XFree86 4.4RC3 SIS DRI
 

Anyone here tried the new XFree86 4.4 RC3 with a SiS based card? I can load the modules successfully and glxinfo shows that Direct Rendering is enabled, but the rendering is all screwed up (warped polygons, objects that should be visible not visible etc). I can find nothing out of the ordinary in the system logs

Got the exact same problem when compiling my own and using the prebuilt binaries.

I'm using the DRM drivers that ship with kernel 2.6.3, hw is a SiS630 configured to use 32MB as VRAM, sisfb and sis are both modules.

Relevant lines from modprobe.conf:
options sisfb mem=12288

Relevant lines from XF86Config:
Section "Module"
blah blah
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Sis630"
Driver "sis"
VideoRam 32768
Option "DRI" "on"
Option "MaxXFBMem" "12288"
Option "AGPSize" "32"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Got exaclty the same here with xfree 4.4.0... finally fps up to 200 instead of 30 (laptop) but in glxgears there are no gears to be seen in the window, and tuxracer and cube give me weird lines all over the screen.

Tried all sorts of things while cruising through LQ and other sites but nothing seems to improve the job.

I'm pretty damn sure the problem lies in the sis_dri.so MESA driver, because forced software rendering (setenv LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT 1) works.

One thing I haven't tried yet is to recompile the 2.6.3 kernel from a fesh source.
Initially, with xfree 4.3.0, I got Winischhofer's drivers and started fooling around with those. If I remember right, the sis_dri.so had to be copied to the kernel source and the recompile or something like that (never got any success).
Now, with xfree 4.4.0, that shouldn't be necessary or might even be harmful?

Post back if you have any luck in getting those grapics properly on the screen, ok.

I don't quite get the logic here... could you elaborate on this a bit more for a newbie as myself? Thnx ;-)

Well, I've tried it every way I can think of. Here is a summary:
XFree86 4.4 drivers from www.winischhofer.net
7
I have tried kernel 2.6.3 with:
1) agpgart module
sis-agp module
sis module
sisfb module

2) agpgart built-in
sis-agp module
sis module
sisfb module

3) agpgart built-in
sis-agp built-in
sis module
sisfb module

Then those 3 with sisfb built in. It appears there is no difference if sisfb is built as a module or not. With sisfb built-in, I have tried all configs with sis built-in. Again, this makes no difference.
If, however, I build the agpgart into the kernel, when I try and run anything, I get a complete video lock-up, which needs to be rebooted to get out of. If I build it as a module, it will not get inserted, and I have to do it manually. This makes no difference to the output of glxgears, which shows a black screen, until resized, where it (sometimes) shows muddled polygons.

I think therefore that the problem has something to do with the SiS AGP kernel drivers. I have tried using the sis driver from www.winischhofer.net, but this makes no difference.
I don't believe sisfb is faulty, since it worked fine with 2.4.x kernels.

Indeed, I also tried all those options you mention without any success.

Please, is there anyone who knows The Trick to get the sis drivers to work well????

I highly doubt it's anything to do with sisfb. As mentioned before, it's either
sis_dri.so, or the kernel drivers sis.ko and sis-agp.ko

I believe it's an error in sis_dri.so with the latest XFree versions. The bug was submitted a while ago, but has not been cleared up:
http://bugs.xfree86.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1059
You can get around it by using sis_dri.so from XFree 4.2. I have a copy of the file built with gcc-3.2.1, but it works with my XFree-4.4.0 which was built with gcc-3.3.1. If you do not wish to compile it yourself, contact me through PM or email and I can send a copy to you.

OK I lied. That works fine with glxgears, but other things it works "less well". i.e very badly. It doesn't like textures, but at least it doesn't crash hideously.

guygriffiths,

You almost made my day! What a disappointment :-(
But at least now I know it's bug, it's not me ;-)
Let's hope someone is able to get a work-around.

Cheers, Leon.

If you really need DRI, you can always revert to a 2.4.x kernel and use XFree-4.3 with the sis_dri and sis_drv from XFree 4.2.1.
But I've found no way of getting it to work with the 2.6.x kernel, which is what I want.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but for anyone who's interested, I've gotten (finally) 3D acceleration to work with the latest DRI binary drivers from http://www.freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/. I'm on a 2.6.7 kernel, glibc-2.3.3 (with NTPL thread), and X.org 6.7.0. Tested so far with glxgears and fooBilliard (http://www.geocities.com/harpin_floh...lard_page.html)

ugenn, im a total newbie trying to get my card to work on Dual monitors. I have the SiS xabre 400 (330). I am using Mandrake 10.0 with the latest kernel. How do i go about installing the latest DRI binaries?

Im used to compiling from source with SuSE but cant get it to function on this machine.

DRI is not supported in the newer models I believe. Get the binaries from http://www.freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/. The binaries are for a fairly recent version of Xorg, I believe, so you have one of the latest Xorg servers installed.

i upgraded to xfree86 4.4 last nite. It has better support for my card, alls i want is my dual monitors back.