Subject: Re: Yellow Dog Linux 2.1 and Power Mac G4 w/Radeon - Absolute newbie
From: Juan Manuel Palacios (jmpalacios@mac.com)
Date: Wed Jan 16 2002 - 11:43:30 MST
Hello Aram. Sorry for taking such a long time to answer but the heat of
the new year just landed on me so I've been full of work. University
brought along quite a couple of Christmas presents which completely
drained my time.
So, I don't know if by now you already solved the problem or not, but
anyhow here go my thoughts. From what you tell me about the output of
"dmesg" it seems that the radeon driver cannot acces the card propperly,
maybe due to faulty agp support (which is the type of video port your
card is on). I'm going to ask anyone who is reading this thread and
knows more about it than me to correct me if possible, because from now
on I'll be shooting in the dark since I'm a bit lost. From what I've
seen the agp support was compiled into the kernel rather than as a
module (no sign of module "agpgart" anywhere!), so if that is the
culprit of your problem then I don't think you'll be able to get
accelerated video over radeon until you recompile your kernel with the
propper settings. If, at the end, we go down that path I'll tell you
then how to choose compiling options and how to compile, if you don't
know.Recently I heard that YellowDog 2.1 doesn't have complete support
for all the radeon cards, so that may also be what's bugging you. In
that case I suggest you to either search the list archives for support
for your card or to publish a message to the list asking that specific
question (describe with detail your hardware settings). So, in short, I
am not that sure of what your problem could be if I base my self on the
output of "dmesg" (anyone has any words more relevant than mine about
this?). But I think I can give you another set of suggestions that might
help us pinpoint the problem.
First of all I would like to point that the driver we should be looking
at is "ati" and not "radeon", so maybe trying what you already have with
the word "ati" instead of "radeon" will give you a different set of
results (go again for the kernel argument tweaks). The radeon cards work
with that one and the Rage cards work with the "r128" one. I suggest
looking for the ati driver to see if it is inside the kernel or as a module:
modprobe -vv ati
If you get nothing as output then probably it is inside the kernel. If
you get errors then tell me about them. If "modprobe" claims to have
loaded it then double check with "lsmod" that it is up. Now we will
tamper a bit with the file that defines your X environment's settings
(all this must be done as root and at the system console, not in X):
cd /etc/X11/
emacs XFree86Config-4
Scroll down to a line that says Section "Device" and read the part that
says "Driver". Most probably you'll have "fbdev" for driver, so you are
going to change that to "ati". Save the changes with "ctrl-x-s" and quit
with "ctrl-x-c", and afterwards go to runlevel 3:
init 3
Test your new X settings by issuing the following command:
./X <-- it is a capital X
That must be done will inside the /etc/X11/directory. If you get a
grey screen then congratulations my friend, you have accelerated video
over the ati driver. If you get errors then we'll have to keep on
trying.If the first attempt works then you can improve things a bit more
by forcing the color bit depth. Again edit the formentioned file with
emacs and look for Section "Screen", SubSection "Display" and change the
DefaultDepth line to 32 and if it fails to 24 (24 is the real name for
32, some cards accept the 32 argument and some don't). With each change
you have to save the file and rerun the ./X command. If you have the
grey screen then switch back to the virtual console you were at and hit
ctrl-c to stop X and rerun the command each time. That must give you
acceleratd video with full 24 bit depth colors. Go back to runlevel 5 to
continue with your Linux live knowing that you managed to have a fully
working X environment!
init 5
If the ati driver fails then change the driver back to "fbdev" and tell
me aboout the errors you got. Retain the default depth tweak in order to
at least have full bit depth unaccelerated video.
I'll leave you know with all this to try. Good luck and again happy Linux
learning (it is a great OS!).
Regards,...
Juan.
P.S.: Sorry for not mentioning that the driver should be the "ati" one,
I didn't remember until today when I reread one of your messages!
Aram Kudurshian wrote:
> Hello Juan,
>
> Thanks again for your e-mail; I'm here with my Linux friend and we've
> gone
> to go through what you've suggested. However, it seems there is
> something
> 'funky' with the driver as my techno geek friend will explain:
>
> I've examined the dmesg output and I found a line that explains the
> whole
> situation, or at least most of it:
> "radeonfb: cannot reserve FB region"
> So it seems like the driver loads but cannot take control of the card.
> This
> is all using the kernel included with YDL 2.1 (2.4.10-r1) as I didn't
> have
> time to try the 2.4.18-pre3 version.
