Radeon 8500, 9200, 9700 freeze Mandrake 10 with ATI's drivers
 

I searched through the forum, but couldn't find this question from anywhere.

Is there any other solution for the lockups with Radeon-cards and 2.6.3-kernel, than wait for new drivers from ATI? ATI says these drivers (3.7.6) only support kernel version 2.4. The system runs overally stable, but I get random lockups with all these three cards on three different computers. The systems are so much different from each other that I'm completely sure it's the drivers causing it (with the default drivers I never saw system freezing, before installing ATI's drivers).

I also must keep XFree with 3D Acceleration disabled (major slowdown in 2D performance if enabled) and DGA disabled (even more lockups, if enabled, especially with XawTV). But I don't really care about these, just if the systems would run stable.

But other than that, Mandrake 10 is really great and actually runs (especially loads) my games faster than my Windows! Gaming is not my primary usage, but Linux really performs great as a gaming platform as well. We sometimes have LAN-parties with friends on Linux-network here, mostly UT, UT2003 and UT2004, but also Quake3 and some other games. :)


edit: To add, I can ssh or telnet the freezed systems, but they won't restart with "shutdown -r now" anymore, and no process can be killed (including X). They're completely hung, but I can use the console. Finally, I have to press the reset-button and perform the disk check in next boot.

edit2: I guess I also better add that the systems NEVER have locked up when playing any game. They ALWAYS lock up in regular 2D-usage, like when I only have a terminal or browser open there, so not under any kind of straining usage.

Hi...

I am having similar problems... The only thing I could do til now was forcing my Radeon 9200 to PCI mode (XF86Config using: Option "BusType" "PCI")
of course this way 3D accel dropped 4x... but no more lockups. I tried everything... My last hope is ATI to release its new drivers for XFree 4.4.0 / kernel 2.6.x...

Good Luck

I am also having similar problems with my Radeon 9700 and the ATI drivers with 2.6.3 kernel.
Before reading this I had not really pinned the random freezes on anything, but now i think it has got to be those drivers.

When your desktop freezes in "normal 2d usage" (IE: KDE) can you still move the mouse?

DGA seems to cause black-screen-of-death and a similar lockup for me when WINE attempts to use it.

Now, what and where do I stick in my XF86Config to force PCI mode?

I haven't had any lockup problems, and my GL rendering works fine, though i cant get the tv-out to work on my 9100, which is supposed to be similar to the 8500, are you using agpgart?

I can move the mouse, I can SSH or VNC the computer, but I can't kill X anyways and I can't reboot it from SSH either (kernel is somehow locked up, even though it seems to work). I have to reset the computer.

No, I'm not using AGP cart. Should I test this?

I find that whilst changing my bus type to PCI "seems" to stablize my system it does not completely stop the freezes and, for some reason, I still get excellent graphical performance.
I am beginning to think that, as my fps doubles with PCI instead of AGP 1X, my system is either lying to me or the radeon drivers are so far gone the only resolution would probably be to wait for a new release.

Which brings me on to asking; Does ANYONE know when new ATI linux drivers are going to be released? And, failing that, if there really is a usable alternative.

I have tried with/without AGP Gart and without/without various other settings, nothing short of disabling the drivers has worked for me and the freezes are so sporadic that it takes ages for me to figure out whether any setting changes have had any effect.

I have not had my system lock up during 3d usage either. In fact I believe that running fgl_glxgears actually causes my system to remain stable for longer, this may sound insane but the only time I have been able to use my computer without a freeze was following the running of fgl_glxgears. Time for some more experimentation I suppose.

I am getting 600+ FPS in PCI mode with fgl_glxgears in its default window size, not bad but I prefer the 900+ I get with it minimized.

That is odd... Ive seen many posts about instability with the latest ATI drivers... its the 3.7.6, correct? Either you could try degrading to another driver, or you could try a different method of AGP. If youre using ATIs, try agpgart, and vice-versa.

That's exactly the same problem I'm having here!

It seems, as if it never locks up in 3D-usage. But the lockups in 2D-usage are also so random, it's just nearly impossible to find the cause for them.

