Testing mesa 7.6 RC on Ubuntu karmic

[molostoff]

Note that xorg-edgers tracks master trunk (mesa 7.7-to-be) whereas x-updates tracks the 7.6 branch. Stock karmic has the 7.6.0 release with some patches (for crashes and corruptions which are not yet fixed in the 7.6 branch).

I have tested both 7.6 & 7.7 (each over fresh install of 9.10 Kubuntu) on M71 (X2100), Acer aspire 5720g (updates are all the last ones at the moment of this posting).

(1) 7.6 included in fresh Kubuntu 9.10: Just after install I have got unreadable (garbaged) console, and KDE with unability to run desktop effects - freezes and aborts to KDE login.

After setting up radeon-kms on this fresh install: I've got fresh-looking console/ttys and partially working KDE: effect glitches may take 1-2sec of freeze. KDE window titlebars (Qt theme look) filled with transparent squares (I suspect that these are letters, but errorneously undrawn). Fortunately it works somehow.

(2) 7.7: Only one combination I have found that works fine at all is fresh Kubuntu 9.10 (daily live), then setting radeon-kms in grub.cfg, and then update from x-edgers repo (sorry, but I've tested it on Urbanterror, Googleearth, Openarena and so on) - no garbage, speed is eye-candy and effects at most are smooth. Only one thing is hiding the sun - small glitches in desktop cube animated switching - looks like slower than 9.04 and not so much smooth than before.

As for me, 7,7 - is excellent.

If you point out me to some testing tool of your choice - I am ready to run it on every update/reinstall.

[agd5f]

You might try Dave's drm-next kernel tree. Lots of bugs have been fixed since 2.6.31.

[tormod]

(1) 7.6 included in fresh Kubuntu 9.10: Just after install I have got unreadable (garbaged) console, and KDE with unability to run desktop effects - freezes and aborts to KDE login.

I am pretty sure this is fixed in 7.6.0-1ubuntu4. You used an earlier version, right?

[molostoff]

I am pretty sure this is fixed in 7.6.0-1ubuntu4. You used an earlier version, right?

I have tested them all. Last night I reinstalled in fresh with 7.6.0-1ubuntu4 - the same effect. Then I have added x-swat stable version update - and got the same.

In case I will do reinstall again and test them consequently too.

I just pointed to a thing comes through all these versions (except 7.7) - transparent squares in title bars.

But things moving so fast so it looks like new updated versions already in process, while I sometimes have catching a tail only....

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Also the thing is unclear to me is kms for radeon driver. Without this (rely on kubuntu defaults) - console becomes broken with any mesa/radeon version, is this fault from kubuntu installer?

[highlandsun]

Also the thing is unclear to me is kms for radeon driver. Without this (rely on kubuntu defaults) - console becomes broken with any mesa/radeon version, is this fault from kubuntu installer?

I confirm that as well, running xubuntu.

Unfortunately KMS is still corrupting things for me, so I'm now booting with radeon.modeset=0.

On a slight digression, with my own compiled kernel the radeon driver was unable to load its firmware if it was loaded in the initramfs. I already checked and copied the firmware to both /lib/firmware/radeon and /lib/firmware/2.6.32-rc4/radeon but it made no difference. So I had to alter the initramfs that update-initramfs created, and completely remove the gpu drivers from there. This way they load from the real rootfs, and everything works.

[tormod]

On a slight digression, with my own compiled kernel the radeon driver was unable to load its firmware if it was loaded in the initramfs. I already checked and copied the firmware to both /lib/firmware/radeon and /lib/firmware/2.6.32-rc4/radeon but it made no difference. So I had to alter the initramfs that update-initramfs created, and completely remove the gpu drivers from there. This way they load from the real rootfs, and everything works.

This was probably LP #381037, fixed today with udev 147~-6.

[rob2687]

I get the character corruption on my mobility 9600. This happens on the stock Karmic install and with this Mesa 7.6 branch ppa. I think ExaNoDownloadFromScreen helped. There seems to be a more serious issue which causes the system to lock up after a while when using KMS. I've looked at syslog, kern.log, and Xorg.0.log but none show anything during the time when the system locks up.

I've also been testing this ppa on my desktop pc which has a x1900. It has been running without any problems for a few weeks now.