X troubles (possibly radeon related)

[Eric Anholt]

On Sun, 2006-04-09 at 01:46 -0700, Fred Cox wrote:
> All right, let's start over, knowing that since this
> is all going through the mailing list, the archives
> will save me if Yahoo is snippy.
> 
> Currently, I am in the position of not being able to
> upgrade my ports, due to the machine being unusable in
> short order if I start Xorg 6.9.0.
> 
> I don't feel comfortable in this position, since I am
> not able to easily incorporate security fixes or
> feature upgrades for any ports.
> 
> I don't think I'm the only person in this situation,
> from what I've found searching the web.
> 
> It's my understanding that the drivers are part of the
> kernel.  The output of a make buildkernel seems to
> confirm that understanding.

The kernel has drivers for many devices.  The X Server also has drivers
for the many graphics devices it supports, which are not part of the
kernel.  The driver in X actually makes use of a small kernel module
(the DRM) for dispatching commands to the card for 3D support.  That
kernel module is generally the most stable part of the whole graphics
driver system.

> One of my attempts to figure out what was killing my
> system was to not upgrade the kernel from FreeBSD 6.0
> release, but to upgrade the ports.  That, and every
> other setup I tried that involved upgrading Xorg,
> killed my system.
> 
> Perhaps my ignorance of exactly how Xorg works is
> confusing me, but this seems to point to Xorg 6.9.0's
> interaction with the radeon driver, not the radeon
> driver, which I don't believe I upgraded.

In updating X.Org, you updated your radeon 2d driver.

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so

> If the 6.8.2 code can work with the FreeBSD 6.0
> release  radeon driver for the X300 chipset, but 6.9.0
> doesn't, it seems that a little investigation can
> point to a quick solution.  However, the people who
> have the knowledge will need to work with the people
> who have the hardware and the willingness to help
> investigate.

No.  "A little investigation" in the past has always led to quick
solutions that broke other people's hardware.  Some people were pissed
about 6.8.0 and 6.8.[12] (I can't remember which one it was).  Other
people were really pissed about 6.7.0.  They all broke different radeons
for people.  That's why we should all be glad that benh has been working
hard the last few months sorting this crap out.

You can turn off the DRI and probably get your particular r300 to work,
as I'm sure has been noted in the list archives several times.

-- 
Eric Anholt                     anholt at FreeBSD.org
eric at anholt.net                 eric.anholt at intel.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-x11/attachments/20060409/68fe7249/attachment.pgp