# [Solved] 2.6.35 Kernel Radeon driver - Garbled Console

## jasn

I upgraded to the 2.6.35 Gentoo sources kernel on my Asus N81Vp laptop, (ATI's Radeon Mobility HD 4670 GPU), within an existing xorg-server 1.8.2/KDE 4.4.5 system, (previously using the proprietarty ati-drivers 10.7). Everything installed correctly and is running fine except one thing.

The point at which the boot process would typically switch to the frame buffer screen, change the console font, and display the Linux kernel logo picture, the screen goes black, with the backlight on, then completely black, and then the display come back on but it only displays garbled green/white text/pixels. Also when I exit KDE, it does a similar thing, in not displaying the console screen at all.

Can someone who's done this recently, go over how to setup the frame buffer part of the in kernel Radeon driver? I selected agpgart, and intel_agp, as modules, and they get loaded correctly. The DRI/radeon driver, (with KMS), and it gets loaded correctly. And then I do like the wiki says, and DON'T select the Radeon framebuffer module. In fact, I don't select ANY framebuffer hardware module. Everything else seems load correctly according to my dmesg, including the RV730 microcode. I just can't get a correct console display anymore.

I'm thinking that perhaps the resolution of the laptop screen causes these kinds of issues, so I appended the correct resolution statement to my kernel boot line, video=1366x768-24@60, but it doesn't change anything.

Thanks..Last edited by jasn on Tue Aug 10, 2010 3:17 am; edited 1 time in total

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## ssteinberg

Are you still using the fglrx drivers? Or did you switch to radeon?

fglrx with radeon framebuffer and without DRM and no KMS.

Or radeon with KMS and no framebuffers.

If you use KMD you don't need framebuffer drivers. Try to pass radeon.modeset=1 to kernel in grub.conf.

edit: Reread your post again... If radeon.modeset=1 doesn't work, double check kernel log for clues.

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## jasn

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried passing the radeon.modeset=1 on the kernel boot command line but I still get the same behavior. What kind of kernel log messages should I look for, when trying to debug this?

/var/log/dmesg output

/var/log/messages output

/var/log/Xorg.0.log output

/usr/src/linux/.config

Thanks again..

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## DaggyStyle

under Support for frame buffer devices, enable only Enable firmware EDID

also, mark both as builtin

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## jasn

Thanks Daggy..

But still same garbled console behavior..

/var/log/dmesg

/var/log/messages

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

/usr/src/linux/.config

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## DaggyStyle

are you sure you are using manual kernel?

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## jasn

I dont' know what you mean by manual kernel. I use "genkernel --menuconfig kernel" to set the kernel options via the menu system, and then to build and install my kernel, if that's what you mean.

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## DaggyStyle

 *jasn wrote:*   

> I dont' know what you mean by manual kernel. I use "genkernel --menuconfig kernel" to set the kernel options via the menu system, and then to build and install my kernel, if that's what you mean.

 

ok, in this case, what is the output of zcat /proc/config.gz?

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## jasn

/proc/config.gz

Same as the second kernel config I posted in this thread.

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## chithanh

You have framebuffer console built as module. Either make it built-in or ensure that the fbcon module loads.

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## jasn

Thanks for the solution chithanh.

I verified the solution both ways. As built into the kernel, and then going back to all modules, but making sure I edited my /etc/conf.d/modules file to load the fbcon module on boot, (which is what I'm running now..)

Thanks again..

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