ATI video problem - extremely slow desktop - 100% cpu load

[Vincent Stemen]

Hi.

FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE
Motherboard: gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 R2
Video: Integrated ATI Radeon HD 3000 graphics

System runs fine with a simple stand alone window manager such as jwm,
openbox, etc. But anytime I run a desktop environment that has a panel and/or
desktop icons, the X desktop takes a very long time to start up and runs
extremely slow and unresponsive, the pointer jumps instead of moving smoothly,
and the main Xorg process runs at 100% load on one core. I have tried several
different desktops, such as xfce, enlightenment, lumina, etc. Similar problem
on all of them.

It appears to be any environment that is using DBUS. That could just be
a coincidence.

The weird thing is that it does not always do it. Once in a while, when
I launch X, it comes up quick and runs fine. Shut down X and re-run it and
it's back doing it again. Sometimes it will come up running fine several
times in a row. Once it comes up working correctly, it stays working until
I restart X. Even after a reboot, it is inconsistent about doing it the first
time X is run.

I have tried re-installing all the ports from X11 and the desktop environments
from FreeBSD 11 release_1, release_2, quarterly, and latest. Same problem
with all of them.

Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this?

I don't know if for sure if this is a FreeBSD or a port problem. There are
radeon modules running.

# kldstat

5 1 0xffffffff82431000 12b4a0 radeonkms.ko
...
10 1 0xffffffff825b9000 103e radeonkmsfw_RS780_pfp.ko
11 1 0xffffffff825bb000 5b3f radeonkmsfw_RS780_me.ko
12 1 0xffffffff825c1000 1338 radeonkmsfw_R600_rlc.ko

X is using the ati driver from the xf86-video-ati-7.9.0_1,1 package.

The evidence seems to be pointing toward the xf86-video-ati package being the
problem. If I edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use the "vesa" driver rather than
the "radeon" driver the problem goes away.

But, of course, the vesa driver is low resolution and does not re-initialize the
console when I exit X.

_______________________________________________
freebsd...@freebsd.org mailing list
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stabl...@freebsd.org"

[Nikita Druba]

Hello!
I was have the same problem with my HD 4870x2 at FreeBSD 11.1 and kde5
some time ago. As a result I was change video card to Nvidia. But I
don't try vesa drivers.
Good luck!

20.06.2018 00:23, Vincent Stemen пишет:

[Vincent Stemen]

I have now tested with two additional ATI cards.
A Radeon HD 5450 and and older card that shows as
"RV370 [Radeon X300 SE]" in the PCI info.

Same problem on all of them. Before, it would come up and run correctly
once in a while. It doesn't seem to at all now. This seems to be some
kind of core radeon driver bug.

[Mark Saad]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 3:43 PM, Vincent Stemen <vi...@hightek.org> wrote:
> I have now tested with two additional ATI cards.
> A Radeon HD 5450 and and older card that shows as
> "RV370 [Radeon X300 SE]" in the PCI info.
>
> Same problem on all of them. Before, it would come up and run correctly
> once in a while. It doesn't seem to at all now. This seems to be some
> kind of core radeon driver bug.
>

Vincent
I am running 11.2-PRERELEASE with a Cedar PRO [Radeon HD 5450/6350]
and I dont have any issues like that

here is what I do to get it working for me; and I have used more or
less the same setup since 10.3-RELEASE

In my loader.conf I have

radeonkms_load="YES"
radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_pfp_load="YES"
radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_rlc_load="YES"
radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_me_load="YES"

I use a static xorg.conf as well In there I have the following bits

1 Section "ServerLayout"
2 Identifier "X.org Configured"
3 Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
4 InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
5 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
6 Option "AIGLX" "true"
7 EndSection
...
19 Section "Module"
20 Load "dbe"
21 Load "dri"
22 Load "dri2"
23 Load "extmod"
24 Load "record"
25 Load "freetype"
26 Load "bitmap"
27 Load "type1"
28 Load "glx"
29 EndSection
...
50 Section "Device"
51 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
52 Option "DRI" "true"
53 Identifier "Card0"
54 Driver "radeon"
55 BusID "PCI:3:0:0"
56 EndSection
57
...

Also if the redeon driver is not working for you try scfb . It works
better the vesa it some cases


msaad@ostrich:~ % pkg info xf86-video-scfb-0.0.4_5
xf86-video-scfb-0.0.4_5
Name : xf86-video-scfb
Version : 0.0.4_5
Installed on : Mon Sep 25 10:52:09 2017 EDT
Origin : x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb
Architecture : FreeBSD:11:amd64
Prefix : /usr/local
Categories : x11-drivers
Licenses :
Maintainer : x...@FreeBSD.org
WWW : UNKNOWN
Comment : X.Org syscons display driver
Annotations :
repo_type : binary
repository : FreeBSD
Flat size : 21.4KiB
Description :
This package contains the X.Org xf86-video-scfb driver.
Framebuffer access via FreeBSD syscons.

