Amd a4-3300 apu & x

gcyoung · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 60 Location: England

I have just installed a new motherboard and apu as listed above. I have installed a basic gentoo X86_64
system, but am having problems with getting Xorg installed.

I understand the graphics are controlled by an ati-radeon HD6000 system on the GPU element about which I know nothing.

I have installed 'X' step by step in conformity with the gentoo 'Xserver Configuration Howto' with the result that I lose all screen output (Black screen of death!), on leaving grub. I can only access my disks now via a live CD. I suspect that frame buffer software may be missing. I can just catch a glimpse of the message "Parsing ELF" before the screen blanks.

My previous experience has all been with nvidia agp graphics, so all this is unknown territory for me. If there is anyone who has had successful experience with this processor and can give advice I'd be grateful to have it.
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Later Addendum:
It seems the computer does not crash. It just can't write to the screen. I am now accessing it with ssh via another computer. I will try to setup a display manager to see if the failure to output to the screen is simply in text mode.
I can't seem to find any information on setting up this particular graphics arrangement other than that mentioned above which does not seem to work.

Kaso_da_Zmok · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:28 pm Post subject:

i assume you have installed the radeon open-source driver and you are missing the firmware, that's why you have the black screen.
the a4-3300 has Integrated Radeon HD 6410D GPU

You will need firmware

gcyoung · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 60 Location: England

I think you are correct. As it happens I had worked out by single stepping into my boot-up that the loss of a screen occurred as it loaded the radeon module.

I had misunderstood the Gentoo Doc "The X Server Configuration HOWTO" I interpreted that as requiring the 'ATI Radeon' box in the kernel config to be ticked. (See "Enable Radeon KMS support) in article. In fact, it still looks to me that it implies the module should be compiled!
However, I have removed the radeon module and I now have a graphic screen again. If anyone else should read this I can confirm that the firmware is PALM, SUMO2 AND SUMO.

If you can advise me how I can get a framebuffer with my setup, I'd be grateful, as I prefer a non graphics screen for software development etc. With the time I've wasted jumping in and out of 'System Rescue" ( marvellous disk that!), and my new system, attempting to get the radeon driver working I'm a bit reluctant to continue with trial and error.

All my previous computing has been with nvidia, so I'm a bit lost with radeon/ati

Kaso_da_Zmok · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:50 pm Post subject:

post you current kernel config into pastebin plz.
this is what i have in kernel for ati 5770

chithanh · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:40 pm Post subject:

You need all the firmware listed under http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml # Radeon HD 6000 series Fusion APUs

If you don't want to set CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE it is also possible to build DRM_RADEON =m, but you need to make sure that the radeon module is loaded before X starts. DRM_RADEON_KMS=y is required in any case.

gcyoung · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 60 Location: England

A quick live install of ubuntu to see all the necessary modules for this new motherboard & LPU showed me there is a proprietory driver (ati-drivers) for this graphics chip, so I have installed it, and it seems to be rather better than the open source version.

I still havn't sorted out a framebuffer, however, and the higher resoloution vga modes do not seem to work. I note that portage provides x11-drivers/xf86-video-fbdev. Does this conflict with the ati-drivers?

chithanh · Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:11 pm Post subject:

If you want framebuffer console with ati-drivers, you have to use vesafb or uvesafb. Once vesafb is enabled, you can boot with vga=ask parameter to see the available video modes.

gcyoung · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 60 Location: England

I have now just discovered the aticonfig program which has helped with xorg.conf. It's a pity that the suppliers can't give all this Linux information when they supply the motherboards etc. Perhaps one day .......? It's a lot better today, but a bit like going on a treasure hunt to find the clues when one installs new hardware.

I tried installing uvesafb, which I have used in the past, but it doen't seem to work with the ati graphics. I had a bit of trial and error with mplayer as well, since my familiar settings didn't work. Ie xv. The gl2 setting seems to be the best.

Thanks for the help given. I shall persevere in finding a framebuffer setting, but that is not so critical for me.

gcyoung · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2007 Posts: 60 Location: England

Just to set the record straight, if anyone should look here in future, I was wrong about the failure of the uvesa framebuffer with the generic ati graphics driver. I must have corrupted something or made an error in my installation.

I have now installed it and that has given me a comfortable non graphics console screen to do my maintenance, scripting and programming on.