Removal of XAA acceleration in X.org, and older NVIDIA GeForce

[Mark Martinec]

> Tijl Coosemans wrote:
>> This card is still supported by x11/nvidia-driver-304

Mark Martinec wrote:
> Good suggestion! It does seem to draw screen and scroll
> much faster than NV (although it seems to stall from time
> to time (like unresponsive mouse) on a busy host).
> Will need to test more thoroughly tomorrow when poudriere
> builds will be over. Thanks!

Actually it did not turn out well. Although nvidia-driver-304 with
a GeForce 7300 GT does not suffer from slow scrolls and slow rendering
of web pages, it frequently stalls (like every minute) and nothing
happens for a dozen of seconds: mouse cannot move a cursor, a cursor
may even temporarily disappear, typing on an xterm or konsole window
is unresponsive. It appears as if a host is terribly busy, even though
it is not (the yesterday's poudriere build was over, and I even
rebooted the host, with nvidia driver loaded by a boot loader
this time).

After a dozen of seconds or so, things get back at being responsive
again, until the next lockup. Occasionally a window may become
scrambled, but rectifies itself after a while. After trying to
work in this situation for a while, eventually screen turned black,
with a host totally locked up - not even responding to ssh or ping
or ctrl alt F1, or a soft ACPI power off button, so had to be
forcibly rebooted.

So in the end I had to revert back to the NV driver, which is
now slow, but at least is stable and consistent. I guess we need
to start looking for a new graphics board, quite unfortunate.

   Mark



>> <Mark.Martinec+freebsd at ijs.si> wrote:
>>> /usr/ports/UPDATING:
>>>> 20141219:
>>>>  AFFECTS: users of x11/xorg and all xorg ports
>>>>  AUTHOR: dumbbell at FreeBSD.org
>>>>  The X.Org server (x11-servers/xorg-server) is updated to 1.14.
>>> 
>>> http://blogs.freebsdish.org/graphics/2014/11/19/xserver-1-14-update-ready/
>>>> Changes since xserver 1.12
>>>>   The most visible change is the removal of XAA. This is a 2D
>>>> acceleration
>>>> method which was deprecated some time ago, in favor of EXA or
>>>> Intel-specific’s
>>>> UXA or SNA. For the end user, this means that some drivers
>>>> (xf86-video-*)
>>>> are not supported anymore, mostly for older GPUs according to 
>>>> Phoronix.
>>>> If you encounter this case, please let us know.
>>> 
>>> Ouch!!! Upgrading X -related ports went with no problems (FreeBSD 
>>> 10.1),
>>> but I didn't realize the outcome would be so terrible. Scrolling or
>>> refreshing a full-screen page in a web browser now feels like in the
>>> good old days of a 19200 bps line and a glass terminal. Even 
>>> scrolling
>>> or paging through plain text with 'less' or editor on a KDE konsole
>>> or xterm feels sluggish. Certainly the size of the display does not
>>> help in this regards (2560x1600).
>>> 
>>> The Xorg.0.log reports:
>>>    NV: Found NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT at 02 at 00:00:0
>>> 
>>> Now I fear that upgrading ports on my other workstation
>>> (GeForce 7600 GS) would lead to similar results.
>>> 
>>> I know these graphics boards are not the latest of breed
>>> (the CPU and mb are still fairly decent). They were chosen for being
>>> fan-less, and coping sufficiently well with 2D and text even on
>>> largish displays.
>>> 
>>> So is my only choice now replacing graphics with heat- and noise-
>>> sources I don't really need, or being stuck with frozen ports?
>>> I wonder if I'm the only one in this situation.