[FreeBSD 7] Radeon Mobility M10/9600 + xorg 7.3 + ati/radeon driver causes complete system hang/freeze

[Mark Ovens]

Torgeir Hoffmann wrote:
> On beforehand, I appologize for sending a rather incomplete mail regarding
> this last week, I hope with this new information that I can find a clue on
> how to debug or solve this problem.
> 
> 
> I have the following problems with my xorg 7.3 installation, even after I
> have pkg_delete -a, and reinstalled all with packages. The system was
> updated with freebsd-update from 6.3-release to 7.0-release.
> 

This sounds similar to the problem I have with 7.3 and a Radeon 8500LE 
card. Never had this problem with any previous version of Xorg (or XFree86).

when the system hangs I can ssh(1) in from another box and find that 
Xorg process is sucking as much as 400% - yes four *hundred* percent - 
CPU ????? It is holding a Giant Lock - State is *GIANT

I can kill the Xorg process but on the affected box I just end up with a 
blank black screen so have to Ctrl-Alt_Del to reboot.

The problem seems to come and go as I update installed ports. If I've 
got the problem then updating the ports gets rid of it (sometimes) and 
when the system is working a port upgrade starts it off again 
(sometimes). It seems to be one of the X ports being updated that is the 
cause but I don't know which - xorg-drivers seems a likely culprit.

One thing I did do was to delete the port xf86-video-radeonhd which 
fixed the problem once. I don't know what installed it as a dependency 
but it hasn't been reinstalled - although the problem still comes and goes.

I've had this on 6.3 and on 7.0 (completely clean build, not an upgrade 
from 6.3).

As I said, this has only been a problem since u/g Xorg from 7.2->7.3 and 
it is becoming a PITA. I wonder if it's just that Radeon cards don't 
work too well with FreeBSD and/or Xorg?? Perhaps it's worth swapping to 
nVidia?

Don't know whether any of that helps?

Regards,

Mark