I can sometimes run the computer even for a week and then it locks up. Then, sometimes it locks up many times in a row with just some minutes uptime. This could mean overheating system, but I checked my temperatures and there is definitely nothing overheating. And like I said, this same locking happens exactly the same way on 3 different computers having a Radeon-card. And ONLY on the computers having a Radeon-card. However, if I disable the ATI's drivers (and use MESA), the system does not seem to have any lockups anymore, but then I also lose OpenGL (MESA is not actually the fastest :o ).

I sent feedback to ATI, but I guess they're not going to answer. I want new drivers for my video cards, is that so hard to do? It's not like kernel 2.6.x is anything new anymore... nVidia has had drivers for it for some time already now.

I have now downloaded and upgraded to the new 3.9.0 fglrx drivers from ATI's website

They installed fine and test-loaded a module for kernel 2.6.3 with no obvious problems.

However following fglrxconfig and a restart I am left with MESA when I check fglrxinfo

I have reinstalled the drivers twice, uninstalled and reinstalled but I am still left with MESA and no fglrx despite the fact it appears in lsmod.

Somebody help!

It's about time for us ATI-users to get new drivers! Just downloaded them and will try them later.

I hope they fix the stability issues.

Forget the 3.9.0 drivers, I am still having the same old problems.

Do not expect them to fix your problems, but if you do try them and they DO fix your problems. Drop me a line.

Wodeh, have you tried using some other window manager instead of KDE? Like IceWM, which I'm now using with Nautilus as the desktop (from Gnome). I seem to get no lockups anymore with IceWM (well who knows yet, maybe I will...). Also, the system always seemed to lock up when using Konqueror to browse files. Now I use Nautilus and Rox.

Also, try removing the line to mount "/tmp" to "none" in /etc/fstab. Mandrake gives the /tmp-folder only about 250MB, if that line's there, thus it will be full soon and can cause some lockups too. After removing the line (and unmounting /tmp), the temp files go to the main partition's "/tmp".

Note: if you unmount /tmp, don't do it in X. Go to text mode first, or boot your computer after removing the line from /etc/fstab.

Hi,

First I don't speak English well... but I think I'd share my experience.

I also encountered lockup... the lockup appeared since day 1 I install the ATI driver. The longest time between each lockup is 23 hours. (Yes the lockup made me crazy so I actually put a stop watch beside my monitor to record the time)

I did try to troubleshoot it... after many hours of investigation I found... nothing. It's competely random, and no error in any log files seems to related to the lockup.

So I began to change settings in XF86config and enable/disable/amend kernel options related to display, use internal agp/agpgart, EACH SETTING AT A TIME and test it.

I changed so many setting, but X still lockup.

Last week I enable "omit xfree86-dga" (which means disable dga?), and comment out "DPMS" option in monitor section in XF86config. (Just "shooting in the dark")

And guess what, a week had passed and it didn't lockup. Maybe there is nothing to do with DGA and DPMS, but given that the longest time between lockup is 23 hours, (troubleshoot for months start with ATI 3.7.6 driver...) am I just being lucky? I don't know....

I know my solution sound strange (DGA maybe reasonable but DPMS?) It may or may not work for you, but it doesn't hurt to try....


edit:

Forgot to mention, I run my linux box 7x24, I work at home and my PC is just beside me so I can always count the time.

Also my Spec:

MB: Soltek SL-B8E-F w/ i865G chipset
Display: Grandmaster ATI 9700 128MB RAM
RAM: Geil 512MB x 2 DDR400 running in dual channal mode
HD: WD1600 SATA 8M buffer
Sound: SB!Live 5.1
Dist: Slackware 9.1, upgrade kernel to 2.6.6 (w/o any patch), KDE 3.2.1 (slackware package d/l from kde.org )

I was having the exact same problem - I use Mandrake 10.0, 2.6.3 kernel and the newest (3.9.0) ATI drivers, and the thing still freezes. What I've tried doing is downgrading my kernel to 2.4.25, and it doesn't freeze! No idea why this would be so, it just occured to me because on ati.com it says that these drivers were tested under 2.4 and are do not specifically support 2.6. Blechs, go figure.

I spent ages getting the fglrx drivers working with my 9200. OpenGL and dual head (via tvout). In the end there were two problems with my setup:
-- old nvidia drivers were still installed.
-- had vga=extended in lilo.conf