FC6 + fglrx 8.30.3-1 + composite disabled = blank screen (Radeon 9500)

[Michael]

Does your xorg.conf reveal anything of interest (errors)?

What graphics card are you using?

[Orioner]

Does your xorg.conf reveal anything of interest (errors)?

What graphics card are you using?

I'm using a Radeon 9500 Pro.

I take it you mean Xorg.0.log But no, no errors or even notable warnings there (just that there's no mouse specified etc). The last three lines logged are

(II) fglrx(0): Acceleration enabled
(II) fglrx(0): X context handle = 0x1
(II) fglrx(0): [DRI] installation complete

and then X hangs and I have to reboot.

Interestingly enough, when I tried to revert back to the radeon driver (after first building the ATI driver myself, then trying livna.org's version) it didn't work either - it, too, caused X to crash, with

(**) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0xc7ffc000
(**) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0xffffffc0
(**) RADEON(0): Map Changed ! Applying ...

and then nothing.


I'm puzzled. I guess either my card is fried (which seems unlikely) or I'm getting an ATI bug here (and my radeon driver is gone?)

Does ATI's driver, if installed via RPMs built as instructed on Phoronix, overwrite the Xorg/Mesa libGL? Any idea?


Orioner

[Michael]

It sounds like it may be one of the common fglrx driver bugs.

Have you tried rebuilding the radeon driver? (or reinstalling the RPM?)

[Orioner]

It sounds like it may be one of the common fglrx driver bugs.

Have you tried rebuilding the radeon driver? (or reinstalling the RPM?)

So it does. I wish they'd fix it

I tried reinstalling mesa-libGL (+devel), mesa-libGLU (+devel) and xorg-x11-drv-ati but it didn't help. Frankly, I have no idea what to do next.

This does, however, look too complicated to be good:

[root@orion 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6]# ls -l /usr/lib/libGL*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Nov 27 01:35 /usr/lib/libGL.so -> libGL.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Nov 27 01:35 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 432272 Oct 31 22:07 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Nov 27 01:35 /usr/lib/libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Nov 27 01:35 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.060501
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 524004 Oct 31 22:07 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.3.060501

I don't even want to think what might be wrong here


Orioner

[Orioner]

Hell, I'll probably never be able to go back to the open source radeon driver, but I'm happy to report that I've solved this problem (the "how exactly" part is a bit unclear, though).


Software:
Fedora Core 6, kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6
ATI fglrx driver 8.31.05 from livna.org

Hardware:
ATI Radeon 9500 PRO

Results:
[ataimist@orion ~]$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

[ataimist@orion ~]$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9500 Pro Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6174 (8.31.5)

[ataimist@orion ~]$ glxgears
3105 frames in 5.0 seconds = 620.771 FPS
3512 frames in 5.0 seconds = 702.311 FPS
5243 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1048.467 FPS

[ataimist@orion ~]$ fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
1844 frames in 5.0 seconds = 368.800 FPS
2355 frames in 5.0 seconds = 471.000 FPS
2282 frames in 5.0 seconds = 456.400 FPS


What I did (what exactly did the trick is unknown, though):

BIOS:
changed AGP Aperture Size from 128M to 256M

xorg.conf:
added into "Monitor" (these are monitor-specific values)

Option "HSync2" "30-86"
Option "VRefresh2" "48-150"

added into "Device"

Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "yes"

added section

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

added section

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

This made Xorg start properly for me, but it still gave me Mesa for OpenGL. A little bit of investigation gave this error:

libGL: XF86DRIGetClientDriverName: 8.31.5 fglrx (screen 0)
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so: undefined symbol: __glXFindDRIScreen)
libGL error: unable to load driver: fglrx_dri.so

Which was fixed with a bunch of symbolic links (the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 was the Mesa libGL when it should have been the fglrx one from /usr/lib/ati-fglrx/):

ln -s /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/fglrx_dri.so
ln -s /usr/lib/ati-fglrx/libGL.so.1.2 /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1
ln -s /usr/lib/ati-fglrx/libGL.so.1.2 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2

The first of which I'm not at all certain is needed. Also remember to back up Mesa's libGL.so.1.2 from /usr/lib/, you might need it later.

Now fglrx works like a charm (and I'll start wondering which of those options I can now remove).


Thanks for the help, guys!


Orioner

[Orioner]

Well, what did the trick was either the

Option "HSync2" "30-86"
Option "VRefresh2" "48-150"

part in xorg.conf or AGP Aperture Size in BIOS, and I'd wager it was xorg.conf since I seem to remember changing aperture size before with no effect.

Removing the UseInternalAGPART part from the conf also (obviously) yields slightly better performance:

[root@orion ~]# glxgears
5144 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1028.707 FPS
4928 frames in 5.0 seconds = 985.535 FPS
6151 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1230.120 FPS

[root@orion ~]# fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
2299 frames in 5.0 seconds = 459.800 FPS
2579 frames in 5.0 seconds = 515.800 FPS
2607 frames in 5.0 seconds = 521.400 FPS

There are still a few problems with MPlayer (no XShape extension and OpenGL behaves a bit strange) but otherwise everything seems to be working OK (at least much better than it was).


Orioner

[Orioner]

There are still a few problems with MPlayer (no XShape extension and OpenGL behaves a bit strange) but otherwise everything seems to be working OK (at least much better than it was).

...and adding

Load "extmod"

to xorg.conf Module section and restarting X fixed those too.

Now everything works!


Orioner

[SheeEttin]

Hate to bump an old thread, but do you mind posting your entire xorg.conf?
I hit the same thing, even though everything was working a few days ago.

[Orioner]

Uhh. Sorry, no can do.

Hate to bump an old thread, but do you mind posting your entire xorg.conf?
I hit the same thing, even though everything was working a few days ago.

Uh, I would, but I no longer use this configuration, because it only worked for a while for me as well (it stopped working with the next driver update). So I no longer have that configuration file

Anyhow, I think it was the Phoronix recommended xorg.conf with the modifications I mentioned. There really was nothing fancy in the configuration file. Something just suddenly made it work, and just as suddenly it stopped working.


Orioner

[SheeEttin]

Thanks anyway--I think I've got it figured out, thanks to you!

Now I just hope it'll continue working after I boot into the SMP kernel...