Getting Open Source 3D graphics on R6XX/R7XX cards (NO FGLRX)

[Neo_The_User]

For those who want to do this for older radeon cards, please go to:

http://neo-technical.wikispaces.com/radeon-kms

It may be a bit out of date as I have to play cat and mouse a lot since the developers keep moving and code around, making new branches / trees and such so if you want to re-write that guide (if even necessary) please post a fresh guide here at phoronix.com/forums. Thank you.

[ankerman]

This guide.

And I am happy that I can use the open source drivers for my crappy X600 mobility card, and don't have to use the proprietary drivers anymore (which have been deprecated for my hardware).

Too bad it doesn't work for you. And if you don't like openSUSE, please use something else. Nobody is forcing you.

[Panix]

What guide?

OpenSUSE and older ATI hardware with open source radeon driver sucks.

I tried it with RV250 hardware and 3D cannot be enabled.

OpenSUSE gets direct help from X.Org people AFAIK and it still didn't result in working 3D with that older hardware.

Heck, I couldn't get it to work in Ubuntu but after trying a hundred different configurations in xorg.conf, I finally got one that sort of worked. Even Mandriva 2010 had it work OUT OF THE BOX and they don't have even half the resources. Fedora 12 worked, too, out of the box.

OpenSUSE is massively overrated...imho..

[ankerman]

openSUSE 11.2 working

Just wanted to share that Neo's guide works like a charm on vanilla openSUSE 11.2 as well. I had to install xorg-x11-server-sdk as well as expat, to resolve some dependencies.
I started at step 5 - no need to patch and compile your own kernel, just build the Xorg stuff.

My system:

ATI Radeon Mobility X600 (M24) 3150 (PCIE) on a Dell D810.

Thanks for the guide!

[tball]

I can't get it to work on anything less than 2.6.33. It seems we have the opposite problem.

As an update, I got KMS working. I just rebuilt everything and it worked. Dunno what I did wrong last time.

Well thats odd. I wonder if it has anything to do with fbcon. It is loaded with 2.6.32-9, but I don't know if its loaded with 2.6.33-rc2.
As I have been told, this modules should be loaded before the radeon module or else you won't see anything in the console.

EDIT:
BTW I am using Ubuntu Karmic with latest tormod ddx,drm, mesa etc. for Lucid.

[h3xis]

I have the exact same problem on a laptop with 4650.
With the mainline kernel 2.6.32-9 everything seems fine. But when I try to boot into a mainline ubuntu 2.6.33-rc2 kernel, I get the problem you describes. I don't see any errors in the kern.log, but it just stays black when gdm used to load.

I get this in the 2.6.33-rc2's kernel log also:
kernel: [ 20.811585] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240x67

I don't know if thats a problem at all.
Plz tell me if you find anything about the problem.

I can't get it to work on anything less than 2.6.33. It seems we have the opposite problem.

As an update, I got KMS working. I just rebuilt everything and it worked. Dunno what I did wrong last time.

[tball]

quoted - "Is there anybody running Debian testing/unstable who can no longer get this to work?"

I'm having the same or similar problem with Lucid on my hd4850 - Since around the time the interrupt patches made it into the kernel tree. The current 2.6.32-9.13 kernel from Ubuntu works fine with KMS enabled, it looks to have drm upto the .32 release plus a few backported patches. The latest Ubuntu kernels from the mainline along with a custom compiled DRM-Radeon-Testing applied to Linus' git and Ubuntus 32-9.13 git source have all failed the same way. The remainder of the stack is the lastest (tried both Edgers-PPA and git compiles) and does not appear to be the problem.

I've been busy with other things so I haven't been trying to chase it down lately. When radeon modprobes on the newer kernels the screen immediately blanks (as though the HMDI output is disabled). This occurs with both UMS or KMS. SSHing in, dmesg shows the driver probed and loaded the firmwares with out error and reports that it's switching to a massive console mode (? 267x67). And Xorg.0.log looks like everything is going fine (detected modes look good,etc) and it selects the usual 1920x1080 mode. But the log just stops after that, haven't seen any errors reported aside from the failure to actually produce output.

Like I said the current 32-9.13 kernel along with the latest libdrm, mesa, DDX works great. So I've just been using that and checking every couple of days to see if the kernel (X server) issue is resolved. If rc2 is out now, I should be able to try it and collect some logs this w/e.

I have the exact same problem on a laptop with 4650.
With the mainline kernel 2.6.32-9 everything seems fine. But when I try to boot into a mainline ubuntu 2.6.33-rc2 kernel, I get the problem you describes. I don't see any errors in the kern.log, but it just stays black when gdm used to load.

I get this in the 2.6.33-rc2's kernel log also:
kernel: [ 20.811585] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240x67

I don't know if thats a problem at all.
Plz tell me if you find anything about the problem.

[aljaz]

I couldn't find a thread for the R300 and this one worked, only I just replaced r600 with r300. I've narrowed down the KMS issue to the kernel. I get the same error as I did before (the "no usable configuration" one) if I use a kernel below 2.6.33, but KMS says it's enabled. If I use 2.6.33, everything works (including DRI), except for KMS. I don't really need that then since I have only 1 user on here. When configuring the kernel, instead of using radeon/R700_rlc.bin, I have been putting radeon/R300_cp.bin. Would this be correct?

Khm... For R300 you shouldn't add anything. It should work out of the box. Though I must say I haven't tried 2.6.33 yet on the mentioned laptop so it could be you've done nothing wrong. Maybe tomorrow I'll compile this kernel on the laptop and see what I get.

[h3xis]

KMS=kernel modesetting. And no, you don't really need it unless you have multiple concurrent users on the same computer. Under KMS every user has DRI enabled as opposed to without KMS option (this is why it's useful to me).

Apart from that, you're in the wrong thread. This one talks about R6XX/R7XX. But anyway, it should be the same for R300 and below, because I use the same guide for a laptop with a R1XX. I only leave out the --with-dri-drivers=r600, which under the latest mesa git you shouldn't even need anymore.

So why don't you have KMS? Have you checked all your kernel options from the guide - they have to be exactly like written in the guide? Did you disable KMS via grub (radeon.modesett=0)?

For mesa and dri and stuff you should find a wiki.

I couldn't find a thread for the R300 and this one worked, only I just replaced r600 with r300. I've narrowed down the KMS issue to the kernel. I get the same error as I did before (the "no usable configuration" one) if I use a kernel below 2.6.33, but KMS says it's enabled. If I use 2.6.33, everything works (including DRI), except for KMS. I don't really need that then since I have only 1 user on here. When configuring the kernel, instead of using radeon/R700_rlc.bin, I have been putting radeon/R300_cp.bin. Would this be correct?

[sovok_kpss]

Does hibernation(TuxOnIce) still don't work with KMS?