I was attempting to get Debian (Squeeze, latest net-install CD) working with a Radeon X1900 Mac edition video card (PCI-Express) on my Power Mac G5 Quad. The installer acted a bit weird right from the start, telling me that the step "Install the system" failed (with nothing in the way of useful error information,) but I got the base system installed at least. It booted fine to framebuffer console, so I set about installing GNOME on it. apt finished with nary a complaint, but when I rebooted, I found that when it was ready to launch into X, it choked up and just sat there with a blank screen and a cursor. (Weirdly, though, the screen itself flickered on and off at a high rate, faster than the actual cursor blink.)
Framebuffer console still worked, at least, so I was able to boot into single-user mode and do some investigating in my own limited capacity for this stuff (by which I mean "Google error messages and see what specifics are requested.") lspci -k showed the video card properly with the manufacturer and product name, so it was recognizing it, at least. When I tried Xorg -configure, though (Xorg 1.7.7, it says,) it aborted with a "No DRICreatePCIBusID symbol" message. Checking dmesg gave me a "process Xorg mapped non-existing PCI legacy memory" message, followed by an "invalid ROM contents" message underneath.
For the time being, I put the GeForce 6600 it came with back in and got things up and running. However, when I updated to Sid (unstable) to get Lightspark working, I thought I'd give it another try and see what happened. The flickering-cursor screen now does not happen, it recognizes the card fully and attempts to load the radeon driver - however, it's apparently conflicting with something or other:
This causes the system to hang completely, such that it can't even boot into single-user mode...any changes made to fix it will need to be done with the GeForce in its place.
I'm not sure what all to make of this. I've found a thread about problems getting the same basic setup (G5 Quad, X1900, Debian) to work, but it's a couple years old and the symptoms are different. There's some discussion there about the radeon/radeonhd driver looking for Atom BIOS information on non-Atom BIOS cards, which would explain the "invalid ROM contents" message when running Squeeze, but on the other hand, that seems to be fixed in Sid. Obviously it's playing nicely enough to run framebuffer console output properly, but beyond that I'm not so sure. Does that "conflicting fb usage" message indicate some kind of driver conflict? If so, is there a way I can disable whatever's conflicting with it and leave only the radeon driver in place?
commodorejohn <commodorej...@gmail.com> writes: > I was attempting to get Debian (Squeeze, latest net-install CD) > working with a Radeon X1900 Mac edition video card (PCI-Express) on my > Power Mac G5 Quad. The installer acted a bit weird right from the > start, telling me that the step "Install the system" failed (with > nothing in the way of useful error information,) but I got the base > system installed at least. It booted fine to framebuffer console, so I > set about installing GNOME on it. apt finished with nary a complaint, > but when I rebooted, I found that when it was ready to launch into X, > it choked up and just sat there with a blank screen and a cursor. > (Weirdly, though, the screen itself flickered on and off at a high > rate, faster than the actual cursor blink.)
> Framebuffer console still worked, at least, so I was able to boot into > single-user mode and do some investigating in my own limited capacity > for this stuff (by which I mean "Google error messages and see what > specifics are requested.") lspci -k showed the video card properly > with the manufacturer and product name, so it was recognizing it, at > least. When I tried Xorg -configure, though (Xorg 1.7.7, it says,) it > aborted with a "No DRICreatePCIBusID symbol" message. Checking dmesg > gave me a "process Xorg mapped non-existing PCI legacy memory" > message, followed by an "invalid ROM contents" message underneath.
The last thing I saw on getting this to work was the Kernel bug report: <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13971> Unfortunately, nothing seems to have happened. I sounds like you got further than I did. Later kernels and Xorgs must have made some difference. I gave up on my X1900 and put a 7800GTX 512MB in instead. It works, but does not have true accelerated 3D Xorg: squeeze gives software acceleration using nouveau.
> This causes the system to hang completely, such that it can't even > boot into single-user mode...any changes made to fix it will need to > be done with the GeForce in its place.
I understand that a similar configuration was used by Ben Herrenschmidt to test the X1900 while having a 6600 in the 16 lane slot. It enables some testing.
> I'm not sure what all to make of this. I've found a thread about > problems getting the same basic setup (G5 Quad, X1900, Debian) to > work, but it's a couple years old and the symptoms are different. > There's some discussion there about the radeon/radeonhd driver looking > for Atom BIOS information on non-Atom BIOS cards, which would explain > the "invalid ROM contents" message when running Squeeze, but on the > other hand, that seems to be fixed in Sid. Obviously it's playing > nicely enough to run framebuffer console output properly, but beyond > that I'm not so sure. Does that "conflicting fb usage" message > indicate some kind of driver conflict? If so, is there a way I can > disable whatever's conflicting with it and leave only the radeon > driver in place?
You get a similar complaint about "invalid ROM contents" on an iBook G4 1.33MHz, but X11 and accelerated Xorg works. It seems to be something to do with the X1900 and X11, but apart from the discussion I mention earlier I have seen nothing further.
On Sep 3, 2:32 am, Stephen Harker <sjhar...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> The last thing I saw on getting this to work was the Kernel bug report: > <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13971> > Unfortunately, nothing seems to have happened. I sounds like you got > further than I did. Later kernels and Xorgs must have made some > difference. I gave up on my X1900 and put a 7800GTX 512MB in > instead. It works, but does not have true accelerated 3D Xorg: > squeeze gives software acceleration using nouveau.
