Need help untangling Xorg behavior on Haswell board, KMS, etc. etc.

[Kevin Oberman]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:42 PM, John Reynolds <johnjen at reynoldsnet.org>wrote:

> Hello all, I recently put together a new box with very new hardware--an
> ASRock Z87 "haswell" board with i-4770k proc. I've successfully installed
> 9.2-PRERELEASE (amd64) on it with the help of some folks on -stable, but am
> having a heck of a time trying to get Xorg working. I've used FreeBSD for
> years and years but have always used Nvidia cards and their config tool
> always just barfed out an xorg.conf file that worked no fuss no muss. I'm
> trying like crazy to get this integrated GPU to work.
>
> I did some research and found out that I needed WITH_NEW_XORG=1 in
> /etc/make.conf and I've got that all compiled now with a ports tree freshly
> updated via portsnap. I have xorg 7.7 port and all of things it pulls in
> including version 2.21.9 of the xf86-video-intel port.
>
> Could some kind soul out there give me some pointers on what the
> "preferred" method for setting up X should be at this point using the "new"
> Xorg and this very new H/W?
>
> If I do what the handbook and other tutorials say to do and run
>
>    Xorg -configure
>
> that creates me a file that defines two screens/monitors, etc. That's
> great and all, but I don't use a dual-head setup. yes, I can hack the file
> and take out the other monitor stuff. But my buddy who lives in the Linux
> world asked me "why are you creating a xorg.conf file? I haven't used one
> in YEARS. You don't hardly need one for 'modern' hardware where everything
> is probable and works nicely with each other." So that got me to wondering
> "yeah, why am i creating it?"
>
> So, in the expert opinion of people working actively with Xorg on this
> list, what should "most people" do (most people buying 'modern' hardware
> these days and not using CRT monitors from the 1980's anymore :)? I have
> fired up "xinit" (using just a simplistic .xinitrc and a tmp non-root user
> for testing) with the setup file created from above AND without any setup
> file at all. Both seem to work. xdpyinfo shows that the resolution is
> 1920x1200 which I want by default, color depth seems fine, etc. What is the
> "preferred" setup style?
>
> Now onto the problems / questions: No matter what I do whether firing up
> with the xorg.conf file or without anything, if I exit the window manager
> and expect to come back to the console it doesn't do it. It just locks the
> machine HARD. I searched quite a bit about this and on this list's archives
> (here <http://lists.freebsd.org/**pipermail/freebsd-x11/2013-**
> July/013446.html<http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-x11/2013-July/013446.html>>)
> I see some mention that something called KMS is now being used in the Intel
> driver/Xorg and that something doesn't react well with our newcons console
> driver. What exactly is KMS and why is it important? Also if I look at my
> Xorg.0.log file as it's firing up I get tons of messages about dri devices
> not being found, etc.
>
> [    41.710] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
> [    41.710] Failed to change owner or group for file /dev/dri! 2: No such
> file or directory
> [    41.710] Failed to change owner or group for file /dev/dri/card0! 2:
> No such file or directory
> [    41.710] drmOpenDevice: open result is -1, (No such file or directory)
> [    41.710] Failed to change owner or group for file /dev/dri/card0! 2:
> No such file or directory
> [    41.710] drmOpenDevice: open result is -1, (No such file or directory)
> [    41.710] drmOpenDevice: Open failed
> [    41.710] drmOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID pci:0000:00:02.0
>
> Is there something that must be done in a custom kernel or something to
> remedy this? I have dri-8.0.5_3,2 installed and right now I am just running
> the GENERIC kernel from the install.
>
> Thanks in advance to any/all who respond!
>

Did you define WITH_KMS in /etc/make.conf? Did you build libdrm with the
KMS option?

There have been reports of issues with Haswell GPUs, so it still may not
work with the current KMS code, but it is worth a try. (And it would be
appreciated if you could report the results.)

If all else fails, you can use VESA, but it will be very slow and may have
other issues.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com