Xorg, Radeon and KMS problems

[Da Rock]

On 07/28/14 09:28, Da Rock wrote:
> 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 :)
I haven't done a rebuild on Xorg yet, but general consensus is that its 
not necessary but just use autoadddevices option turned off. Results 
seem quite successful: Its started off looking quite well, and no dual 
screen effect on one screen (I'm fairly certain that was what was 
causing the issues). I've been running it now for the morning without 
degradation too, unlike previous symptoms. So I'd call that a success 
and as such solved.

It would be good to get some better, clearer docs on all this so that 
the slightly thicker of us (namely myself) don't get lost in all the man 
pages trying things and nearly never getting it right :) So I might have 
a look at getting some clarity and writing it down somewhere, poking a 
question or two at this list if I may...

Thanks all.
>
> Cheers
>>
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Roland
>
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