HOW-TO: ProSavage, SuperSavage DDR and dri-drm 3d drivers

koprimer · n00b Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 64

Okay, this is driving me nuts... There are so many shared libraries in Xorg yet I find they can exist in three locations:

/usr/lib/modules/
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/lib/opengl/xorg-x11/lib/ (opengl libraries)

I've done an emerge -C xorg-x11 && emerge xorg-x11 twice now... from what I can tell, it installs .so libraries...
But the snapshots on dri.freedesktop.org compile .a (libglx, libdri, libdrm, libGLcore) and .o (savage_drv) libraries (along with the kernel modules). when you install the snapshots, it just adds these libraries in the most common places. And aparently in xorg-x11-6.8.2-r1, .so libraries preceed over .a and .o libraries.... so you're forced to either remove or rename the .so libraries so it can load the new *.a libraries and the savage_drv.o (before it was Loading the .so ebuild version which of course doesn't support drm).

This alone is enough to make you wanna pull your hair out, but it doesn't stop there. You start noticing once you load X, that not all the new .a libraries get along with the .so libraries... For one, I can't load X11 because libvgahw.so require symbols from savage_drv.o that doesn't exist! I don't have a single libvgahw.a on my computer, and the snapshots didn't install one, and from what I can tell, everyone is loading .a libraries in order to get DRI working with savage. Here's just an example (it also has troubles with vbe):

koprimer · n00b Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 64

Finaly, got dri enabled and working.

Now looking back, when I was installing the CVS version, it probably would have been good if I unemerged (emerge -C xorg-x11) before installing the CVS version. If this is the reason why people (including myself) are having problems getting DRI enabled (or even DRM recognized), then we need to add this to the How To and stress that it's a crucial part of the process.

Now, how I got DRI to work with xorg-x11-6.8.2-r1 (not the CVS version), was after downloading and unpackaging the common and savage snapshots (in that order), then installing, I noticed that X was still loading .so modules... and by checking the snapshots, you can see that they come with .a and .o libraries... So, after installing, you have to make sure that X is loading .a and .o modules and not .so... you can get the extra modules (if you don't have them already) from http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/extras/

I copied the modules from the snapshots/extras to the location provided by my Xorg.0.log and renamed the .so's. The modules that I had to replace are (and again, I used my Xorg.0.log file as a reference, I doubt this is really a good idea to behonest):

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

i'll have to revise my previous statement.

i thought i had dri working, since direct rendering showed up as "yes" in glxinfo, and glxgears worked in twm.

although, whenever i emerged another wm (gnome, fluxbox) i'd get graphical corruption whenever starting X, and if i killed X and went back to console, the display would be totally garbled.

i solved this by disabling the kernel framebuffer entirely (who needs it?), and now everything is working fine and dandy.

i did a fresh install on my laptop, and did this:

downloaded gentoo-sources, compiled agpgart, via-agp, and drm as modules.
emerged xorg
downloaded latest savage-snapshot from dri.freedesktop.org, installed it using the script.

boom. dri working perfectly. ~300fps in glxgears.

this begs the question, is the cvs-method really necessary nowadays?

EDIT: i almost forgot. i have agpgart, via-agp, drm and savage in my modules.autoload.d.

koprimer · n00b Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 64

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille: Your problem seems to be a fairly common problem with dri... The error you're receiving is due to a problem with your kernel. It seems to happen a lot when you don't include agpgart as a module. The best I can suggest if you use 2.6, is to find out what your card's PCI bridge is, then set these settings in your kernel (mine was VIA, you can always check by lspci | grep -i bridge):

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

Thanks koprimer! Now the modules will be modprobed, the CVS version of X still doesn't install completely, but at least it installed the Savage driver.
However, running X gives symbol lookup error: undefined symbol: DRIQueryVersion.

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

koprimer · n00b Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 64

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

I got it working.... the thing finally compiled! Although I think I used the savage driver in the CVS installation instead of the .a and .o files from the snapshots. glxgears fps is at 425.4.
I'll post something up later, it was all using the .so files.
So, what koprimer did was:
Emerge xorg-x11, install the dripkg. This installs .a files into /usr/X11R6/lib/modules. However, the X thing likes to use .so files first, before .a files. Naturally, this made my xorg-x11 emerged installation not work. However, koprimer overwrote his older 1.1.27 savage_drv.so driver with the savage_drv.o, which was version 2, and replaced every other .so in the directory with the new .a and .o modules with the snapshots/extras/modules.tar.bz2. Therefore, his worked. Apparently, the emerged xorg-x11 server also recognizes .a and .o formats.
But what I did was emerge the CVS version of xorg-x11, which provided the savage driver 2.0 in .so format.
However, I got some questions:
So I muck around in /usr/lib/modules, right? not /usr/X11R6/lib/modules?
And you don't muck around in the /usr/lib/modules/dri/ directory, only the /usr/lib/modules/drivers/ directory?
EDIT: what's the difference between the savage_dri files and the savage_drv files?
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

