Unable to start X.org with KMS in FreeBSD 10.0 without using the new_xorg repo

[Kevin Oberman]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 8:13 AM, Arto Pekkanen <aksyom at gmail.com> wrote:

> FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE-p5, some Acer laptop with Intel HD3000 IGP.
>
> Today I got bored of constantly updating packages with poudriere, and
> upgraded all of them with pkg upgrade. By this time I had a working X11
> with Intel KMS.
>
> The operation worked just fine, except that after rebooting X would not
> start; X.org log reported "(EE) No devices found".
>
> The wiki page https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/WITH_NEW_XORG suggests
> that all relevant packages are compiled WITH_NEW_XORG in the default
> repository (http://pkg.freebsd.org/freebsd:10:x86:64/latest/). But it
> seems this is not the case. I had to add the
> http://pkg.freebsd.org/freebsd:10:x86:64/new_xorg/ -repository and do pkg
> upgrade, only then I managed to get X.org working again.
>
> The reason why I assumed that the official packages would work is because
> there is no mention of having to use the "new_xorg" repo anywhere in the
> Handbook.
>
> Should the relevant documentation (
> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x-install.html) be updated so that
> people who have no previous experience dealing with this whole KMS issue
> can get their X.org working? The documentation could at least mention that
> "if the installed X.org won't find devices, please configure new_xorg repo
> and do pkg upgrade".
>
> Should I mention this in freesd-doc mailing list? Or is there a reason why
> this issue has not been documented in handbook yet?
>
> --
> Arto Pekkanen
> ksym at IRCnet
>
>
I just looked at the wiki page and I fail to see anything saying that the
NEW_XRG packages are in the default repository. That is the reason the
new_xorg repo exists. The wiki does say that WITH_NEW_XORG is now the
default for all supported branches except 8. The goal is, indeed to get the
NEW_XORG working with all supported versions and remove the old code, but I
see no indication  that it has been done as of today.

I do agree that clear warnings about the need for the new_xorg repo if KMS
is to be used. It also points out that an update of Intel KMS to support
newer GPU is getting REALLY critical! It's getting harder and harder to
find laptops that have supported graphics and while VESA (usually, sort of)
works, it is not really a good way to run a system.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com