[SOLVED] Framebuffer device not showing up after installing Creator3D Graphics in Ultra 10

austinramsay · 05-21-2020, 05:14 PM

Hello,

I've been working on restoring an Ultra 10 running Solaris 8 which was missing the graphics card when I got it. I got a replacement Creator 3D card for it and after installing I hooked it up to my Sun X7121A 21" CRT monitor using the 13W3 connector. OBP comes up fine and throughout the boot process everything seems great. After Solaris 8 starts the GUI login screen however, the shell just sits there after displaying the:

Code:

**************************************************************
*
* Starting Desktop Login on display :0...
*
* Wait for the Desktop login screen before logging in.
*
**************************************************************

After that message, the shell is still open but with no prompt showing. Just the cursor sitting on the blank line after the message. If I plug in a VGA cable to the onboard graphics and switch the monitor to the VGA source, I can see the login screen has come up. So, Solaris is pushing the desktop to the onboard graphics instead of the Creator 3D card. If I exit the login screen and return back to the command line, I can switch back to the Creator 3D output and start using the shell again.

Through 'dmesg', it appears the system recognizes the card in the UPA slot and assigns it 'ffb0' which is what I would expect. Here is the output:

Code:

# dmesg | grep ffb0
May 21 08:10:37 unknown rootnex: [ID 349649 kern.info] ffb0 at root: UPA 0x1e 0x0
May 21 08:10:37 unknown genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] ffb0 is /SUNW,ffb@1e,0
May 21 08:28:03 unknown rootnex: [ID 349649 kern.info] ffb0 at root: UPA 0x1e 0x0
May 21 08:28:03 unknown genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] ffb0 is /SUNW,ffb@1e,0

'fbconfig' only shows one framebuffer device, which is the onboard graphics. No 'ffb' device is shown. Output:

Code:

# fbconfig -list
Device-Filename          Specific Config Program
---------------          -----------------------
/dev/fbs/m640            SUNWm64_config

Calling 'ffbconfig', the specific config program for the Creator 3D card results in:

Code:

# ffbconfig
ffbconfig: /dev/fbs/ffb0: No such file or directory
ffbconfig: cannot open device /dev/fbs/ffb0

Is there something I am missing here? I don't understand how the card works great in the shell and OBP, but when starting CDE the card is not found.

Thanks in advance!
Austin

austinramsay · 05-21-2020, 07:28 PM

Well, I feel dumb now. By doing some research on a whole different topic I learned that there is a

Code:

boot -r

option that is possible from the OBP prompt to perform a reconfiguration boot.

From the documentation (note this was Solaris 10 documentation, but still applied to me for Solaris 8 obviously):

Code:

A reconfiguration boot tells the system to probe for all connected devices and build the names for them in /devices and /dev. A reconfiguration boot, performed when adding new hardware to the system, is triggered by booting with the -r option. 
ok> boot -r

This was also mentioned just in case someone finds this helpful in the future...

Code:

If another device of an existing type (with the driver already installed) is added, and you forget to do a reconfiguration boot, use the following commands to tell the system to recognize the new device.

    # touch /reconfigure
    # _INIT_RECONFIG=YES /etc/init.d/drvconfig
    # _INIT_RECONFIG=YES /etc/init.d/devlinks

After this, the /dev/fbs/ffb0 was added and CDE came up fine using the creator card video output now. 'ffbconfig' is now usable as well of course.