Last time i tried to post the first post, it froze on me. I guess it's not really stable... or probably it's just really random. Anyway, I got DRI working with the framebuffer. Hah!
Using 2.6.11-gentoo-r2, go to Device Drivers/Graphics Support/and if you have a Savage chip, you can enable everything except the S3 Savage support. Probably you can enable it if you turn off the "Console Acceleration" option below it, but I'll just leave it to other people to find out.
The drawback is that vesafb will now have to redraw the console, and it's noticeably a slower by just a bit, but oh well. At least you get DRI working.
The CVSed xorg still didn't install fully, but at least I got the driver. That's all that matters. I tried renaming the drivers, to get them working just like koprimer's, but it just gave more unresolved symbol errors. Good luck everybody. If the xorg miscompiles, just remember: either it's the CVS's fault, or something is misconfigured... for me, it was the CVS... I downlaoded the CVS again, and it compiled fully, but would only install halfway. Don't worry.... all you really need is the one single savage_drv.so file (or .o file or .a file).
Files you need:
kernel sources (with agpgart AS MODULE and your PCI bridge also AS MODULE)
common-savage snapshots, which install both the DRI driver, and the kernel modules required for savage DRM. Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle... won't work unless they're all pieced together.
Or, if that did not work, try the CVS Xorg. Otherwise stick with your emerged xorg-x11.
The new driver should be in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/savage_drv.so, or .o, or .a.
Congrats to myself, everyone who got DRI working, and thanks to koprimer for actually making this sound sensible. For those still struggling, check your kernel config, check the CVS again, make sure you know which files you need, and good luck (you shouldn't need it).
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

aww damn. now i'm gonna have to get the framebuffer working with dri.

glad you finally got it working. i am fairly sure that the savage snapshot i downloaded installed a savage_drv.o, though. just to be sure, i checked it out.

my savage-20050421-linux.i386.tar.bz2 contains:

dripkg/savage/savage_drv.o
dripkg/savage/savage_dri.so

so i guess it does indeed install 2.0.0 drivers for xorg.

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

BTW, tell me if you get crashes or hard locks. I got crashes very often after about 10 hours of operation and straight compiling with framebuffer in the kernel, and X NOT running. It's really weird. I'm compiling lots of stuff in the kernel without framebuffer now, and see if that will crash less.
The main reason why I want framebuffer working is so that I can pass vga=789 to the kernel. Everything looks so much better like that, but I heard that in the 2.6 kernels, there's now another option or something. video=something. Hopefully.
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

no crashes or hard locks here. been running for approx 24 hours straight without any problems. i haven't turned the framebuffer on, tho. ;-)

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

i just had to verify, so i tried it again from the very start.

recompiled kernel with agpgart, via-agp and no direct rendering manager. (and no framebuffer ;-)

)
emerge xorg WITHOUT dlloader (tried with dlloader first, but wouldn't work)
download latest savage-snapshot from dri.freedesktop.org (currently running 20050428 snapshot)
installed using script (./install.sh)
added agpgart, via-agp, drm and savage to modules.autoload.d
reboot, aaand...

everything worked directly this time as well, although my Xorg.log.0 did say all the usual about sufficient ram being available for 3d, it didn't say anything about 3d acceleration being enabled, does this matter?

anyway, glxinfo says Direct rendering: yes, and glxgears runs around ~300fps as usual.

do notice that i didn't do any CVS stuff at all, i only did what's mentioned above.

EDIT: emerging xorg with dlloader is what's causing the unresolved symbols. just verified this on my stationary box (radeon 9600).

dmvianna · Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 8:07 am Post subject:

I don't have any problems with the framebuffer, but notice that I use the VESA driver for it, and the SAVAGE driver for Xorg.

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

Yeah, I did heed your message, dmvianna

So I stayed away from savagefb, although I did try to compile it as a module. My idea was to modprobe -r savagefb when I ran X. hoho... didn't quite work there.
So I tried vesa (vesafb-tng gives me graphic corruption before it even inits that 2.84 booting message), with no other drivers compiled in.
It ran ok, I went into X, mucked around, tried to get mozilla-firefox extensions available to everybody.
Then suddenly, everything slowed down instantly. The Firefox window closed, the Extensions window was still open, but it redrew itself line by line, pixel by pixel (I was in windowmaker, but I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with it).
By now the whole system was really unresponsive, so I decided to kill X and get back to the terminal (man I feel more comfortable in the terminal than in X now, I must have grown as a Linux user). This horrible pattern that flashes on your screen just after you start x and it changes to vt7 comes on the screen, except now it's purple and shows no sign of going soon. The hard disk light goes crazy.
Doesn't seem to solve itself after some time. I reboot by holding down the damn button.
Now, reiserfsck told me that 1 specific corruption on the partition can only be fixed when running with --rebuild-tree. oops... I have learned my lesson. Sigh. Those 3D games had better work...
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

dmvianna · Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 11:47 pm Post subject:

