Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: video driver / system state question

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:59 AM, Peter Humphrey
<peter@××××××××××××××.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday 26 January 2010 01:13:59 Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>> mtrr: type mismatch for c0000000,10000000 old: write-back new:
>> write-combining [drm] MTRR allocation failed.  Graphics performance may
>> suffer.
>
> This rings a bell. Your kernel line in grub.conf has something like
> "video=inteldrmfb:mtrr:3,ywrap", no? The 3 is causing the error above, or
> you may have a 4. Google should be able to find you the docs on this. The
> options are write-combining and write-back; if one doesn't work the other
> should.
>
> --
> Rgds
> Peter.
>
>

Hi all,
   OK - it's working and gentoo-amd64 is the first email recipient
from my new i5-661 running Gentoo Linux and XFCE4. THANKS TO EVERYONE!

   I'll need to document what I did to get it going as well as archive
files so as to protect myself from some sort of infant mortality or
operator error. None the less at least it's up and usable.

   This seems to be one of those cases where I cannot recognize
exactly who had the final answer as there were a lot of things I did
last night to get the machine going, both based on information from
this thread as well as a thread at intel-gfx. Clearly I'm still
learning/confused about the exact technology here so I want to iron
that out over the next few days.

   The main points, subject to me getting schooled on what's really
happening here:

1) The new i5-661 processor and i915 running X are ONLY supported
using KMS so there seem to be two ways to do this:
a) Build the kernel with AGP, DRM and KMS into the kernel, or
b) Build the kernel with AGP, DRM and KMS modular and then use
i915.modeset=1 on the boot command line

I am using b) at this time.

2) Use drm.debug=0x06 to get lots of nice messages from DRM about
what's going on.

3) Configure the kernel to support frame buffers but turn off
everything except these 4, and possibly only the first and last ones:
(grep for "FB" and "FRAMEBUFFER")

CONFIG_FB=y
CONFIG_FB_CFB_FILLRECT=m
CONFIG_FB_CFB_COPYAREA=m
CONFIG_FB_CFB_IMAGEBLIT=m
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y

 The CFB entries are probably not necessary but I haven't figured out
where they are in the kernel yet to turn them off. They do load
modules so they might be required.

4) In make.conf use these lines among others:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
USE="hal dts mmx sse sse2 ssse3 sse4 -gnome -kde"
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev"
VIDEO_CARDS="intel fbdev"

to set up for X and get a normal text boot which I think is taking
place in the frame buffer.

5) As root run

Xorg -configure
Xorg -config /root/xorg.conf.new

If things go right I'm to the point where Drake was correct. X is up
but the screen is blank. Copy xorg.conf.new to /etc/X/xorg.conf

X -retro does work. Thanks Drake!

6) emerge xfce4-meta and then as user put "exec startxfce4" in
.xinitrc, and then startx

   Assuming I haven't made any omissions or stupid mistakes that gets
me into xfce4. I don't know if I'm running X over a frame buffer or
using a more native VGA.

   I will of course review this in more depth as I document it for
real but I wanted to say thanks for the answers as they were all
helpful.

Cheers,
Mark