[TESTING REQUEST] Xorg in -current (yes, again)

thanks a mill for the input johnny, BUT, as it turns out, both the TNT2 and another 6600GT card now no longer work on their original systems as well, windows systems that were fully functional before I put the card into the 'problem system'! Given that two cards have died in this system, I suspect that there is some sort of hardware issue with the motherboard! Could that be the reason why X hangs, I do not know, but since it killed two cards for me, I decided to put it down! I am now on Slack 13 from another system, reduced to using the onboard Geforce2 MX440 card (nForce2 mobo) instead of the 6600GT that was on this earlier! Just did the install, so I dont know yet if this system is going to be stable.

From a testing point of view, I am still curious to figure out if the onboard intel graphics was the problem on that other system, but I have no way of eliminating a motherboard issue, so that kinda makes any further trials with that system meaningless!

Thanks again for your inputs.

I hate to say this, but it appears as if the 82865 chipsets are simply not going to work with 13.0 :/ There's nothing we can do about it either, it seems -- there have been numerous reports of it not working, and I can't find any indication of anything we're doing wrong. If someone has the inclination the bring it up on the xorg mailing list, feel free - I'm subscribed there, so I'll participate as needed. __________________ Robby Workman

It appears that Robby Workman is 100% correct.
I have tried the combinations in the table below of relevant kernels and Intel drivers available in Slackware 13.0 on the 82865G chipset. All result in the computer hanging with a movable mouse and an unresponsive keyboard either at the KDE splash screen or while completing KDE startup. (I was restarting by ssh from another machine).

 Kernel                                    Intel driver Result
2.6.29.6-smp                                2.7.1        Hang
2.6.29.6-smp                                2.8.0        Hang
2.6.30.5-smp                                2.8.0        Hang
2.6.30.5-smp                                2.8.1        Hang
2.6.30.5-smp with append = "i915.modeset=1" 2.8.0        Hang
2.6.30.5-smp with append = "i915.modeset=1" 2.8.1        Hang

All the above was done on this chipset.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

I have now reverted to using the vesa driver with the default 2.6.29.6-smp kernel and 2.8.0 intel driver so that I can start X. No fancy desktop effects, but at least usable.
This is my xorg.conf.

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "vesa"
        VendorName  "Intel"
        BoardName   "82865G"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

If anybody has managed to get the intel driver working with this chipset using custom kernel compilation, I am interested!

Just because this does not seem to appear in this thread.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82815 Chipset Graphics Controller (CGC) (rev 02)

This works with the default 2.6.29.6-smp kernel and default Intel 2.8.0 driver. The only problem was to add an option as the default hardware cursor does not work properly.
My xorg.conf.

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "intel"
        VendorName  "Intel"
        BoardName   "82815"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option      "SWcursor" "True"            # [<bool>]           
EndSection

Has anyone gotten an 865G integrated graphics controller to successfully run X on Slackware 13 without using the vesa driver? I'm getting frustrated that my favorite distro is hanging on X so I'd appreciate some suggestions to get this thing working.

Originally Posted by Koalazilla Has anyone gotten an 865G integrated graphics controller to successfully run X on Slackware 13 without using the vesa driver? I'm getting frustrated that my favorite distro is hanging on X so I'd appreciate some suggestions to get this thing working.

I'd say user "allend" post is convincing me that it's going to be an uphill struggle and not worth man hours. You're going to have to start upgrading libraries like Mesa and anything else that looks suspect, with no obvious reason from the Intel docs as to why things shouldn't be working now with the 2.6.30 kernel. You'll probably need to rebuild important bits of KDE and X - even if you don't change any versions of those.

Another gotcha with using a different kernel than is stock for Slack 13.0: if the version drifts too far, the kernel headers may become sufficiently different to cause problems with important libraries that were compiled against a particular kernel version. Interfaces the core libraries use do seem to be pretty stable but it can cause weird problems if you upgrade your kernel that are not, in fact, the fault of either the kernel or any offending library or application but of build environment. You'll get the best results overall by sticking to standard kernel and libraries.

