ports/156405: x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati driver: no hardware rendering

[Thomas Mueller]

>From my previous post and Niclas Zeising's response:

> > When I tried with new Xorg and KMS in 9-STABLE, my system froze immediately, not just the console.  I finally managed to downgrade to the old Xorg after
> considerable difficulty.

> What hardware do you have?  Are you sure that the system froze, and not
> only that the console went black?  Did you check any logs (dmesg, xorg
> log, etc.)  How do you load the kernel modules for the intel kms driver?
> In general, you shouldn't need to load anything at all, X loads the
> correct kernel module at the correct time during startup.

I don't remember about the logs, and now is far too late.

But I remember doing everything I did when I had this problem with NetBSD on old computer, native xorg server, not pkgsrc, and no KMS.

Nothing I did with keyboard had any effect.  I tried to Ctrl-Alt-F1 and "shutdown -r now", nothing.

I also tried the Caps Lock key to see if there was any life, did not light up.

By the way, another problem I had with NetBSD was the text console screen blanking after 30 seconds inactivity and not coming back until I could find my way in the dark to a root command prompt and type

screenblank -u

>>>> With serial ports becoming obsolete, what can one use for or in place of a serial console?

>>> FireWire.  I haven't tested myself, but have a look at
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug-dcons.html
>>> for instructions on how to use FireWire as a console.

>> This still leaves the question of how to set it up in terms of hardware.  I don't think there are any FireWire consoles.

>> Would I plug anything into the motherboard's FireWire port?  I just thought of FireWire-to-HDMI cable but haven't looked to see if these exist.

> Check the guide.  In general you plug the firewire cable from one
> computer into another computer, and use the first one to debug the second.

Does it have to be Firewire as opposed to something else like USB or Ethernet?

I have to check Newegg, Tiger Direct, etc for what is available.  No Firewire to HDMI.

Regarding xorg.conf, I could run, as root (already did), "Xorg -configure" from present installation, and make one version with driver vesa.

I see I have a /root/xorg.conf.new with Driver "fbdev".  Change that to "intel" for one version and "vesa" for the other?

Any problem switching (between boots) keyboards?  I have both PS/2 and USB.

PS/2 combo mouse/keyboard port allows connecting a mouse or keyboard but not both at the same time.

But the idea of having a fallback vesa driver was in case the intel driver fails, and when I have work to do where I need to switch back to a text console.

Tom