Direct Rendering for older video cards

[milkyflava]

Thanks for the reply, on Christmas Eve even!

So could I go back to a lower rev kernel to get HW acceleration to work with this card?

Could we not mknod the special character device?

Also, how do you know which DRM goes with which kernel version?

And finally, yes could you post the instructions.


But do know that I can wait for the weekend or later, please don't feel obligated to help during the holidays.

[Hlingler]

Thanks for the reply, on Christmas Eve even!

HO! HO! HO! Merry Christmas! And best wishes for the coming new year.

So could I go back to a lower rev kernel to get HW acceleration to work with this card?

Yes, that should be possible: I can tell you for certain that the original F11 kernel included at release (on the ISOs) worked fine here: 2.6.29.4-167.fc11 . Not sure when this newest glitch came - either with one of the kernel updates, or with that libdrm/mesa update.

Could we not mknod the special character device?

If I knew how, and was sure it would work... . As described in the linked thread: I tried various tweaks and tricks to create the device, all of which failed. This area is not my specialty. If you have any ideas, fire away!

Also, how do you know which DRM goes with which kernel version?

Not sure what you mean: each and every kmod is unique to the kernel that it is built against (by default: the running kernel), and won't work for any other. That's why the pre-compiled ones that I upload all have the kernel version-release prepended & ARCH noted. You may force a build against another kernel (in fact, I usually do pre-build), but this requires extra goofing around.

And finally, yes could you post the instructions.

But do know that I can wait for the weekend or later, please don't feel obligated to help during the holidays.

Yes, I certainly will - but it will have to wait until at least Saturday.

Thanks Again for your interest,
V

[Hlingler]

Oy! Indeed: all it took was a manual creation of the special character device /dev/dri/card0:
su
mkdir -p /dev/dri/
mknod /dev/dri/card0 -m 0600 c 226 0
chown vince:root /dev/dri/card0 ##<<== to match previous F10 examples - use correct user-name.
restorecon -vr /dev/dri ##<<== if SELInux enabled.

I had already previously created the (missing) folder /dev/dri/ . Guess I was trying the wrong tweaks.

"Warp Power restored, Captain!" Direct Rendering with Mach64 restored.

Still unanswered is: what changed/why this is no longer automatically created. I suppose the above commands can be added to /etc/rc.d/rc.local and/or ~/.bashrc as needed.

I'll post later (Saturday ?) the necessary edits to the libdrm source code that are required to compile the kmods.

Thanks,
V

[milkyflava]

I could tell you were a handsome and powerful man the moment I came in here.

Very good to hear! I was about to go ahead and just install the latest kernel and follow your procedure and try the mknod at the end and see what happened. Unfortunately for me, the new kernel doesn't see my wireless card. So I am going to fix that first then try for a Christmas miracle for the video card.

---------- Post added at 01:05 AM CST ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 11:44 PM CST ----------

Alright, so I got myself turned around somewhere. Following posts 49 and 50 and from your reply to me on post 60 here is what I get. I installed the group for the X development and installed the devel for the kernel I am using, 2.6.30.9-102.fc11.i686.PAE. I have downloaded drm-2.4.11.tar.bz from the freedesktop.org site.


In post 49 you have these listed to download from your 4share acct:

libdrm-2.4.6-7.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-dri-drivers-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libGL-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libGLU-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
libdrm-devel-2.4.6-7.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libGL-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libGLU-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libOSMesa-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
mesa-libOSMesa-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm


But in post 60 you say to get the latest matching "fixed" RPMs from your 4shared account. From the list above from post 49 for the files to download you do not have all of these updated. Is it enough to download those in the list above and just the updated ones in your 4share account? Also, you do not have a libdrm-2.4.11.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm file in the 4share account but a libdrm-devel-2.4.11.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm. Is the libdrm from your 4share account still needed if I have downloaded the 2.4.11 from freedesktop?

Thanks for all the help!

[Hlingler]

Hi milkyflava:

OK, referring again back to Posts #49 & 50, to "roll your own" kmods for F11, here are the changes:

• Step #2: Here's the current list of "fixed" RPMs that you'll need, with hyperlinks for your convenience:
  libdrm-2.4.11-2.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  libdrm-devel-2.4.11-2.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-dri-drivers-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libGL-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libGL-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libGLU-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libGLU-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libOSMesa-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
  mesa-libOSMesa-devel-7.6-0.1.1.fc11.ajr.i586.rpm
• Step #3: You already have the correct libdrm-2.4.11 tarball. After unpacking it but PRIOR to making the kmods, you MUST perform the following edits to the source code:
  • In file ../linux-core/drm_os_linux.h , Line 36:
    typedef void irqreturn_t;
    should read exactly:
    #include <linux/irqreturn.h>
    
  • In file ../linux-core/drm_sysfs.c , Line 172:
    snprintf(minor->kdev.bus_id, BUS_ID_SIZE, minor_str, minor->index);
    should read exactly:
    snprintf(dev_name(&minor->kdev), BUS_ID_SIZE, minor_str, minor->index);
  You may then proceed to build the kmods ('make DRM_MODULES="mach64" '), and follow the rest of the instructions from that point. Remember that the instructions as given are for building kmods to match the running kernel.
  
