(abit) av8, x.org pci probe hangs

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

First time Gentoo user, long time Debian user.

Abit AV8 (K8T800)
Athlon 3500+
WD Raptor 36.7GB SATA
Radeon 9200 128MB PCI (so nothing in the AGP slot)
tulip nic (Linksys card)
2004.2 (install from Minimal Live CD)
kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r14
x.org

- Initial Xorg -configure, hung the system.
- scanpci, hangs the system
- pcitweak -l, hangs the system (-l is "list")

No core dump comes through on the virtual console. It just hangs.

It is my understanding from reading the developer docs that X will always probe (for xf86) the PCI bus on startup. So my hypothesis is that it is failing for the same reason that scanpci and tweakpci are failling.

No problem with lspci. /proc/pci reports that the radeon 9200 is on PCI:0:8:0. I've tried specifying this in the xorg.conf, hoping that this will let is skip probing, but no such luck.

pcitweak -l prints out each device found in order. Interestingly, it does not hang the system until after it has printed out the final device, 0:18:3.

The PCI nic works fine. In addition to the tulip nic (PCI:0:0a:0) and radeon (PCI:0:8:0) on the PCI bus, I have a (currently not used) DWL-520+ wireless nic (PCI:0:0c:0).

Looking at the Xorg (/usr/portage/distfiles) sources, scanpci and pcitweak -l do more or less the same thing:

xf86EnableIO();
xf86scanpci(0);
xf86DisableIO();

Maybe I need to take this to an Xorg mailing list.

But I guess what I'm really looking for here is confirmation whether anyone else has experienced a similar problem on this motherboard.

It's hard to say whether it makes a difference, but is anyone else using this motherboard with a PCI video card and nothing in the AGP slot? Or, does any have the ability to test this?

I don't own a 4x/8x AGP card to test this with.

I'm willing to do as much as I can to get this working.

Advice?

Thanks,

--dircha

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

Might have something here.

I took out all the PCI card and moved the radeon 9200 to the slot where the tulip nic (which I knew was working) had been.

No system hang on pcitweak -l.

So this may mean problem solved.

Will update.

--dircha

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

Well, it must have been a fluke.

I'm unable to reproduce that success.

So, if anyone is running this hardware (well, this motherboard), please let me know.

Thanks,

--dircha

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

OK, same result on a 2.6.8.1 kernel.

Getting gdb to work with, for example, pcitweak, is beyond me. The build process for Xorg seems unwieldly.

If anyone is able to offer help or advice for debugging this, I'll gladly take the time.

Thanks

--dircha

malloc · l33t Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 762

Have you tried booting with pci=noapic ??
_________________
--> Linux ### 2.6.11-ck2 #1 Sat Mar 12 20:21:30 WET 2005 i686 GNU/Linux <--

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

> Have you tried booting with pci=noapic ??

I didn't know about that flag. Thank you.

Booting with pci=noapic allows the pcitweak -l scan to complete successfully, ...at least more frequently.

I wonder whether I don't just have some flakey hardware here. Which is why it would be interesting to find someone else running on this motherboard.

Attempting to start X even with the vga or vesa driver still hangs the system. Default scanpci still hangs the system. As does Xorg -configure.

However - as expected - scanpci -O always works, just as lspci would.

I'll try a few things to verify that my xorg.conf is correct and is not the problem. I'm not trying to do dri.

But perhaps this means the issue is with this motherboard and how Xorg probes the PCI bus.

...In which case I should probably report this in Xorg's bugzilla.

Any other ideas?

--dircha

malloc · l33t Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 762

dircha · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 6

> Try booting with pci=noapic pci=routeirq (i don't know if you can do them seperately you if you must put them together pci=noapic,routeirq ) but try with that.

Well, I have to say, you've salvaged my weekend. I think that's the happiest I've ever been to see twm.

Adding routeirq (pci=noapic,routeirq) yields a working X. It works with the radeon driver too.

Is the routeirq flag undocumented? I'm not seeing it grepping the kernel source (or Documentation).

It works, at least. The other hardware is all working. That was the last issue. It's time to start installing the rest of my system.

Thank you again.

--dircha

malloc · l33t Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 762