random X freeze with latest ati driver

[slacker]

I feel like being ignored. The problem is still there. Any new suggestions?

I opened a bug ( http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16198 ) about these lockups a year ago, so what should I say??
I've been living with these hard lockups for a long time, and now they seem even more frequent with 2.6.31
XAA isn't an option for me either.

[Stormking]

The strange thing about this freeze is that it's completely unpredictable. I had only one crash the whole weekend, today and yesterday the system freezes at least once per hour.

[Stormking]

Sorry, but agd5f is on vacation and does not have computer access. He's not actually ignoring you

He seems to be back.

@agd5f: I hope you had a nice and relaxing vacation. But now, please look into this issue! When ATI dropped the support for what they consider legacy hardware, it was promised that the Open Source Driver would get better, fast.

But the current situation is unacceptable. Imagine doing your work on a machine that is about to freeze, any minute. Every single action can trigger the bug, every window you open can mean the end to your current session. It's really, really, really annoying!

[bridgman]

When ATI dropped the support for what they consider legacy hardware, it was promised that the Open Source Driver would get better, fast.

With respect, that is *not* what was said. Please don't misrepresent my words.

We said that the open source drivers would continue to improve, that out developers would help in addition to the community, and that other than 3D we expected the open source drivers would make most users happy already.

[Stormking]

With respect, that is *not* what was said. Please don't misrepresent my words.

We said that the open source drivers would continue to improve, that out developers would help in addition to the community, and that other than 3D we expected the open source drivers would make most users happy already.

I don't care because I am unhappy. Very unhappy!

All I see is work being done on all that fancy stuff (like KMS or adding support for hardware that is actually usuable with fglrx) while I have to be afraid of opening another browser tab!

[bridgman]

I don't care because I am unhappy. Very unhappy!

Understood, but misrepresenting what we said isn't going to help.

We're dealing with a problem that isn't occurring on developer systems AFAIK, so if this is going to get fixed it will be the combination of good guesses on the developers part and precise information from you.

For example, you said that reverting to the older radeon driver which had been reliable before didn't seem to help but that setting MigrationHeuristic to greedy again eliminated the crashes; is that still true ?

[Stormking]

We're dealing with a problem that isn't occurring on developer systems AFAIK, so if this is going to get fixed it will be the combination of good guesses on the developers part and precise information from you.

I will try to help as much as I can. But in the past, it always happened like this:

Me: X is freezing, randomly.
Developers: Try this patch and tell us if it's gone.
Me: I applied the patch but the bug is still there.

At this point, I usually see or hear nothing from you for a few weeks. Instead, I have to bump this thread a few times to get your attention back. It's like talking to someone who falls asleep after each sentence.

For example, you said that reverting to an older radeon driver didn't seem to help but that setting MigrationHeuristic to greedy eliminated the crashes, is that still true ?

Don't know, will try immediately. Expect a report in a few hours.

By the way, I think I can eliminate a heat problem from the list of subjects. A week ago, I've thrown out my WLAN-Mini-PCI-Card and installed an extra heat sink exactly above the graphics hardware. When taking for granted that this machine was ever supposed to work (and it did), I can't imagine it running hot, now.

[bridgman]

What you're seeing is the developers running out of ideas to try. Unless you maintain an up-to-date "this configuration works, that configuration doesn't" picture for the devs they're not going to have anything to base the next idea on.

[Stormking]

What you're seeing is the developers running out of ideas to try. Unless you maintain an up-to-date "this configuration works, that configuration doesn't" picture for the devs they're not going to have anything to base the next idea on.

I will try that but the problem is, there hasn't been a working configuration for a long time.

At the moment, I am running:

- Kernel 2.6.30
- DRM-Module from kernel 2.6.30, no further patches applied
- xserver-xorg-radeon 6.12.99-git20090629.bb04b450-0ubuntu0tormod
- libgl1-mesa-* 7.6.0~git20090620.3b08a43f-0ubuntu0tormod~radeon
- Compiz 0.8.2-0ubuntu8.1

Relevant options from xorg.conf (AFAIK):

- "AccelMethod" "EXA"
- "AccelDFS" "true"
- "DynamicClocks" "false"
- "EnablePageFlip" "false" (because of rotation)
- "MigrationHeuristics" "greedy" (since your posting)

The last days and weeks, I've been running the same configuration (except xserver-xorg-radeon, which was always the lastest one from Tormod's PPA) with MigrationHeuristics set to default (option commented out in xorg.conf). X froze about every two hours (average), sometimes I could work for 4 to 6 hours without a freeze, sometimes it froze five minutes after logging in. But it's safe to say it usually happens after two hours.

[bridgman]

Just checking, have you already tried the usual suggestions, eg taking AGP mode down to 1 etc ?

If you're running a post-6.12.2 driver it might be useful to try ForceLowPowerMode just in case cooling is a factor.