Sorry for not having told you before: I did get all this when trying to make vesafb work. Refer to its specific forums. I just remember I had to compile many packages with fbcon and directfb enabled in make.conf (mplayer and DirectFB, for example), and that I've tried many, many things before it stopped bugging me.
_________________
Proprietary is theft. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, if he had a chance
Powered by a MacBook Pro

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

I tried it again with koprimer's method. The emerged Xorg seems to like the new .a files, except for /usr/lib/modules/extensions/libdri.a. Here's what it says:

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille: did you compile xorg with dlloader?

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

yup. It's in my USE Flags... I got DRI working again by make installing the CVS Xorg, and this time there aren't any strange freezes even when I have vesafb as framebuffer. I think I'm gonna leave off tinkering with my machine and use it for some real work, like playing ZSNES or writing HW. It's sucked off about two entire days off my week.
EDIT: Let me tell you all this, Savage 3D HW support is next to useless! The thing isn't even fast enough to run Tuxracer at 800x600 above 30fps, epsxe runs at 1fps, 1! imagine that, and frame rates jump by 5 on ZSNES if you enable OpenGL rendering. The only thing that that chip is good for is running glxgears at 400fps.... I'm sure of that, I benchmarked the whole thing today. The only other things it is good for is that OpenGL vis plugin in XMMS, and GL screensavers (which also tend to be on the slow side).
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

s0Ma · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2005 Posts: 10

that's weird, i'm playing tuxracer at 1024x768, and it's working perfectly (it's a TAD bit slow, but not that i mind). i also enjoy that GLMatrix-screensaver, and it renders smoothly.

anyhow, try emerging xorg without dlloader, and just install the snapshots from dri.freedesktop.org. it'll work. when i compiled xorg with dlloader on my stationary machine (with a radeon 9600), the drivers for GL refused to work and complained about unresolved symbols. without dlloader however, it worked perfectly.

Motoi-Sakuraba-Milfeuille · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 125

On my laptop, frames drop to about 9fps.... 15fps feels almost smooth, but 9fps really starts biting here. on epsxe the playstation emulator.... heh..... 1fps. I'm not joking... and this is with everything really low, 640x480, sparse colors, all that. ZSNES loses 15 fps off the usual 60 when the Tales of Phantasia world map comes on the screen, and Star Ocean's title screen. I haven't seen an actual application, not even a screensaver, where the thing gets 60fps.
_________________
When you are clever, you realize you are stupid; when you are stupid, you realize you are clever.

red-wolf76

Ok, I'm probably re-opening a can of worms here but I've continuously failed to enably my Savage to run with DRI/DRM.

Followed the tutorial here to the letter, well at least I think so... When I install the driver from a snapshot at dri.freedesktop and enable everything, the system responsiveness slows to a crawl once I startx and KDE starts the desktop. You can practically watch the taskbar items pop up one by one. Glxinfo with grep direct shows direct rendering enabled, but upon trying glxgears for an estimate of fps, my box hangs itself. Without DR, I get decent performance from X/KDE and about 300 fps of glxgears with 16bit colour-depth and 170 fps under 24bit.

System Info:

Kernel: gentoo-sources (2.6.11-gentoo-r6)
CPU Athlon XP (Barton) 2100+ /w 512 MB RAM
MoBo: Shuttle FX41 with VIA Chipset (KM266/KL266)
Graphics: On-board VIA KM266/VT8735 S3 ProSavage8 (DDR) with 32MB of shared system-RAM

framebuffer-support is enabled (but non-critical, I got identical results without it) for S3 Savage in-kernel
agpgart, via-agp, drm compiled as modules (again, identical results with monolithic compilation)

It's not crucial to have it, but you see, I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong.
_________________
0mFg, G3nt00 r0X0r$ T3h B1g!1111

Use sane CFLAGS! If for no other reason, do it for the lulz!

xavier10 · Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 10:58 am Post subject:

I would like to get DRI working on my Thinkpad T22 with Savage IX/MV.
I followed the how to and failed to get DRI working (glxinfo says No and glxgears barely above 100 fps).
Then I tried to follow the ideas in this thread and have to admit I am a bit lost now. I tried with an xorg snapshot with the following lines in the xc/config/cf/host.def file and the compilation failed (errors during the compilation of savage drivers:

xavier10 · Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 12:38 pm Post subject:

Ok, I tried again, without the option "DriDrivers savage" (which I did read somewhere else, but not in this thread) and the compilation went ok. The install was smooth.

Basically, I applied Algor method, but did not succeed in compiling Mesa (drm.h reported missing plus the million errors you could expect when you miss an ".h").