By the time you've started recompiling everything important and replacing key libraries, you're onto starting a fork of the distro... good luck with that...

Maybe the guys doing Dropline Gnome, http://www.droplinegnome.net/ will work some magic - but it doesn't look like they've quite finished with 12.2 yet.

If it's any consolation, Slack 13.0 won't work with my Matrox G200 and G400 in my Xeons because the proprietary Matrox driver for the G Series doesn't play with Xorg 1.5 and nobody is quite sure if the binary component will still work even if somebody gets around to modifying the open source component (in theory it will but on paper so should Slack 13.0 and Intel 865G).

For those of you needing the 865G chipset, please consider building http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/...-2.9.0.tar.bz2 and let me know if it works.

if the version drifts too far, the kernel headers may become sufficiently different to cause problems with important libraries that were compiled against a particular kernel version

What do you mean?


Be careful with Linux kernels 2.6.30 through 2.6.31.
There is a bug with the scsi emulation or PATA driver. I haven't isolated it yet.
CDrom and DVDrom burning stops abruptly or never starts.

My issues are with a usb 2.0 Lite-on and an onboard Mastsushita DVD/CDRom burner.


Did the 965 cards work with the xf86-video-intel from Slackware 12.2?

I've compiled the whole stack necessary to get the best performance from Xorg 7.5/Mesa and although there is some questionable performance gains the quality is terrible.

There is e-mail traffic between two of the Intel developers from a while back.
http://lwn.net/Articles/283793/ <-- it starts here but if you dig a little.
The Intel developer was stating he had huge gains but the other guy was saying he couldn't reproduce it.

It's all in the past now. I actually went back to using Slackware 12.2. My wacom tablet works better and my whole experience with xorg is snapier.

peace

For those of you needing the 865G chipset, please consider building http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/...-2.9.0.tar.bz2 and let me know if it works.

Robby, thanks for the heads up on this.

I downloaded the source and built it by doing:

./configure --prefix=/tmp/xf86-video-intel-2.9.0 make make install

I did explodepkg on the xf86-video-intel-2.8.1.txz and replaced the contents of ./usr/lib with the new libI810XvMC.la libI810XvMC.so.1.0.0 libIntelXvMC.la libIntelXvMC.so.1.0.0 files. I replaced the contents ./usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers with the new ch7017.la ch7xxx.la intel_drv.la ivch.la sil164.la tfp410.la ch7017.so ch7xxx.so intel_drv.so ivch.so sil164.so tfp410.so files. I also replaced the contents of ./usr/man/man4 with a gzip of the intel.4 TROFF format man page.
Then I made a package using makepkg.
I describe my package building in case I made a blunder.

I have tested this package with the 2.6.29.6-generic-smp kernel and found that the system hangs as described before at the KDE splash screen when the hard disk icon appears.
I have tested this package with the 2.6.30.5-generic-smp kernel and found that the system hangs during KDE initialisation.
I have also tested this package with the 2.6.30.5-generic-smp kernel and the append = "i915.modeset=1" option. The system either hangs during KDE initialisation or after KDE has finished initialisation and has been in use for a few minutes. I also note that when KDE has successfully booted, the default resolution was 1024x768, rather than the maximum of 1280x1024 that I can get on the box that I am using for testing.

Originally Posted by rworkman For those of you needing the 865G chipset, please consider building http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/...-2.9.0.tar.bz2 and let me know if it works.

I built and tested this driver with i810 video card. So far it works nice with xfce desktop. You can grab it from here for testing:
http://advamacs.com/pub/intel-slackware/

[EDIT] You need to reboot machine after upgraded. Killing X and restarting is not enough. The driver has better performance than 2.8.x but its stability is lower. It crashes randomly when I run glxgears and when I`m trying to start another X session on different display.

[EDIT2] When I upgraded to kernel 2.6.32.3 from current, glxgears seems to work fine now. Stability is acceptable but I still get some random blackscreens and crashes.

The Intel 852GM in Latitude 100L won't work with the X packages from the Slackware 13.0. The full description of issues and screenshot here. The Intel's drivers of levels 2.9.0 and 2.8.1 won't work, too, with same issues.

