[drm] Found UVD firmware Version etc

[drm] Found VCE firmware Version etc

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

Here's what i get (R9 380)

# dmesg | grep -i fb0
[ 1.302701] fbcon: amdgpudrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 1.474076] amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: fb0: amdgpudrmfb frame buffer device

What CONFIG_FB options are enabled? I dont have CONFIG_FB_EFI set to try removing that.

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

I'd say that's the key. What CONFIG_DRM options are enabled?