Xorg, Radeon and KMS problems

[Da Rock]

On 07/28/14 00:03, Roland Smith wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 10:45:30PM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
>>>>    Ok, haven't quite got it all in place yet - haven't had time to recompile
>>>>    Xorg yet without hal.
>>> Setting "AutoAddDevices" to "off" is probably sufficient. And you only
>>> need to rebuild xorg-server AFAIK.
>> I'll give the conf option a shot. Takes a little while on my system to
>> build, and its building some big stuff atm like thunderbird and
>> libreoffice, so next day is latest I'd get it going.
> BTW, if you're updating ports, you might want to give the update to pkg-1.3.1
> a miss for now if you're running on amd64. It segfaults on that platform.
Good to know. I'm just trying to get it started, don't need more 
problems right now...
>
>>> Check if it is possible to disable one of the graphics chips in the BIOS.
>>> That could be a last resort fix. AFAIK Xorg doen not have proper support for
>>> using two graphics cards or switching beteen them.
>> Not that I'm aware of - HP take away a lot of fine tweaking options in
>> bios for some stupid reason, and I went looking last time I was playing
>> with the dual card setup and HD. I'll have another peek though.
> You should be able to disable one of the cards using device.hints(5).
>
>  From your pciconf output;
>
>      vgapci0 at pci0:1:5:0:    class=0x030000 card=0x1445103c chip=0x97121002 rev=0x00
>      hdr=0x00
>          vendor     = 'Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI'
>          device     = 'RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series]'
>          class      = display
>          subclass   = VGA
>          ...
>
>      vgapci1 at pci0:2:0:0:    class=0x030000 card=0x1445103c chip=0x68e41002 rev=0x00
>      hdr=0x00
>          vendor     = 'Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI'
>          device     = 'Robson CE [AMD Radeon HD 6300 Series]'
>          class      = display
>          subclass   = VGA
>          ...
>
> So you have two “vgapci” devices. E.g. to disable the HD 6300, put
>
>      hint.vgapci.1.disabled="1"
>
> in /boot/device.hints and reboot. That should get rid of it.
I'll try that if I need to. See how it goes first - looking ok so far 
with the autoadddevices off. Question on that though: does that mean if 
I plug in a mouse it won't be useable? Or does moused take care of that?
>
> Additionally (but unrelated), on a laptop you might want to set
>
>      hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3
>
> in /boot/loader.conf to power-down all hardware that's not attached to a
> driver. That might make your battery last longer.
Maybe I should have a look at starting there - documenting all these 
sysctls. That looks like a good one to know about on any system to save 
power.
>
>> Who's looking at the support for multiple cards in Xorg then? Is there a
>> wiki/blog or such I can follow, help out with?
> Not sure if anybody is. This is something only found on some laptops as a
> power-saving thing.
>
> And since most Xorg development is done on Linux, a solution might very well
> be Linux specific.
I'll have a poke around then, and see what I can find. Maybe if the 
solution is not so linux specific it might be more use to the rest of us :)
>
>
> <snip xorg.conf manual>
>>> But I guess you'll have to remove one of the cards from your xorg.conf.
>>> to force Xorg to use the other one.
>> This could be clearer. I think I tried playing with this to get it to do
>> what I want, but I got muddled following this. Perhaps you might
>> understand better - is this what it means?:
>>
>> Section "Device"
>>       Identifier  "Card1"
>>       Driver      "radeon"
>>       BoardName   "Radeon HD 6300"
>>       BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
>>       Option    "LVDS" "built-in"
> Use this instead:
>         Option    "Monitor-LVDS" "Monitor0"
>
> But if you disable one of the chips, it might not be necessary.
Dunno how I missed that vital clue in the man. I'll see how that goes 
then :)

Cheers
>
>
> Good luck!
>
> Roland