The Intel's drivers of levels 2.6.0 and 2.7.0 work OK, don't have these issues.

Problems with intel graphic makes me think to break up with Slackware for the first time from several years

I know this is not Slackware to blame but other distros can manage this problem for user.

Originally Posted by Yury_T The Intel 852GM in Latitude 100L won't work with the X packages from the Slackware 13.0. The full description of issues and screenshot here. The Intel's drivers of levels 2.9.0 and 2.8.1 won't work, too, with same issues. The Intel's drivers of levels 2.6.0 and 2.7.0 work OK, don't have these issues.

You do know that Slackware 13.0 comes with versions 2.6.3 and 2.7.1 for you to try, right?

# slackroll list-versions xf86-video-intel
Available versions:
    xf86-video-intel:
        Local:  xf86-video-intel-2.8.0-i486-1
        Remote: ./extra/xf86-video-intel-alternate/xf86-video-intel-2.5.1-i486-1.txz
        Remote: ./extra/xf86-video-intel-alternate/xf86-video-intel-2.6.3-i486-1.txz
        Remote: ./extra/xf86-video-intel-alternate/xf86-video-intel-2.7.1-i486-2.txz
        Remote: ./extra/xf86-video-intel-alternate/xf86-video-intel-2.8.1-i486-1.txz
        Remote: ./slackware/x/xf86-video-intel-2.8.0-i486-1.txz

End of list

Originally Posted by rg3 You do know that Slackware 13.0 comes with versions 2.6.3 and 2.7.1 for you to try, right? ...

Nope. How would I? Usually, I look only for a "superfluous" features in the /extra, like a jdk or dip, not for a remedies for things not working. That's the *new* versions of the intel drivers that should be in /extra. At the very least, some notice of the possible risks should be put in, say, UPGRADE.TXT on the 1st disk.

Originally Posted by Yury_T Nope. How would I? Usually, I look only for a "superfluous" features in the /extra, like a jdk or dip, not for a remedies for things not working. That's the *new* versions of the intel drivers that should be in /extra. At the very least, some notice of the possible risks should be put in, say, UPGRADE.TXT on the 1st disk.

From UPGRADE.TXT:

For details of important changes from Slackware 12.2 to 13.0, see the file 'CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT'. Thanks to Robby Workman for help with this.

From CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT:

extra/xf86-video-intel-alternate/xf86-video-intel-* (several alternate versions of the Xorg intel driver just in case the default doesn't work properly for you)

HUGE thankx to witek, I've been wanting to shoot myself in the face regarding slackware13.0 (x86) and 3x computers I have running on intel video hardware (2x desktops are intel 82865G, and lastly my circa~2004 dell insprion 1100 laptop with intel 845G)! no matter what version of intel drivers I use that came with slackware13 DVD (2.8.0 was default, and I tried ALL in /extra) I would get a black screen when loading X and hard-lockup requiring a reboot, or I'd get distorted images/text, and hard-lockups.

using witek's xorg intel 2.9.0 package @ http://advamacs.com/pub/xf86-video-i...9.0-i486-1.tgz I can run XFCE, windowmaker, and almost any Xwindow manager just fine NOW! (thank god I didn't have to compile that myself).

the ONE problem that boggles my mind and has me really sad = KDE4 from slackware13.0 will NOT work on ANY of my 3x computers with intel video hardware... prior to using witek's xorg 2.9.0 intel drivers, starting KDE4 would produce a black-screen, and hard-lock the system! but now that I am using witek's xorg intel 2.9.0 package I can at least START-UP KDE4 and see the splash-screen with the black and white bubbles in the background, but as soon as the splash-screen flashes the last KDE icon, I get a black screen and see some notifications about akonadi, and that's it. I have to kill X via control-alt-backspace, and my workaround for now is to use a different window manager. I bet one could get around this by disabling DRI & DRI2, but that just isn't acceptible to me at this time as all 3 of these computers run just fine with prior versions of slackware and/or xorg.

I look forward to a day when my lame intel video hardware will WORK with KDE4! every-day it seems to be getting that much closer...