Udev not creating /dev/dri/* nodes [SOLVED]

taipan67 · Last edited by taipan67 on Sun Jan 16, 2005 11:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

Okay, i'm out of ideas..!

I've done a networked Stage1 install of kernel 2.6.9-r9 with linux26-headers & udev (no devfs), all with nptl support.

So far, & after much gnashing of teeth, i've just got xorg-x11 to start, but with no dri or glx, which effectively halves my frame-rate. As the subject heading indicates, i suspect this is because i have no /dev/dri/card* device nodes. Other than that, the migration to udev is looking very promising indeed.

Any suggestions before i go after a window-manager..?

taipan67 · Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 8:46 pm Post subject:

Me again!

Right, then. I had no dri, then i did, then i didn't again... & again & again... Now i have, & i think i know how to keep it, but it's woefully untidy, not to mention labour-intensive...

I remembered from reading a Shorewall config-file that the Iptables-modules needed to be loaded in a specific order, & this seems to be a similar case:

If i manually modprobe my card's driver-module (radeon), i have dri. If i add it to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 i DON'T have dri.

It would appear that i need agpgart loaded BEFORE radeon, which the autoload.d entry doesn't do.

Oh yeah, /dev/dri/card0 gets created ONLY when i startx. I'm considering hard-coding it with mknod (finding the major-minor pair was a right ball-ache!).

There MUST be an elegant way to load the driver-module with udev, otherwise i won't be able to boot to a display-manager, at least not with dri intact. Any udev boffins following my progress so far..?

taipan67 · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 7:58 am Post subject:

UNGAWA!!! (I wanted to write the other noise Tarzan makes, but i didn't know how to spell it)

Well slap my wrist for ever questioning the abilities of udev...

I decided to see what would happen if i booted to X, so i created a new runlevel called gui, rc-updated it with everything from default, added xdm, then put an extra boot-option in grub.conf - exactly the same as my original one, but with "softlevel=gui" added as per the handbook.

Rebooted, was relieved to see gdm appear in front of me, logged in to gnome, & when i ran glxinfo...

I HAVE DRI! And that's with no explicit mention of the radeon driver anywhere in /etc. Udev just did everything anyone could wish for it to do. I never should have doubted it, really. After all, it loaded up my ethernet card as if it was the most natural thing in the world, & that's a first.

Apologies to any udev-developers to whom i may have caused offense. I now heartily recommend everyone to make the leap over to this setup.