Ati Driver Freezes X on start

[Angus]

I have OpenSuse 10.3 64-bit, and an ATI HD2600Pro PCIe graphics card. The VESA driver does not work with my monitors full resolution of 1680x1050. Whenever I try to install the driver (8.471), X freezes before it can start. I found an Xorg.0.log that might shed some light on what's going on. Here's the end of it:
(II) fglrx(0): driver needs X.org 7.1.x.y with x.y >= 0.0
(II) fglrx(0): detected X.org 7.1.0.0
(EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *
(II) fglrx(0): FBADPhys: 0xc0000000 FBMappedSize: 0x10000000
(WW) fglrx(0): Failed to set up write-combining range (0xd0000000,0x10000000)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM initialized for area (0,0)-(1728,8191)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM auto alloc for area (0,0)-(1728,1050) (front color buffer - assumption)
(II) fglrx(0): Largest offscreen area available: 1728 x 7141
(==) fglrx(0): Backing store disabled
(II) Loading extension FGLRXEXTENSION
(II) Loading extension ATITVOUT
(**) fglrx(0): DPMS enabled
(WW) fglrx(0): Textured Video not supported without DRI enabled.
(II) LoadModule: "glesx"
(II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so

[bridgman]

Are you running 4GB of RAM ?

[Angus]

No, 5GB. ;

[bridgman]

OK, more than 3 anyways ;)

IIRC that error seems to be related to SBIOS memory management with over 3GB of RAM, and seems to be quite BIOS-specific. If you felt like experimenting, it would be really interesting to see if the problem goes away when running with only 1 or 2 GB of RAM.

[Angus]

OK, more than 3 anyways ;)

IIRC that error seems to be related to SBIOS memory management with over 3GB of RAM, and seems to be quite BIOS-specific. If you felt like experimenting, it would be really interesting to see if the problem goes away when running with only 1 or 2 GB of RAM.

Well, it might be interesting, but it wouldn't be acceptable, since I'm running VMware sometimes with 2 virtual machines.
I'll see if I can find time to try it on Monday. In the meantime, feel free to come up w/other solutions.

[bridgman]

Thanks. Just to be clear, I'm only proposing this as a way to help diagnose a problem we don't see in-house. Not suggesting that you actually run this way.

[Angus]

Well, it looks like you were right: I pulled all but 2Gb out of my machine, and for the first time I was able to see 1680x1050. So now that we know what the problem is, do you have a workaround that doesn't involve losing half my memory? Is there any *other* way to get 1680x1050, or at the very least, a 16:10 aspect ratio? Is it worth giving ATI driver feedback on this?
I don't remember installing nVidia's driver being a cakewalk either, but at least things got done.

[movieman]

What motherboard are you using? I had a similar problem with the on-board graphics on my Asus M2A-VM where the system would boot but lock up when fglrx started running, unless I restricted the RAM usage to below 4GB.

That went away when I upgraded the BIOS; as far as I could figure out it appeared to be telling the OS that it had remapped 512MB of RAM from 3.5GB to 4GB, but not bothered to tell the hardware the same thing.

[Angus]

I haven't been able to figure out what the motherboard is, but it's the one that comes with the Asus Aspire M5620. I've looked for BIOS upgrades, but come up empty. I remember a setting in the BIOS that has something to do w/"remapping". Disabling it didn't help the problem.

[movieman]

As a short-term workaround you could try putting mem=4095M on the kernel boot line, and that should give you around 3.5GB of RAM. But you'll still be missing 1.5GB that way.

Another possibility is a duff RAM DIMM. I presume that if you have 5GB you're probably using something like 2x2GB and 1x1GB?

[bridgman]

Angus, I don't have an immediate answer for using fglrx but now at least I know what question to ask. Our dev team (Matthew actually) is aware of the BIOS problems and they were the ones who suggested testing with <4GB to confirm the problem, but in general they have seen the problem go away once the mobo vendor provides an upgrade that properly handles 4GB support.

That said, if the VESA driver works then it's possible that the problem is only related to (say) acceleration, in which case (a) disabling DRI on fglrx might help and (b) there's a good chance that one of the open drivers might work, and they would definitely give you reliable 1680x1050 operation.

So:

1. Try disabling DRI on fglrx - I don't have the option in front of me, hopefully someone can jump in.

2. Give radeonhd a try - I think you should be able to download a package for release 1.1 if you don't feel like downloading from git and building from source.

You should definitely be able to add 1GB back in (total 3GB) and the suggestion above about setting RAM to 4095K would also be worth tryng. Obviously continuing to look for mobo BIOS upgrades would be good too.

I don't think we have a good driver workaround for this particular BIOS issue but will check to see if anything new has turned up.

[Angus]

Angus, I don't have an immediate answer for using fglrx but now at least I know what question to ask. Our dev team (Matthew actually) is aware of the BIOS problems and they were the ones who suggested testing with <4GB to confirm the problem, but in general they have seen the problem go away once the mobo vendor provides an upgrade that properly handles 4GB support.

Oh. I'll go bug Acer then.

That said, if the VESA driver works then it's possible that the problem is only related to (say) acceleration, in which case (a) disabling DRI on fglrx might help and (b) there's a good chance that one of the open drivers might work, and they would definitely give you reliable 1680x1050 operation.

So:

1. Try disabling DRI on fglrx - I don't have the option in front of me, hopefully someone can jump in.

That seemed to work! By putting Option "NoDRI" in Section "Device" in xorg.conf, X did indeed start, and with 1680x1050 resolution. Thanks!

You should definitely be able to add 1GB back in (total 3GB) and the suggestion above about setting RAM to 4095K would also be worth tryng. Obviously continuing to look for mobo BIOS upgrades would be good too.

mem=4095M didn't work. Neither did mem=3583M.

So what am I losing by not having DRI? I've noticed that certain screen updates are as slow as a sleeping snail. For instance, if I grab the vertical scroll bar on this very page, and drag it, the updates are painfully slow. I would say this is barely preferable to having a bad aspect ratio.

[bridgman]

So what am I losing by not having DRI? I've noticed that certain screen updates are as slow as a sleeping snail. For instance, if I grab the vertical scroll bar on this very page, and drag it, the updates are painfully slow. I would say this is barely preferable to having a bad aspect ratio.

You are pretty much losing all acceleration. Might be worth trying one of the open drivers. The radeonhd driver, for example, has "shadow framebuffer" code paths which maintain a copy of the framebuffer in system memory and blit the changed bits up to your graphics card when necessary. It sounds crude but delivers pretty decent performance without acceleration.

I would give radeonhd a try as your next step. It will definitely deliver better unaccelerated performance than fglrx. For video playback you'll want to pick the "X11" option wherever possible.

[Angus]

I tried contacting Acer tech support asking about a BIOS upgrade, and they gave me a lot of double-talk about not supporting Linux software, drivers not being under warranty, and so on. I.e., "we're a bunch of jackasses so we're going to point the finger in all other directions".
I also gave RadeonHD a try. Their documentation didn't inspire a lot of confidence, but after trying the mailing list, pretty soon I was able to get it all running. Now I've got 1680x1050 with fast refreshing. Excellent! Thanks for all your help