Bug 473525 - X driver for radeon X800XL regression
Summary: X driver for radeon X800XL regression
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: xorg-x11-drv-ati
Version: 10
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dave Airlie
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2008-11-29 03:40 UTC by Michael Wiktowy
Modified: 2009-12-18 07:01 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-12-18 07:01:14 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
An exerpt from the Xorg.0.log (4.12 KB, text/plain)
2008-11-29 03:40 UTC, Michael Wiktowy
no flags Details
Stdout and stderr during 'X -configure' (1.77 KB, text/plain)
2008-11-29 03:43 UTC, Michael Wiktowy
no flags Details
Stdout and stderr during 'X -config /root/xorg.conf.new' (1.21 KB, text/plain)
2008-11-29 03:44 UTC, Michael Wiktowy
no flags Details
Autogenerated xorg.conf for Ati Radeon X800 XL (4.44 KB, text/plain)
2008-11-29 03:46 UTC, Michael Wiktowy
no flags Details
Image of screen corruption at X startup (222.28 KB, image/jpeg)
2008-11-29 20:11 UTC, Michael Wiktowy
no flags Details

Description Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 03:40:29 UTC
Created attachment 325062 [details]
An exerpt from the Xorg.0.log

Description of problem:
The radeon driver included in the release of Fedora 10 does not work correctly for the ATI Radeon X800 XL video card. When X starts up with a freshly autogenerated xorg.conf, A garbled screen with green horizontal stripes is displayed with a properly rendered and functional cursor on top and you are left with a semi-frozen system (can move the cursor around but cannot reboot with ctrl-alt-del or switch to a different terminal)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.9.0-54.fc10.i386
xorg-x11-server-common-1.5.3-5.fc10.i386
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.5.3-5.fc10.i386
kernel-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use old xorg.conf from a working Fedora 9 or generate a new one using 'X -configure'
2. start X
  
Actual results:
unusable garbled screen with green horizonal stripes

Expected results:
normal desktop

Additional info:
Was able to get at least a 1600x1200 display using the vesa driver but not the full 1920x1200 resolution of the monitor.

Comment 1 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 03:43:37 UTC
Created attachment 325063 [details]
Stdout and stderr during 'X -configure'

Comment 2 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 03:44:56 UTC
Created attachment 325064 [details]
Stdout and stderr during 'X -config /root/xorg.conf.new'

Comment 3 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 03:46:07 UTC
Created attachment 325065 [details]
Autogenerated xorg.conf for Ati Radeon X800 XL

Comment 4 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 04:22:55 UTC
Further reading of the release notes and linked common bugs gave me the proper kernel parameter to use to disable the kernel mode setting.

Adding nomodeset to the kernel line in grub made X start up properly using radeon driver.

Comment 5 Warren Togami 2008-11-29 06:35:57 UTC
http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/xorg-x11-drv-ati/6.9.0/
http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/kernel/2.6.27.7/
Try the latest builds of the drivers and kernels.

Comment 6 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 20:11:06 UTC
Created attachment 325102 [details]
Image of screen corruption at X startup

Comment 7 Michael Wiktowy 2008-11-29 20:13:02 UTC
I installed the latest available at koji:
xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.9.0-59.fc10.i386.rpm
kernel-2.6.27.7-130.fc10.i686.rpm
(and the required dep kernel-firmware-2.6.27.7-130.fc10.noarch.rpm )

kernel modesetting still does not work properly for this card.
The text-based startup displaying all the deamons coming up shifts to a much
higher resolution that before but the start of X just displays stripes like
before. The only way I can get out of that mode it to press and hold the power
button.

Will attach a photo of the screen to give you an idea of the degree of screen
corruption.

The good news is that nomodeset still works as a workaround. Let me know if
there are any other versions that I should try.

Comment 8 Michael Wiktowy 2008-12-01 21:00:39 UTC
Just read this post on Planet Fedora:

http://airlied.livejournal.com/63368.html

Looks relevant to this bug so I will try out that new kernel as soon as I can.

Comment 9 Michael Wiktowy 2008-12-02 14:16:06 UTC
Tried kernel-2.6.27.7-132.fc10.i686.rpm but no joy. Still the same green lines.

Looked at things a little further. It appears that I can get the spiffy new bubbling solar flares by adding 'rhgb' to the grub kernel line (I suspect that I could do that with the original kernel + Radeon driver included with F10 but did not check) but as soon as all the daemons start up and it switches to login screen, the screen gets corrupted and I have to press and hold the power button to recover.

I see there is a 134 build of the kernel now. Will try that when I get a chance.

Comment 10 Michael Wiktowy 2008-12-02 23:21:55 UTC
Good news, everyone!

Kernel Build 134 works like a charm wrt KMS for this video card. Both rhgb and regular new and improved widescreen console startup transitions to the graphical login smoothly. It is a bit weird to see the login box over top of the console text startup messages and then having the background fade in. But very slick looking.

Thank you for all your efforts and responsiveness.

Comment 11 Michael Wiktowy 2008-12-04 18:18:28 UTC
Not so great news.

Further testing reveals that while KSM works, performance of playing video streams is terrible. The compressed video file starts stuttering and heavily desyncing with the audio almost immediately and then the video grinds to a halt taking any mouse responsiveness with it. During the whole time, the audio plays normally.

Going back to build 130 fixed the video but it does not work for KMS.

Comment 12 Michael Wiktowy 2008-12-08 23:49:42 UTC
Installed latest x ati driver and kernel

kernel.i686                             2.6.27.7-137.fc10              installed
kernel-firmware.noarch                  2.6.27.7-137.fc10              installed
xorg-x11-drv-ati.i386                   6.9.0-61.fc10                  installed

Still video stream stuttering as per Comment #11 but discovered this occurs only when KMS is enabled. When kernel is booted with nomodeset, there is no fancy graphical boot but the video plays properly.

Comment 13 François Cami 2009-02-04 07:52:00 UTC
Michael,
Does modesetting work with current F10 or do you still need nomodeset to avoid a crash ?
Is performance the only problem now ?

Comment 14 Michael Wiktowy 2009-02-13 02:42:18 UTC
I can confirm that current kernel (kernel.i686 2.6.27.12-170.2.5.fc10) plus current ATI/AMD open source X driver (xorg-x11-drv-ati.i386 6.10.0-1.fc10) is stable but performance when playing video is poor (but improving since last time I checked). Video no longer skips frames and locks up when played in full screen. However, there is still a significant amount of tearing that occurs. There is a very distinct *diagonal* tearing line (running from the lower left to the upper right corner) where on one side it plays the video a few frames behind. When the video is not full screen, the more typical horizontal tear line shows up. Video is playing in Totem (the other players, including mplayer, do a worse job).

Comment 15 Michael Wiktowy 2009-02-13 02:44:22 UTC
To be clear, Comment #14 is *without* nomodeset. With nomodeset, video plays smoothly but get no rhgb/plymouth candy.

Comment 16 Michael Wiktowy 2009-02-13 03:08:03 UTC
Another observation:
With nomodeset: switching to 3D desktop works ... but it is really slow.

Without nomodeset: switching to 3D desktop locks X up solid as soon as the window frames are loaded again.

Comment 17 Bug Zapper 2009-11-18 08:00:09 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 10 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 10.  It is Fedora's policy to close all
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Comment 18 Bug Zapper 2009-12-18 07:01:14 UTC
Fedora 10 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-12-17. Fedora 10 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


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