# Loading Radeon drivers at boot

## skiwarz

In an effort to increase my console text size, I started messing around with the graphics drivers enabled in the kernel. Now, when I boot, i get a message that says:

```
switching to clocksource tsc
```

 and then the machine proceeds to hang for about 2 minutes. After that, the text resizes and everything continues as it should.

I have every radeon, ati, or amd option in the kernel enabled (I use menuconfig) and built-in, not modules. grep-ing dmesg gives me this: 

```
[    0.798845] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.

[    0.799615] radeon 0000:01:00.0: VRAM: 512M 0x0000000000000000 - 0x000000001FFFFFFF (512M used)

[    0.799689] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GTT: 512M 0x0000000020000000 - 0x000000003FFFFFFF

[    0.802428] [drm] radeon: 512M of VRAM memory ready

[    0.802482] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.

[   60.896092] radeon 0000:01:00.0: radeon_uvd: Can't load firmware "radeon/RV710_uvd.bin"

[   60.896748] [drm] enabling PCIE gen 2 link speeds, disable with radeon.pcie_gen2=0

[  121.056105] r600_cp: Failed to load firmware "radeon/R700_rlc.bin"

[  121.056221] radeon 0000:01:00.0: disabling GPU acceleration

[  121.072793] radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff880122a93c00 unpin not necessary

[  121.072846] radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff880122a93c00 unpin not necessary

[  121.074395] [drm] radeon: power management initialized

[  121.118237] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device

[  121.326679] radeon 0000:01:00.0: fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device

[  121.326700] radeon 0000:01:00.0: registered panic notifier

[  121.326722] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.33.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
```

Using 3.10.25 kernel. Radeon HD 4670 (RV730)

Any ideas how I can fix this?

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## i92guboj

So, do you have the microcode installed?

```
[  121.056105] r600_cp: Failed to load firmware "radeon/R700_rlc.bin" 
```

```
* x11-drivers/radeon-ucode

     Available versions:  20130826 ~20131111 ~20140204

     Homepage:            http://people.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/radeon_ucode/

     Description:         IRQ microcode for r6xx/r7xx/Evergreen/N.Islands/S.Islands Radeon GPUs and APUs
```

If so, maybe you didn't configure your kernel properly. You need to suply the firmware path somewhere, but I don't remember where's that right now.

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## skiwarz

I added the firmware into the kernel given by https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon

Compiling now. Let you know in a few minutes if it worked.

Learned a lot reading that article there ^

Never had a "new" gpu before, but I guess the newer ones require microcode. Seems to me that it should just be included in the driver somehow, since the two need to be matched anyways. Do you know if the firmware/microcode actually gets installed to the gpu/device? Or is it just dealt with by the OS?

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## skiwarz

Ah, yes. It works. Thank you.

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## i92guboj

As far as I know, it's the kernel/module which loads the firmware. I don't think the fs even exists at that stage. But I never looked into it, admittedly.

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