ATI card problem, driving me insane!

[carlsalter]

Hi,

I have two ATI PCIe cards in my machine that I use to drive four display panels. They both worked perfectly on the same machine under XP and WIN 7. I recently bit the bullet and moved to Ubuntu at work with a view of rolling it out to more machines in the office. However, whereas my cards worked perfectly under 9.10, months of tinkering has not managed to get them both running under Lucid.

Both are correctly identified with LSPCI...

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3600 Series
08:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3600 Series

but the Catalyst Control identities the non-default card as 'Unknown'. Enabling the card anyway results in the Lucid being unable to boot. I get the same effect using the built in ATI drivers.

Xorg.0.log reports nothing nothing interesting. I've tried every version of the ATI driver that I can get my hands on. Even a clean re-install resulted in exactly the same problem.

It doesn't help that aticonfig --initial=dual-head --adapter=all -f makes an xorg.conf that appears to be about right! Both cards and all four monitors appear but it simply doesn't work!


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "aticonfig Layout"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-0"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "0-DFP1"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
Option "PreferredMode" "1600x1200"
Option "TargetRefresh" "60"
Option "Position" "0 0"
Option "Rotate" "normal"
Option "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "0-DFP2"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
Option "PreferredMode" "1600x1200"
Option "TargetRefresh" "60"
Option "Position" "1600 0"
Option "Rotate" "normal"
Option "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]-0"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "Monitor-DFP1" "0-DFP1"
Option "Monitor-DFP2" "0-DFP2"
BusID "PCI:8:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]-1"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:8:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0"
Device "aticonfig-Device[1]-0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Virtual 3200 3200
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-1"
Device "aticonfig-Device[1]-1"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Rebooting back into Win 7 or 9.10 results in all four monitors bursting into life!

I nearly gave up yesterday and moved back to microsoft but thought I'd give it one last go...

Can anyone throw some light on what might be the problem?

Cheers

Carl

[bridgman]

I believe Multiview was temporarily broken by the VGA arbiter (I think it was the VGA arbiter) that appeared in Lucid. There's a bug ticket on ati.cchtml.com along with a workaround from Felix :

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1828

Bug ticket 1835 talks about similar problems but is referred back to 1828 :

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1835

With luck the change will get into 10.7; in the meantime try the workaround suggested in #1828.

[carlsalter]

Thanks bridgman, unfortunately it didn't work for me, was hard enough getting 10.04 to start without the gui but after deleting VGA arbiter line I still got the error mentioned in the fix....

Backtrace:
0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x3b) [0x80e937b]
1: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x61c7d) [0x80a9c7d]
2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb7738410]
3: /usr/bin/X (xf86CallDriverProbe+0x182) [0x80b82c2]
4: /usr/bin/X (InitOutput+0x3c2) [0x80b9a82]
5: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1ebbb) [0x8066bbb]
6: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xe6) [0xb7471bd6]
7: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1e961) [0x8066961]
Segmentation fault at address 0x268

Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting

I really thought that I'd be able to get this running using the radeon or ati drivers, I got as far as four working screens but ANY mouse or keyboard movement freezes the machine... Quite frustrating after being so impressed with 9:10!

[bridgman]

You probably need a newer driver than 10.4 for Multiview. If you have a spare partition I would try 10.6 + Lucid fresh instal + workarounds.

[carlsalter]

You probably need a newer driver than 10.4 for Multiview. If you have a spare partition I would try 10.6 + Lucid fresh instal + workarounds.

I've actually got 10.6 installed, it doesn't seem to make any difference which driver version I use, always the same lockup every time I enable the second ('unknown' by amdcccle) card! What really gets me is that even the non-proprietary 'ati' and 'radeon' drivers also misbehave. Logic would suggest that using a working xorg.conf from 9:10 with either of the bundled drivers *should* give me four screens but also results in lockups...

[carlsalter]

I've actually got 10.6 installed, it doesn't seem to make any difference which driver version I use, always the same lockup every time I enable the second ('unknown' by amdcccle) card! What really gets me is that even the non-proprietary 'ati' and 'radeon' drivers also misbehave. Logic would suggest that using a working xorg.conf from 9:10 with either of the bundled drivers *should* give me four screens but also results in lockups...

I'm probably wrong there as RandR doesn't support multiple cards right?

[rohcQaH]

XRandR doesn't really work with multiple cards, but that's ok. It should still be possible to bring up all screens with their native resolution.

If both fglrx and the OS drivers give the same results, I strongly suspect that there's still some part of VGA Arbiter alive. You may want to re-check that.

btw, you said that using an xorg.conf with only one card works. Did you try an xorg.conf with only your *second* card? The first step is usually to make sure each card works fine on it's own, then you can try joining them into a single X server.


I noticed in the xorg.conf you posted that you're using 4 screens and have Xinerama disabled. Is that intentional?

[carlsalter]

Hi rohcQaH,

/dev/vga_arbiter is not present, I only deleted the file mentioned in the bug fix, was something else I was supposed to do? (Not totally clued up with Linux but that's probably obvious!)

Both cards work independently of each other, fglrx loves to swap the default cards each time that I install a new version...

The xorg.conf is one of 46 different versions currently on my machine! Some with Xinerama on, some with it off, some generated by aticonfig, some generated by 10.04, some cobbled together by me. Non of them giving me the desired results. Not that I'm going to give up!

[carlsalter]

Holy sh*t, got it!! xorg.conf no 147 works after removing vga_arbiter! I finally have four screens up and running (although the layout is screwed but that's only because I'm still learning...)

Thanks for all your help guys!

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon 3600b"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:8:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon 3600"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor2"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor3"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor4"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Radeon 3600b"
Monitor "Monitor1"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "3200x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen2"
Device "Radeon 3600b"
Monitor "Monitor2"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1600x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen3"
Device "Radeon 3600"
Monitor "Monitor3"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "3200x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen4"
Device "Radeon 3600"
Monitor "Monitor4"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1600x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout1"
Screen "Screen1"
Screen "Screen2" RightOf "Screen1"
Screen "Screen3"
Screen "Screen4" RightOf "Screen3"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
EndSection

[carlsalter]

Although the damn thing hangs when I log out now!