FreeBSD 5.2.1 and XFree86-4.x ati driver lockup problem -- Solution

[Jim]

Brooks,

Thanks for the tip.  I recompiled my kernel and X is working just fine 
with acpi enabled.  Hopefully my little adventure helps others...


Best regards,


Jim

Brooks Davis wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 09:41:16PM -0500, James wrote:
> 
>>To the FreeBSD team,
>>
>>I struggled with this one for quite a while before figuring it out, so 
>>here goes...
>>
>>I had been using FreeBSD 4x for quite some time on my Compaq Presario 
>>1800.  And, XFree86-3.6x worked nicely with the laptop's ATI Rage 
>>Mobility graphics chip.  Unfortunately, the FreeBSD 4x branch didn't 
>>support the Atheros chipsets in some of the newer networking cards like 
>>the Netgear WG511, so I upgraded to FreeBSD 5.2.1.
>>After that, I couldn't get XFree86-4x to work reliably with my laptop.
>>It turned out that the X instability, which included complete system 
>>lockup, was caused by the ACPI module being loaded upon boot-up. 
>>Sometimes the Xserver would start-up sometimes not.  Also, there was a 
>>guaranteed system lockup if you exited Xwindows and then re-entered 
>>Xwindows at a later time.  In other words, you only got one Xsession per 
>>boot!  So, after trying all sorts of things in XF86Config, and upgrading 
>> to XFree86-4.4 from XFree86-4.3 it turned out that all I needed to do 
>>was add the following line to my /boot/device.hints file...
>>
>>      hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"
>>
>>After that everything worked great!  Xwindows is stable, and my new 
>>Netgear WG511 card is working like a charm.
> 
> 
> You might try building a kernel without SMP and apic.  That let me use
> my ATI Rage P/M Mobility reliably and still keep acpi enabled.
> 
> -- Brooks
>