> _______________________________________________
> freebsd...@freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stabl...@freebsd.org"

--
mark saad | none...@longcount.org

[Vincent Stemen]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 05:13:17PM -0400, Mark Saad wrote:
> Vincent
> I am running 11.2-PRERELEASE with a Cedar PRO [Radeon HD 5450/6350]
> and I dont have any issues like that
>
> here is what I do to get it working for me; and I have used more or
> less the same setup since 10.3-RELEASE
>
> In my loader.conf I have
>
> radeonkms_load="YES"
> radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_pfp_load="YES"
> radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_rlc_load="YES"
> radeonkmsfw_CEDAR_me_load="YES"
>
> I use a static xorg.conf as well In there I have the following bits
>
>

> Also if the redeon driver is not working for you try scfb . It works
> better the vesa it some cases

Thank you very much Mark! The scfb driver works! I didn't know what the scfb
driver was for or that it will use the radeon kernel modules. This seems to
confirm that the problem lies in the radeon X server driver that's in the
xf86-video-ati package.

I tagged this as semi-solved in the subject because it solves our immediate
problem and gets us working, but it seems to be a work around to fixing the ati
driver problem. Unless FreeBSD is going in the direction of using the scfb
driver and not needing the ati driver at all, but I have found no documentation
indicating this. The man page for scfb says it is a non-accelerated driver.
So far as I can tell, that is not necessarily the case. It is using the radeon
kernel modules and I seem to have full desktop features, resolution, and
performance, including transparencies. I even tested moving windows around
that are playing high def videos.

I am curious how you discovered the use of this driver for ATI cards since I
have not found docs that say anything about it.

BTW, I did test with all three ATI Radeon card models that I mentioned,
and it works fine with all of them.

Anyway, there are some caveats to getting it working. Since I spent the
last few days working on this issue, I am posting my notes below to help
others who might be experiencing the same issue.

Solution to getting ATI Radeon graphics cards working
=====================================================
Use the "scfb" driver from the xf86-video-scfb package rather than the "radeon"
driver from the xf86-video-ati package.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
...
Driver "scfb"
...
EndSection

This driver also requires the radeon kernel modules to be loaded, but does not
automatically load them like the radeon driver does.

I tried loading them in /boot/loader.conf,

/boot/loader.conf
radeonkms_load = yes
radeonkmsfw_RS780_pfp_load = yes
radeonkmsfw_RS780_me_load = yes
radeonkmsfw_R600_rlc = yes

This did not work. The radeonkmsfw_R600_rlc.ko module does not get loaded and
the console does not get initialized. Apparently it has something to do with
loader loading the modules first, when the kernel is not running yet to have
detected the PCIe devices. Even if you manually load radeonkmsfw_R600_rlc
after booting, using kldload, it still does not initialize the console.

You must load radeonkms.ko after the system is fully booted.

# kldload radeonkms

That automatically loads the other 3 modules and initializes the console where
the console text goes into higher resolution mode. Then X and the desktop
environments work and seem to be fully functional, including transparency, etc.

So I can either put it in /etc/rc.local, to be run at boot time, or put it in
an X startup script wrapper. Note that it must be run prior to startx because
it must be loaded before launching the X server. So it cannot be put in
~/.xinitrc.

[Carl Johnson]

Vincent Stemen <vinc...@hightek.org> writes:

> You must load radeonkms.ko after the system is fully booted.
>
> # kldload radeonkms
>
> That automatically loads the other 3 modules and initializes the console where
> the console text goes into higher resolution mode. Then X and the desktop
> environments work and seem to be fully functional, including transparency, etc.
>
> So I can either put it in /etc/rc.local, to be run at boot time, or put it in
> an X startup script wrapper. Note that it must be run prior to startx because
> it must be loaded before launching the X server. So it cannot be put in
> ~/.xinitrc.

Have you tried loading it with kld_list in /etc/rc.conf? Those get
loaded during boot, but it might be late enough to work. That would be
automated, so it might be a little more convenient.
--
Carl Johnson ca...@peak.org

[Mark Saad]

Vincent
I used the scfb driver in openbsd land for a work project . Currently I am using 11-STABLE with the Radeon driver but at one point I had a different card under 11.0 that didn’t work unless I used the scfb driver .

---
Mark Saad | none...@longcount.org