Radeon 5770, graphics/gpu-firmware-kmod, and graphics/drm-fbsd11.2-kmod

[Scott Bennett]

     I sent this reply without realizing that the headers were different, and
the message only went to Niclas instead of to the list.  I am posting to the
list now from a not-quite-final version I had saved, but it should be nearly
identical.  I have corrected one spot I fixed in the version that went to
Niclas.

Niclas Zeising <zeising at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 2020-04-12 12:42, Scott Bennett wrote:
> >       Is an MSI-built card with a Radeon 5770 supposed to be supported by
> > graphica/gpu-firmware-kmod and graphics/drm-fbsd11.2-kmod?
> > 
>
> I believe so, but I don't have the hardware to test.
> drm-fbsd11.2-kmod is fairly old though, and only works on 11.  Any 
> reason you haven't updated to FreeBSD 12?

     Yes.  To date, every attempt to build 12.1-STABLE on my 11.3-STABLE
system has failed in seconds.  I have no idea how I can upgrade to 12.1-STABLE
until I can build it.  I do emphatically *not* intend to install from scratch
again, especially not given the thoroughly braindead ZFS installation option in
the FreeBSD installer.  I bit the bullet *once* just to get to root-on-ZFS under
11.1, and it required a *lot* of work to get it configured the way I wanted it
because of the idiot installer.
     Further, 11.2 introduced kernel memory management bugs that people began
complaining about on the mailing lists within the first few days.  Now the
project is planning 11.4 without ever having fixed the bugs.  11 hasn't been a
production-quality system since 11.1.  The upshot of the bugs is that my 8 GB
machine is only good for one or two buildworld or portmaster -a runs before it
needs to be rebooted.  I run a tor relay, and I can't justify frequent reboots.
     gpu-firmware-kmod and drm-fbsd11.2-kmod appear to work beautifully, except
for one little problem.  If xorg is running, then after some random uptime between
3 hours and 35 hours, the GPU apparently hangs, turning my screen light blue with
very pale blue vertical pinstripes two pixels wide and separated by somewhere
around eight or ten pixels all the way across the screen.  It's reasonably pretty,
but not what I want.  Messages prefixed with "drmn0: " are placed into
/var/log/messages, informing that the GPU is not responding and that the system
will be rebooted in 10 seconds.  When the 10 seconds have elapsed, the system
crashes down into the BIOS, which goes through a reset and stops, waiting for
approval to continue because one of the fan power connectors on the motherboard is
not currently in use.  An orderly shutdown is *not* done, so I have to pick up
quite a few pieces to get things running again.  These crashes do not occur as
long as I don't run xorg and just use the default eight virtual consoles, i.e.,
character mode only.
     Thus, for the fifth time since I began using FreeBSD at the beginning of 2005
(5.2.1-RELEASE), I do not have safely usable graphics on my system.  That leaves
me with only lynx(1) as a web browser and many other applications I can't run.
mplayer, for example, is only good for audio files, not video files.  Even though
NetBSD just introduced ZFS in 9.0, mprime, which I run, is not available for any
other BSD besides FreeBSD.  Also, it's not clear to me that pools upgraded to the
features introduced in FreeBSD 11.2 can be used with whatever level of ZFS is
currently imported into NetBSD.  So NetBSD isn't an option for me.  AFAIK, none of
the other BSDs have ever implemented superpages either.  So, for the nonce, I am
stuck with FreeBSD.
     I apologize for the venting, but FreeBSD has ruined graphics support for
long periods of time repeatedly.  The third time I was without working graphics
for over two years.  I am really, really tired of this.  The frustration of losing
graphics time after time for a decade and a half is just overwhelmingly corrosive.
     In spite of all this BS, I have long advocated FreeBSD to other people, but
I guess I should take a breather on doing that for a few years to wait for the
quality of FreeBSD to improve lest my personal and professional credibility take
a dive.

                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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