Xorg, Radeon and KMS problems

[Roland Smith]

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.

> > 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.

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.

> 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.


<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.


Good luck!

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://rsmith.home.xs4all.nl/
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