>
> Well, any help would be greatly appreciate and thanks again,
>
> Aram K.
>
>> Hello Aram. So I'm going to make the assumption that your friend
>> knew what he/she was doing and got you a newly home brewed, compiled
>> and
>> working kernel. Were the radeon drivers compiled INTO the kernel or as
>> MODULES? I they were compiled as modules you have to make sure they are
>> being loaded as needed (most probably upon boot up). So probably a line
>> for this would have to included in a magical file called modules.conf
>> located at the directory /etc. So the full path to the file would be
>> /etc/modules.conf. It would have to be edited to include the line that
>> would load it upon boot up under an aliased name. But unfortunately I
>> don't know the alias for that module since I don't use it, maybe
>> someone
>> else on this list can help us with that by telling us if it DOES need
>> an
>> alias in modules.conf in the first place, and if so which one.
>>
>> If the radeon support was compiled into the kernel then it does not
>> need anything special to load, it comes with the kernel. So, I move
>> onto
>> the next step.
>>
>> Lets suppose that either the support was built into the kernel or
>> that someone provides us with the correct method of loading the module,
>> now we have to review your booting arguments. First you could double
>> check if you are running the kernel you built by issuing the command
>> "uname -r" which returns the active kernel version, and it should match
>> the one you built. If not then go to /boot and make the proper symlinks
>> so that yaboot can find the correct kernel image (we'll go over this if
>> "uname -r" does not match the kernel release you think you're running).
>> On to your boot arguments. They have to be changed a bit to either one
>> of the following:
>>
>> append="video=radeonfb:vmode:x@y,cmode:32"
>> video=radeonfb:vmode:x@y,cmode:32
>> append="video=radeonfb:vmode:x@y,32"
>> video=radeonfb:vmode:x@y,32
>>
>> Either one should work, but that is the correct syntax and not the
>> one you were using. The "x" stands for the number of the proper video
>> mode for your screen, and that is found by looking at the output of the
>> command "man vmode". You'll find a number of modes that stand for
>> specific resolutions at specific refresh rates, so replacing the "x"
>> with the mode number that most suits your case should give you quality
>> video. The "y" WOULD stand for the refresh rate but I seriously doubt
>> it'll be needed at all, since each vmode includes a specific rate. So
>> the proper number will force the adequate rate. Specifying the "y" with
>> the same rate that a specific mode provides would only be redundant,
>> and
>> giving a different value will most probably freak your kernel (but I'm
>> only guessing with this last assertion, maybe it just overrides). I
>> think we'll be much better off by finding the correct vmode and
>> ditching
>> the "@y" altogether.
>>
>> So, give that a try and let me know how it goes. I take for granted
>> that you know that those arguments have to be entered into
>> /etc/yaboot.conf, and that the file has to be edited by root. If it
>> doesn't work then tell me exactly what you did and the error output.
>>
>> Have fun and enjoy your Linux learning. Regards,...
>>
>>
>> Juan.
>>
>> On Thursday, January 10, 2002, at 04:48 PM, Aram Kudurshian wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Juan,
>>>
>>> Now that I've reread what I wrote, I can actually see how little info
>>> it
>>> gave. I've experimented a bit more but it hasn't fixed anything (nor
>>> changed anything it seems). Here is what I did since I installed YDL.
>>>
>>> 1) Used the 'make menuconfig' command to enable the support for Radeon
>>> drivers + turned on SMP.
>>> 2) Rebuilt the kernel (?) and enabled it (this was done with the aid
>>> of a
>>> friend so it worked out fine)
>>> 3) Made a new yaboot set (is this how you call it) that used my new
>>> kernel.
>>> The code in this set is the same as the normal one (I just copied it
>>> out)
>>> except with the addition of this line:
>>>
>>> (tab)append="video=radeonfb:1600x1200-32@75"
>>>
>>> 4) Saved the yaboot.config file and enabled it with the ybin command
>>> (again
>>> I was under direction).
>>>
>>> This is as far as I've gotten. I am not sure what you mean by the
>>> XFree86config-4 file? Is this similar to the menuconfig system?
>>>
>>> Here is the information from the 'lsmod' command:
>>>
>>> Module Size
>>> printer 7056
>>>
>>> OK, I hope this helps you narrow down the problem and sorry for the
>>> delay,
>>> I've been busy w/ school work all day long!
>>>
>>> Aram
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________
> Aram Kudurshian
> aramk@mac.com
> Student/Programmer
> http://homepage.mac.com/aramk/
> AIM: aramk622
> http://www.htmlcreator.net
>
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