Radeon no DRI?

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 1:24 pm Post subject: Radeon no DRI?

I am having a problem with yet ANOTHER ATI-based system. Every time I try to put Gentoo onto a system with an ATI/AMD card in it, X fails to start and SDDM crashes with it being unable to open "/dev/dri/card0". I have never solved this and always wind up putting Windows 7 on the systems, which works flawlessly. What do I need to check to get this working? I have the kernel stuff selected including DRI and no framebuffer stuff. This always just works with Intel and nVidia, but ATI must need something extra.

I am not in front of the system in question and cannot post the config at this time. If you can tell me what needs to be selected in the kernel for this thing to show up I will be more than happy to do so. I will say that I used the Gentoo Radeon Guide, but it has not solved this issue. I did include the ucode into my kernel, but the system gets an 80x25 console with or without that ucode, and it doesn't complain about the ucode missing if it isn't built into the kernel, so I do not believe that is the issue.

The card in question is an AMD 6520G. Again, 80x25 works, but SDDM crashes and the X log shows two lines where it's unable to open "/dev/dri/card0". SDDM is in the video group (not sure if it needs to be for ATI, but it does for nVidia).
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Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:41 pm Post subject:

Maybe this: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7940068.html?sid=04d52165cc5c383b34121fe90c490a47

I see my bapste has expired. i could pastebin it again if you want, but if you read the thread, you will see that it was a permissions problem, not a kernel problem.

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

dmesg would help...

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:00 pm Post subject:

Ant, I do not have a way to get you dmesg output from the machine, it is incomplete. There are no errors or warnings in dmesg however, only in X.org.log, and then only the inability to open /dev/dri/card0. I did not see the device listed, so permissions are a moot point, but I will check again soon.

*UPDATE*

I was right, /dev/dri does not exist.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:29 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:48 pm Post subject:

I run eudev on all of my Gentoo systems.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:49 pm Post subject:

Here is my config for the A6-7600 APU system: http://bpaste.net/show/2e85add69cbd
Here is my config for an older system with radeon on mobo : http://bpaste.net/show/d235e5d64e67
Hope they help.

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:55 pm Post subject:

I think you want "Direct Rendering Manager", CONFIG_DRM

Symbol: DRM [=y] x
x Type : tristate x
x Prompt: Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) x
x Location: x
x -> Device Drivers x
x (1) -> Graphics support

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:23 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

You have a bit missing from your kernel.
It will be something under Direct Rendering Manager
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:07 pm Post subject:

I have DRI selected, it was the first thing that I checked. I will go through the options again and report back. Thank you all for your help thus far.

*UPDATE*

I have DRM selected as built-in in my kernel, as well as "ATI Radeon" and the sub-option "Always enable userptr support". I also have the legacy fbdev selected under the DRM menu. It is the only option under DRM. All of these are selected as built-in.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 12:16 am Post subject:

With eudev if you modprobe radeon, it should produce /dev/dri.

You should see this 9with different date/times):

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 1:59 pm Post subject:

Radeon is built into my kernel, so I should not even be able to modprobe it. I always build the permanent hardware drivers into my kernels. This system is a laptop, so the video is permanent. I will try it this afternoon anyway, but I do not know if it will do anything and I expect it to error out.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 2:22 pm Post subject:

Try it as a module. Possibly, eudev will not detect it as a built-in. Add it to /etc/conf.d/modules to be sure it's loaded.

i.e.

chithanh · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 3:32 pm Post subject:

Workaround for sddm is putting the sddm user in the video group. Similar things have been done for the gdm user in the past.
Of course this negates part of the reason why there is a separate user for sddm but who cares...

If radeon is built into your kernel, then firmware needs to be built-in too: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon#Firmware
About normal users, they don't need to be in the video group as long as your kernel has CONFIG_TMPFS_POSIX_ACL=y

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 12:45 am Post subject:

SDDM is in the video group. After emerging it I always do that. My users are also normally in the video group. Oh and yes, I did build the firmware into the kernel. I am not getting firmware missing messages, just no /dev/dri being created. I am going to try modprobing in a bit when I get to the system, but again, I seem to recall modprobe not working on things built into the kernel.

*UPDATE*

I did as asked. Running "modprobe radeon" does nothing. No error because it is already loaded (part of the kernel) and no /dev/dri is created. Again, I have never had ATI/AMD cards work in Gentoo, not sure why.

Let me ask this first. Will I obtain better performance if I use the proprietary driver? If so, what is the bare minimum that I need to get the system up?
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Tony0945 · Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 12:28 pm Post subject:

Again, build it as a module. Look at the two kernel configs I posted. Those are both working configs using the in-kernel driver, one from February 2010, the from a recent mobo purchased last month.

Radeon has given me much less trouble than nouveau.

chithanh · Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 3:34 pm Post subject:

Also check what is the content of /proc/fb (should be radeondrmfb when radeon KMS is active).

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 9:02 pm Post subject:

I suspect radeon would give you lass trouble than nouveau, since nouveau is for nVidia cards. Also, why can't we build radeon into the kernel? I will rebuild as a module, but I prefer for this stuff to be in-kernel.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 12:13 am Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 1:02 pm Post subject:

Oh OK. I despise nouveau personally and have had trouble with it also, but I use the official nVidia drivers on those systems and have not had an issue since. This is also why I asked about using the official ATI/AMD drivers. Performance is a factor here, so if they're better suited for the job, what would I need in my kernel?
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Tony0945 · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 4:12 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 4:45 am Post subject:

I tried the radeon driver as a module. Same thing. No /dev/dri and nothing in /proc/fb at all. I then tried with radeon as a module AND the radeon framebuffer device as a module. No dice. I also tried modprobing the radeon driver, still no /dev/dri. I honestly believe it is broken somehow. I have NEVER had the slightest issue with Intel or nVidia, but I have yet to get an AMD/ATI card running, for this exact reason.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 12:58 pm Post subject:

What does eudev log when you modprobe radeon? Be sure you have error logging enabled in eudev?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 6:42 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

Radeon does work both modular and built in. My media player uses Radeon as built in.
The complication is building into the kernel the right firmware for your card, hence the advice to make it work as a module first.
dmesg will tell you the firmware files needed - there may be several.

The kernel Radeon driver gives you radeonfb for free. All the frambuffer hardware drivers in the kernel must be off, especially ATI/AMD ones.
If they load they grab the hardware, the Radeon driver you need will not work

The media player is off just now so I can only get the kernel config file from when it used to PXE boot.
That's a few years ago now. To keep it silent, (no moving parts) it now has an SSD.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 5:48 pm Post subject:

Sorry for the slow response. I have been sick since Friday. Nothing major, but it has had me not wanting to even see a computer. Anyway, here is my update.

There are no firmware-related messages in dmesg or /var/log/messages, leading me to believe that there is no error as far as that goes. As for eudev, it is at default emerge settings. How do I enable more logging from it? Oh, and I removed the FB devices from the kernel. I was merely testing it.

*UPDATE*

On a whim I checked the logs for SDDM stuff and found a segfault. This happens every time SDDM is started.

Segfault Image
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