Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Trying to configure Radeon card

[Jeff Cranmer]

On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 17:06 +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: 

> Forgot one last thing.  After you do what I described in my other post,
> make sure to execute:
>
> eselect opengl set ati
>
>
Hi Nikos,

Thanks for the advice.

I think that the instructions that you're providing, however, are for
the closed source ATI driver.  I've already battled unsuccessfully with
that driver via OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, Fedora and gentoo, so I'm trying to
configure using the open source Radeon driver instead, with reference to
this wiki here
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Radeon

Regarding eselect, I used eselect opengl xorg-xll to select the open
source driver instead of ati.  I think this is correct?

The kernel options are configured as follows

Device Drivers  ->
Generic Driver Options  ->
  <*> Userspace firmware loading support
   [*] Include in-kernel firmware blobs in kernel binary
Graphics support  ->
  <*> /dev/agpgart (AGP Support)
  <*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) ->
   <*> ATI Radeon
    [*] Enable modesetting on radeon by default

When I re-ran emerge radeon-ucode and checked my kernel blobs line
in .config, I discovered that I had not included the kernel blobs
radeon/R600_rlc.bin and radeon/R700_rlc.bin, so I recompiled the kernel
using those options and rebooted after running grub to setup the revised
kernel.

I also noted the instructions at
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Framebuffer#Drivers_with_Kernel_Mode_Setting_.28KMS.29
and recompiled the kernel once more after changing the following
settings

Device Drivers ->
Graphics support ->
  [*] Support for frame buffer devices  --->
   [*] Enable firmware EDID
   [*] Enable Video mode handling helpers

Following on further, I found this link
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo#RemovingAMD.2BAC8-ATIcatalyst.2BAC8-fglrxdriver.28closedsource.29
and discovered that I still had the fglrx.ko module
in /lib/modules/2.6.34-gentoo-r6/video, so I deleted it and typed 
depmod -a

After reviewing my /etc/make.conf, I discovered that I had the
VIDEO_CARDS="fglrx" option set, so I changed that to
VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" and ran

emerge -Dav mesa libdrm xf86-video-ati
emerge -NDuav system  (nothing to merge)
emerge -NDuav world (rebuilt xorg-drivers-1.7 and
pm_utils-1.4.1http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo#RemovingAMD.2BAC8-ATIcatalyst.2BAC8-fglrxdriver.28closedsource.29

I then re-ran grub and tried to boot into the revised kernel, but still
no luck getting anything other than software rasteriser.  The Xorg.0.log
file for this run is attached.

I then tried moving the xorg.conf file to another location and restarted
with no xorg.conf.  I still got only software rasteriser, but now I have
errors in Xorg.0.log where fbdev and vesa modules do not exist.

This log file is in the second attachment, Xorg.0.log.noXorg.conf

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I go from here?

Thanks in advance

Jeff