some graphic corruption with radeon driver after Apr 27 updates
 

Hi.

Yesterday I've installed last -current updates. My system is always kept to -current.

From today I have some graphic corruption in kde. Until yesterday all was ok. I'm not using compositing engine. My laptop has an X700 mobile

I'm using an xorg.conf config file because I've a multimonitor setup and I have saved xrandr settings directly in xorg.conf

In the xorg.conf file I'm using the radeon driver (not fglrx)

I'm getting some strange behaviour by example when I scroll text, where some line disappear from the screen, and sometimes some grafic element (icons, by example) is replaced by weird elements.

Do someone has got same kind of errors?

Thank you

Goodbye

I can't tell anything for sure as I use a nVidia GPU.

But I did notice that there has been a lot of activity about radeon and KMS in Linus' kernel tree recently.

So if you are a bit adventurous you could try a newer kernel, for instance 2.6.34-rc5 (or wait for -rc6, probably soon to be released).

Barx, activate the modesetting for the radeon drm module and everthing will be fine.

The easy way is:

echo "options radeon modeset=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-drm.conf

and reload the radeon drm module or reboot the system

Ok I'have activated the modesetting. Now I cannot restart the system, tomorrow I'll check if the problem is solved.

About the kernel I'm using the last one included in the -current, but I prefer to use this one to avoid time waste on every kernel upgrade

In addition to the activation of modesetting in /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-drm.conf, I had to load the kernel module at startup to make Xorg work correctly. I added the line:

in /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Do not forget to change permission of this file to executable (if it's not already set)

Ok .. With modesetting activated the problem seems solved.

I haven't added modprobe radeon in rc.local because radeon module is already loaded automatically

Thank you all for the help

Best regards

Alessandro

Well, our friend gegechris99 is right. ;)

If you want a proper 3D acceleration you should load the radeon drm module before to start the X.org server.

From my own investigation (I may be wrong), I need to load the kernel radeon module before X starts because the Slackware generic kernel is not shipped with parameter CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS set:

I compiled a custom kernel in which CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS=y and the kernel radeon module loaded automatically.

More precisely here are changes for RADEON in my custom kernel:

Thank you all for the hints.

Now I have some more questions ..

The option CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS should be enabled to have the radeon module loaded correctly on X startup.

But I should get the same result loading manually the module before starting X, is correct?

Instead of putting 'modprobe radeon' in rc.local can I put the line in rc.modules? I think it's the right place. The effect should be identical .. it's only a question of order and coherence.

Thank you
Alessandro

As the configure help states, CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS configure kernel mode setting by default when loading the radeon module.

This is highly recommended if your card is supported to take advantage of KMS features.

If not set may be you can get the same result adding the "modeset=yes" or whatever in the modprobe command. You can check that with "modinfo radeon" and have a look at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-paramleters.txt too (if hopefully it's up to date).

If you want to make sure this module be loaded, yes rc.modules (that is to say the file rc.modules links to) is a good place for the modprobe command.