# Radeon, KMS, Kernel 2.6.33

## SeeksTheMoon

Hi, I am using the radeon KMS staging driver from 2.6.32 and it works well. As 2.6.33 has been released, I wanted to upgrade to improve my system with the stable driver but after the kernel starts, it loads or wants to load the firmware and hangs.

FYI I installed the firmware after I built the kernel, like I did for 2.6.32 and everything looks fine and of course 2.6.32 is still working for me, but 2.6.33 isn't.

Even the 33-rcX releases never worked and I thought that the stable release fixes that.

My card is a ATI Technologies Inc RV710 [Radeon HD 4350] and the kernel help says

```

  │ This code support the following hardware : R1XX,R2XX,R3XX,R4XX,R5XX               │

  │ (radeon up to X1950). Works is underway to provide support for R6XX,              │

  │ R7XX and newer hardware (radeon from HD2XXX to HD4XXX). 

```

So am I right, that my card does not work with 2.6.33 because they silently dropped support for newer models even though they claim to have a stable driver now (which implies that it works at least as good as the staging one)?   :Confused: 

Is someone out there who can confirm this?

----------

## DaggyStyle

kms is a complete crap, a useless piece of junk.

they have bugs that they have no idea where are they coming from so they just leave it be.

at 31, my comp hard froze with a black screen, with 32 it hard froze with colors, at 33 the just freezes (not hard) without any ability to do anything.

linus once said we would like to dedicate one cycle of development to pure bug fixes but the other reject... it starts to sound like windows... ship something crappy and maybe try to fix it if it isn't to hard...

----------

## Herring42

Well, it works fine on my system with KMS!

```

$> glxinfo |grep OpenGL

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.                            

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (RV710 954F) 20090101  TCL DRI2         

OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8-devel                                     

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.10                                  

OpenGL extensions:                                                            

```

You need the microcode for r6xx/r7xx GPUs that is shipped separately:

```

emerge x11-drivers/radeon-ucode

```

Apparently, new firmware is no longer going to be shipped with the kernel   :Confused: 

Running bleeding edge versions of mesa libdrm xf86-video-ati etc.

----------

## SeeksTheMoon

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> You need the microcode for r6xx/r7xx GPUs that is shipped separately:
> 
> ```
> ...

 

aah, that's it! Thanks, I never thought about an external firmware ebuild. Thanks for helping, everything works now as expected.

----------

## DaggyStyle

 *Herring42 wrote:*   

> Well, it works fine on my system with KMS!
> 
> ```
> 
> $> glxinfo |grep OpenGL
> ...

 

here is my output:

```
dagg@NCC-5001-D ~ $ glxinfo |grep OpenGL 

IRQ's not enabled, falling back to busy waits: 2 0

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (RV620 95C4) 20090101  TCL

OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8-devel

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.10

OpenGL extensions:

dagg@NCC-5001-D ~ $ emerge -s mesa libdrm ucode xf86-video-ati

Searching...                                                  

[ Results for search key : mesa ]                             

[ Applications found : 3 ]                                    

*  media-libs/mesa

      Latest version available: 9999

      Latest version installed: 9999

      Size of files: 0 kB           

      Homepage:      http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/

      Description:   OpenGL-like graphic library for Linux

      License:       LGPL-2                               

*  x11-apps/mesa-progs

      Latest version available: 7.7

      Latest version installed: 7.7

      Size of files: 20,783 kB     

      Homepage:      http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/

      Description:   Mesa's OpenGL utility and demo programs (glxgears and glxinfo)

      License:       LGPL-2                                                        

Searching...    

[ Results for search key : libdrm ]

[ Applications found : 2 ]         

*  x11-libs/libdrm

      Latest version available: 9999

      Latest version installed: 9999

      Size of files: 0 kB           

      Homepage:      http://dri.freedesktop.org/

      Description:   X.Org libdrm library       

      License:       MIT                        

Searching...    

[ Results for search key : ucode ]

[ Applications found : 6 ]        

*  x11-drivers/radeon-ucode

      Latest version available: 20091209

      Latest version installed: 20091209

      Size of files: 7 kB               

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

      Description:   IRQ microcode for r6xx/r7xx Radeon GPUs           

      License:       radeon-ucode                                      

Searching...    

[ Results for search key : xf86-video-ati ]

[ Applications found : 1 ]                 

*  x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati

      Latest version available: 9999

      Latest version installed: 9999

      Size of files: 0 kB           

      Homepage:      http://xorg.freedesktop.org/

      Description:   ATI video driver            

      License:       MIT                         

dagg@NCC-5001-D ~ $ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)

00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 04)

00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 04)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series

01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 Audio device [Radeon HD 34xx Series]

03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)

03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)

03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)

03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)

09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

dagg@NCC-5001-D ~ $ uname -a

Linux NCC-5001-D 2.6.33-gentoo #2 SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 25 15:59:58 IST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8100 @ 2.10GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

dagg@NCC-5001-D ~ $

