# ATI KMS woes: Radeon R9000 RV250

## eccerr0r

Since DRM is really borked without KMS for some reason, I'm trying to setup kernel mode setting.  However my Radeon R9000M RV250 is giving me this in dmesg:

```
[    7.716050] radeonfb: detected LVDS panel size from BIOS: 1400x1050

[    7.716053] radeondb: BIOS provided dividers will be used

[    7.812031] radeonfb: Dynamic Clock Power Management enabled

[    7.813140] radeonfb (0000:01:00.0): ATI Radeon 4c66 "Lf"

[    8.030387] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810

[    8.043242] eth1: Setting MAC to XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

[    8.084266] udev: renamed network interface eth1 to eth2

[    8.324042] intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 50572 usecs (2438 samples)

[    8.324047] intel8x0: clocking to 48000

[    8.603311] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting.

[    8.603315] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.

[   12.838418] EXT3-fs (sda3): using internal journal

[   13.253193] device-mapper: ioctl: 4.17.0-ioctl (2010-03-05) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com

```

From what I've found, it doesn't look like DRM is setup properly and linked to radeon.  Seeing other people's dmesg, seems it should report out more information of my card, but it already mounted rootfs at this point...

When I try to start X11 it complains that /dev/drm/card0 is missing (udev didn't create it, nor does it seem like the device is there if I mknod a character device at major 226, minor 0)...

Anyone got KMS (and especially DRM) working with a R200 series ATI Radeon on a latter kernel?

----------

## chithanh

Do not use legacy fb drivers like radeonfb, vesafb, uvesafb or vga16fb with KMS. This causes problems.

----------

## eccerr0r

ah...thanks, getting closer...  That made a huge difference.

Probably need to recompile my kernel with fb options totally removed (though it seems fb is a {M} requirement with KMS turned on?!?!) ... When I got rid of radeonfb.ko and fb_ddm.ko, I finally get DRI working!

... However during boot my screen turns black and text mode is totally disabled... wow... have to be in graphics mode now...

might be an artifact of the remaining FB options? or modules?

----------

## chithanh

Please check the X configuration guide how to properly configure your kernel for KMS. In particular, you need to enable framebuffer console (if built as module, you must ensure that fbcon will be loaded).

----------

## eccerr0r

I completely disabled modules for the related stuff and compiled KMS/AGP/DRM into the kernel.  Framebuffer support is "force enabled" by the config... weird... but...

I'm surprised, no wonder why radeonfb-fbcon conflicts - it's completely redundant, I get my high capacity console back with KMS/DRM!

Thanks, this looks like it works now, with DRI even!  And console works once again ((ctrl-)alt-fX)...

Time to tweak, hopefully can get more fps but at least DRI is enabled once more, that has been completely broken on this machine for the longest time...  now need to do the same thing for my other radeon machines.

----------

## cyrillic

 *eccerr0r wrote:*   

> Anyone got KMS (and especially DRM) working with a R200 series ATI Radeon on a latter kernel?

 

My home theater machine has similar hardware (Radeon9200 / RV280), and KMS and DRM are working fine on 2.6.36-rc2.

The one thing I care about, video playback performance, is noticeably slower with KMS enabled than with it disabled.

Because of this, I often boot with "radeon.modeset=0" so I can watch movies without dropping frames.

I know this kinda defeats the purpose, but I am eagerly awaiting the day when KMS performance will be at least equal to the old-school video drivers.  :Smile: 

----------

## eccerr0r

Interesting.

The main reason for getting KMS to work is that I was having absolutely no luck getting direct rendering working again...  perhaps it was just because I had radeonfb enabled or something, but I had it working before, with it enabled.  Something changed, no clue what... maybe just radeonfb conflict with DRI? Not sure...

Was trying to run WoW with DRI now enabled, it's in pretty poor shape... Oh well.

EDIT>>

ARGH. My R200 does not work with the same arrangement (X86_64)... it oopses in the DRM code or something.  Need to set up serial console and capture the oops...

----------

