ATI Radeon Express 200M on Debian jessie (as of 7 Sep 2013)
Hya,
System Debian jessie (686) as of 2013-09-07, on an ancient laptop with Radeon Express 200M. Situation X-session fails to kick in. Troubleshooting facts Xorg.log reads Code:
(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported. Updated packages include xserver-xorg-core:i386, xserver-common:i386, xserver-xorg-video-fbdev:i386, xserver-xorg-video-radeon:i386 and many other ones. Previous dist-upgrade was about 2 months ago. Troubleshooting guess and act I checked with two kernels, 3.9.6 and 3.10.7 (both compiled from debian repo) with and without drm modesetting. So, it is not kernel realted. Debian changelog does not have much information. Question Has anybody already run into this? If so, solved? I guess some sort of screen section on xorg.conf would do (or EDID??). cheers |
Quote:
Code:
Xorg -configure |
Check this out
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-943020.html |
Hya
Thanks for your attension. I made one step forward. I followed your suggestions. Xorg -configure did not work well. However, It gave me a template. The "Gentoo forum" suggested by EDDY1 gave me detailed instruction, unfortunately did not work well. I did many things. Checked legacy fglrx driver: It turned out that my card is not suppported. Clean install radeon driver: For some reason, X kicked in, but keyboard and mouse are dead. For some reason, log says that keyboard and mouse are disabled. Added "AllowEmptyInput" "False" in xorg.conf, did not do much. I checked that evdev package is installed. HOWEVER, I found that evdev kernel option is not checked. (I do not know how this happened, it was off in older kernels also.) I recompiled my kernel with evdev on. Then something wierd went on. X kicks in (good), keyboard and mouse work (good), desktop looks ok (good), but color is screwed up when application (iceweasel, gimp) is launched. (NOT GOOD!!) I do not have time now, I will update. |
Hya
Another step ahead. Now I know that problem is that color depth is 8 (not 16.) What I did. I checked color under xfce4 (I was on fluxbox). Color went differently. Under fluxbox, it went totally odd. Under xfce4, it looked like 8bit color. Xorg.log.0 agrees as follows. Code:
[ 71.575] (II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported. Code:
Section "Screen" I checked with and without "Device fbdev". Also I removed color depth 8 subsection. (none worked!!) I somewhat think I am on a right track. (Do I need fbdev when I have xserver-xorg-video-radeon?) Another possible clue is the fact that dmesg says Code:
[drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled. +++++++++++ added on edit Adding nomodeset as a kernel parameter on boot does not solve this situation. Userspace modesetting is on. |
What happens when you start X without an xorg.conf file?
|
Mayb since it saying "modesetting isn't supported"
try nomodeset. What xversion of legacy driver are you running because 13.1 isn't listing it. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...eon_linux.aspx |
Hya
Thank. Without xorg.conf, it kicks in but 8 bit color. I am using an open source driver (Debian jessie repo) xserver-xorg-video-radeon. Not fglrx-legacy, because it does not support Radeon 200M. Yes, I tried nomodeset, which did not work. However, I don't think it would work. Why? Debian Changelog reads: Code:
xserver-xorg-video-ati (1:7.2.0-1) unstable; urgency=low I will update. cheers |
Yeah, since it's only a KMS driver, if it doesn't work, it uses the fbdev driver instead which is why the color display is low.
The key issue seems to be this line. Code:
[KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported. What's located in your /etc/modprobe.d directory? In the meantime, you may also want to follow this bug, which seems to be a similar issue that you're having: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=721796 |
Hya,
Thanks for your attention. Yes, I removed fglrx driver completely, I believe. I have a little issue with modprobe. I compiled everything into kernel. While I was dividing the kernel into modules, I did something wrong. Currently, under recovery process. I will update. cheers |
I'm more or less interested in seeing if there's anything blacklisted. When you install the fglrx driver, you have to blacklist the radeon driver. Some distros also recommend blacklisting the drm module as well, so check and make sure there's nothing crucial that's being prevented from being loaded. Also, depending on how you installed the fglrx driver, it can overwrite some libraries. I know for Slackware this is the case and the mesa package has to be re-installed after removal.
But before you go too crazy, I'd start with a clean slate. If you can, install Debian on a USB drive and upgrade to Jessie (or use a snapshot to do it). Install X and a window manager like fluxbox and see what happens when you start up X. |
Hya
I managed to get my lame penguin back again. (not clean install) Code:
>ls -l /etc/modprobe.d/ cheers |
self reply.
Upgrading xserver-xorg-video-radeon:i386 and related ones from 1:7.2.0-1 to 1:7.2.0-1+b1 did not resolve the problem. Still dmesg says kernel modesetting is on, while Xorg.0.log says off. cheers |
self reply
After upgrading kernel to 3.11.8, still problem persists. However, following error message shows up. Code:
(EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory I followed the instruction, (modified several kernel options.) then BINGO. thanks for your help. Have a happy penguin |
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