Yeah, I'm almost ready to do that, except I'd *really* like to have this working so that I have 3D acceleration (OpenArena is, shall we say, a bit completely unplayable in software,) rather than having to wait for nouveau to catch up on older cards. (I'd rant about the infuriating apathy towards older hardware and architectures that aren't x86 or ARM in the Linux world, but that's a thread for another time.)
> You get a similar complaint about "invalid ROM contents" on an iBook > G4 1.33MHz, but X11 and accelerated Xorg works. It seems to be > something to do with the X1900 and X11, but apart from the discussion > I mention earlier I have seen nothing further.
Yeah, only the "invalid ROM contents" message is gone now - I guess they must have changed things to recognize cards properly on PPC, so I'm left with some kind of apparent driver conflict between radeon and "OFfb ATY,Priona" (is "OFfb" OpenFirmware framebuffer, a generic driver, maybe?) which I'm not sure how to resolve.
commodorejohn <commodorej...@gmail.com> writes: > On Sep 3, 2:32 am, Stephen Harker <sjhar...@netspace.net.au> wrote: >> The last thing I saw on getting this to work was the Kernel bug report: >> <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13971> > (I'd rant about the > infuriating apathy towards older hardware and architectures that > aren't x86 or ARM in the Linux world, but that's a thread for another > time.)
I would tune in. Yes, there is a significant problem for ppc users and some of the other architectures. In addition there seems to be a real problem with pcie cards: few have openfirmware rom options so you are stuck with old cards. I did see a suggestion that you should be able to stick a x86 card into a G5 pcie machine and use it in linux, you would not have a boot display. This was untested and I don't know if anyone has tried it.
>> You get a similar complaint about "invalid ROM contents" on an iBook >> G4 1.33MHz, but X11 and accelerated Xorg works. It seems to be >> something to do with the X1900 and X11, but apart from the discussion >> I mention earlier I have seen nothing further. > Yeah, only the "invalid ROM contents" message is gone now - I guess > they must have changed things to recognize cards properly on PPC, so > I'm left with some kind of apparent driver conflict between radeon and > "OFfb ATY,Priona" (is "OFfb" OpenFirmware framebuffer, a generic > driver, maybe?) which I'm not sure how to resolve.
As I understand it, yes "OFfb" is OpenFirmware framebuffer and was often used as a (slow) driver for not fully supported firmware. In a non-ppc world the general advice appears to be that there is a potential conflict between the framebuffer device and the radeon device under KMS (Kernel mode setting) kernels and the radeon driver now uses KMS. A quick search on google shows <http://forums.gentoo.org/ viewtopic-t-871343.html?sid=aa6c5fa19b1f41e66c5eac960d3eafb8> which says (in part)
================================================================== As far as I know, PowerPC still requires a framebuffer device, otherwise there is no boot console. As of the last time I tried KMS, it was a pretty terrible experience on my PB G4 with an R300. Sleep and screen brightness do not work and it will lock up unless the AGP speed is fixed to 1x. To do this, add this to your yaboot configuration: "append=radeon.agpmode=1"
It is still recommended to stick with UMS for now (See BenH's post here: http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-powe...@lists.debian.org/msg62503.html) but that won't allow DRM either due to an OpenGL bug in the old driver (see here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26496).
Not much choice now, but it is slowly being worked on. Sorry! ==================================================================
That post is dated around April 2011. You could try searching under "radeon kms ppc" and see if there are any later solutions
On Sep 3, 4:45 pm, Stephen Harker <sjhar...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> I would tune in. Yes, there is a significant problem for ppc users > and some of the other architectures. In addition there seems to be a > real problem with pcie cards: few have openfirmware rom options so you > are stuck with old cards.
It's especially aggravating because so many Linux advocates are all like "Linux! It makes sweet wizardly love to your old hardware!" Well no, it bloody well doesn't, not when my older hardware is ever so slightly out of the mainstream!
> In a > non-ppc world the general advice appears to be that there is a > potential conflict between the framebuffer device and the radeon > device under KMS (Kernel mode setting) kernels and the radeon driver > now uses KMS. > As far as I know, PowerPC still requires a framebuffer device, > otherwise there is no boot console.
No boot console wouldn't be too much of a problem, I was planning on setting yaboot to auto-boot Linux anyway as I don't have OSX installed, but of course I want to be sure I've got it working before I go doing that, and I might have to do that in order to get it working...gah, catch-22.
> That post is dated around April 2011. You could try searching under > "radeon kms ppc" and see if there are any later solutions
Okay, coming back to this, I tried the suggestion to disable KMS, by
adding the line:
append="radeon.modeset=0"
to the appropriate image in yaboot.conf. This takes care of the total
hang, such that I can now boot into single-user mode without problems,
but leaves me in need of a xorg.conf file in order to start X. Xorg -
configure does create a semi-filled-in template that at least has the
card's PCI bus ID and driver name, but it errors out because "number
of created screens does not match number of detected devices" and
leaves the rest blank. Can someone explain to me how to deal with
this, or point me to a resource on rolling one's own xorg.conf?
