Direct Rendering for ATI card with Tungsten Graphics Mesa driver
 

I had Compiz Fusion (with Direct Rendering) working at some point in time (about 6 months ago), but then had to re-install the OS (openSUSE 10.3). Now I can't get it to work again. I thought maybe the hardware wasn't good enough. My video card is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9100 IGP

However, when I booted with the Knoppix (5.3.1) DVD (it uses Compiz Fusion by default), it worked fine. glxinfo reported the following:
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R200 2000602 AGP 8x x86/MMX/SSE2 NO-TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 7.0.3-rc2

That caused me to think I did some other stuff that interfered with Direct Rendering. So I installed openSUSE again on a spare hard drive. Went though, enabled 3D Accel. in setup, and ran glxinfo once the installation finished. It reported pretty much the same thing as above, but a slightly different version of Mesa (for the OpenGL version string).

I have a lot of stuff/settings that I don't want to redo on a new installation. What should I do to get the Tungsten Graphics driver to be used in my current installation?

Current installation's glxinfo:
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.5.2)

I am convinced that my video card CAN utilize Direct Rendering (because of what Knoppix and the new installation can do).

Thanks in advance!

can you see if the module:

lsmod |grep ati

Otherwise see if your xorg.conf has "ati"

modprobe -v ati
or radeon

If it is not there try replace vesa by ati and restart. Try using Yast/graphic card to reconfigure.

'lsmod | grep ati' gave me a bunch of sound modules as well. The ones I thought necessary were:
ati_agp 12648 1
agpgrat 35764 2 drm,ati_agp

As for the modprobe command, the ati module wasn't found, but radeon completed successfully.

When I went into YaST to config the graphics card, the 3D accel. checkbox was finally available. I'll test to see if I now have direct rendering.

Thanks.

P.S. Will there be a need in the future to run 'modprobe -v radeon' again? Or is there some way to make the change permanent? Thanks again.

Unfortunately, glxinfo still reports Mesa GLX Indirect as its OpenGL renderer. Any other suggestions (even as to what the problem might be)?

That was right after rebooting. If I do 'modprobe -v radeon', and then run glxinfo w/o rebooting, it WILL say 'Tungsten Graphics, Inc' for the OpenGL vendor.

So now I need some way to make the 'modprobe -v radeon' happen all the time.

I've found something interesting. When glxinfo is run as a normal user (the one that's currently logged on), glxinfo says "Mesa GLX Indirect".

However, when run as root, it says "Tungsten Graphics, Inc.".

What could be causing that?

Do you have DRI section in your xorg.conf? You may need to add "Mode 0666" to this section.

I have a like problem with intel 965 gm, after upgrading kernel 2.6.21.5 to 2.6.24.7 all works!
You should build drm and agp modules.

Yes, I did that already.

As for upgrading the kernel: How? (I've never done it before...)
Also, where should I look for the drm and agp sources?

See your Xorg log, in particular look for dri module loading.

Everything looks fine in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

There are no errors related to DRI.
There is a warning, though:
(WW) RADEON(0): DRI init changed memory map, adjusting ...
(WW) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION was: 0x2fff2c00 is: 0x2fff2c00
(WW) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION was: 0xffffffc0 is: 0xec7fec00

I don't know if that's causing a problem, though...

In suse try:

glxinfo | grep -i direct
You should get something like:
direct rendering: Yes


can you boot to knoppix and try the same

and copy the xorg.conf file in a usb stick and see what is different in SUSE 's xorg.conf

Also, once you have "modprobe -v radeon" do not reboot just logout (Ctrl-Alt-backspace) - u just need to restart xserver.

carefully look into the file
/etc/sysconfig/kernel - add radeon in this file (so that you need not do it everytime.


after logging in see
ls /dev/dri/card0 -l

crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 2008-05-12 19:11 /dev/dri/card0

the user _must_ belong to video group.

Also look in below:
http://en.opensuse.org/Ati#Troubleshooting

may be u have dri for root but not for user. This means you need to enable POSIX shared memory

can you post
$ df
xorg.conf

'glxinfo | grep -i direct' reports Yes when run as root and No when run as the user.

Knoppix's xorg.conf doesn't differ much from suse's. It has a lot more modes for the monitor, and some other additions (not affecting graphics).

So I should add radeon to the MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT in /etc/sysconfig/kernel?

'ls /dev/dri/car0 -l':
Should I change the group to video for /dev/dri/card0?

I already checked, my user belongs to the video group.

'df':
xorg.conf:

I was just looking through relevant files (graphics drivers, dri files, drm files, etc).
Here are the folders I checked: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/, /usr/lib/xorg/modules/, /usr/lib/xorg/extensions/, /usr/lib/dri/, /lib/modules/2.6.22.5-31-default/kernel/drivers/char/drm/
One thing I noticed on ALL the files in all the above folders was that the owner was root, and the the group was also root. Maybe this is causing some kind of problem?

I already have POSIX shared memory enabled, from trying to get it to work before...

Reboot the machine and login as user
glxinfo | grep -i direct'

type:
'ls /dev/dri/card0 -l'
lsmod | grep radeon

And post the result here.


This is correct. do not change anything here.

Did you recompile kernel or is it SUSE default installation.

'glxinfo | grep -i direct':
direct Rendering: No
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect

'ls /dev/dri/card0 -l':
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 226, 0 2008-05-17 14:57 /dev/dri/card0

'lsmod | grep radeon':
radeon 116228 1
drm 79636 2 radeon

I didn't _manually_ recompile the kernel. I don't know if it was ever recompiled by anything else since the installation.