```

when kms is disabled, when it is enabled the irq thing is gone

I get softlocks when the screen suddenly goes black

----------

## VoidMage

Do you use uvesafb, radeonfb, etc. ?

When they say to remove those, they really mean it.

For the moment on a r300 family, with mesa 7.7, libdrm 2.4.18 and git of xf86-video-ati

it seems to work quite good.

Well, it does, after I learned the "mean it" part the hard way.

----------

## DaggyStyle

 *VoidMage wrote:*   

> Do you use uvesafb, radeonfb, etc. ?
> 
> When they say to remove those, they really mean it.
> 
> 

 

nope, never got them to work even

----------

## gringo

 *Quote:*   

> For the moment on a r300 family [...] it seems to work quite good. 

 

yup, all i can say is it works for me too (radeon 9600 here).

cheers

----------

## i92guboj

As long as you install the microcode, it should work. It works here with an r600 chip, no problem so far. Admittedly, I use no fancy feature, not even composite.

----------

## DaggyStyle

 *i92guboj wrote:*   

> As long as you install the microcode, it should work. It works here with an r600 chip, no problem so far. Admittedly, I use no fancy feature, not even composite.

 

like said before, microcode is installed, have composite enabled but I don't use compiz and it's friends.

----------

## Link31

I've got both KMS and switchable graphics working (plus Composite and 3D support on both cards) on the following system :

- ATI Radeon 3650 (R600)

- Intel 4500MHD (G45)

- kernel 2.6.33

- xorg-server 1.6.5-r1, mesa 7.7-r1, libdrm 2.4.17

- xf86-video-ati 9999, xf86-video-intel 2.9.1

- radeon-ucode 20091209

----------

## trikolon

how did u install mesa 7.7 with xorg-server 1.6.5? i always get blocks with that combination

```
Calculating dependencies               ... done!

[ebuild     U ] x11-proto/xextproto-7.1.1 [7.0.5]

[ebuild     U ] media-libs/mesa-7.7-r1 [7.5.2] USE="(-gallium) (-selinux)" VIDEO_CARDS="-nouveau% -svga%" 

[blocks B     ] <x11-libs/libXext-1.0.99 ("<x11-libs/libXext-1.0.99" is blocking x11-proto/xextproto-7.1.1)

[blocks B     ] <x11-base/xorg-server-1.7 ("<x11-base/xorg-server-1.7" is blocking media-libs/mesa-7.7-r1)

```

----------

## DaggyStyle

 *trikolon wrote:*   

> how did u install mesa 7.7 with xorg-server 1.6.5? i always get blocks with that combination
> 
> ```
> Calculating dependencies               ... done!
> 
> ...

 

there are two possibilities:

he did that by changing the ebuild

he is wrong and using 1.7

the latter is the most possible.

there is a slight possibility he is using an old ebuild version in which that restriction doesn't exists but that means he need to save it somehow and apply other changes, thats leads to a similar situation of 1.

----------

## kukibl

 *trikolon wrote:*   

> how did u install mesa 7.7 with xorg-server 1.6.5? i always get blocks with that combination
> 
> ```
> Calculating dependencies               ... done!
> 
> ...

 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6188367-highlight-.html#6188367

----------

## Ant P.

You're better off compiling the radeon drm driver as a module; that'll still work even if the firmware's missing. Having it built in causes it to try loading the firmware files before the rootfs is mounted or something stupid like that.

----------

## Link31

 *kukibl wrote:*   

> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6188367-highlight-.html#6188367

 

Yes, I hacked the ebuild into an overlay to bypass the dependency.

----------