  
  EDIT:
• Step #4: (Missing instructions) You should ensure that the file ownerships and permissions are as shown, changing as needed. If running SELinux, also a good idea to:
  su
  restorecon -vr /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/
  
  
• Step #7: When you get to this point, I would suggest that instead, you:
  • Log out of desktop;
  • Open a VT [Alt-Ctl-F2] and log in as root-user;
  • command:
    init 3
    mkdir /dev/dri/
    mknod /dev/dri/card0 -m 0600 c 226 0
    chown vince:root /dev/dri/card0 ##<<substituting of course your own intended user-name
  • init 5
  • Log back into desktop and assess; you should see:

    [vince@localhost ~]$ glxinfo | grep render
    direct rendering: Yes
    OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mach64 [Rage Pro] 20051019 AGP 2x x86/MMX
    [vince@localhost ~]$

Done. Note that you must have sufficient VRAM to drive your display at the desired resolution (8 MB VRAM is about enough for 1024x768). Any questions/problems, post back and we'll try to fix... .

Good Luck,
V

P.S. There's got to be an easier way to automatically force creation of the necessary device folder & file. I'll ponder this question, but the above should work for now.

[Bologrew]

Greetings Hlingler,

This is your new guinea pig.
As agreed, here is the spec. again:

Sony Vaio Laptop PCG-FX210
800 MHz Mobile AMD Duron processor
256 MB memory
ATI RAGE™ Mobility-M1 with 3D acceleration support (according to the manual)
(--) PCI:*(0:1:0:0) 1002:4c4d:104d:80e3 ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M
AGP 2x rev 100, Mem @ 0xe9000000/16777216, 0xe8100000/4096, I/O @
0x00009000/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072 (according to Xorg.0.log)

Running Fedora 12 and kept current with the latest updates.
Desktop is KDE4, 1024x768@24bit

If you need more information (including the complete Xorg.0.log) then just let me know.

Best regards,

Nicholas Redgrave

[Hlingler]

Like living on the edge do we? KDE4 on an 800 MHz Mobile CPU with 256 MB RAM.

Any idea how much VRAM ? Try:
grep -i ram /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Or:
grep -i mem /var/log/Xorg.0.log

OK, I'll get started on F12. The chipset is supported.

V

[Bologrew]

It was previously running Fedora 7 and I had to build the MadWiFi drivers myself to get the PCMCIA Netgear WG511T card to work. Under Fedora 12, the WiFi card worked without any intervention.

It is a bit slower running F12 than it was on F7 but once a program is loaded and running, it is quite acceptable and since this laptop was given to me free of charge by a friend (it had no hard disk at that point and only 128 MB RAM), I'm certainly not complaining. :-)
Most of the time it doesn't need to use swap although a big "yum update" will do the trick..

Now then, on the VRAM front:

$ grep -i ram Xorg.0.log
(**) MACH64(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
(--) MACH64(0): Internal RAMDAC (subtype 1) detected.
(--) MACH64(0): 8192 kB of SDRAM (1:1) detected (using 8191 kB).
(WW) MACH64(0): Cannot shadow an accelerated frame buffer.
(--) MACH64(0): Internal programmable clock generator detected.
(II) Loading sub module "ramdac"
(II) LoadModule: "ramdac"
(II) Module "ramdac" already built-in
(II) Initializing built-in extension XINERAMA

Best regards,

Nicholas Redgrave

[phili]

Excellent guide it's really very interresting thank you

[exitRooster]

Greetings Hlingler,

This is your new guinea pig.
As agreed, here is the spec. again:

Sony Vaio Laptop PCG-FX210
800 MHz Mobile AMD Duron processor
256 MB memory
ATI RAGE™ Mobility-M1 with 3D acceleration support (according to the manual)
(--) PCI:*(0:1:0:0) 1002:4c4d:104d:80e3 ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M
AGP 2x rev 100, Mem @ 0xe9000000/16777216, 0xe8100000/4096, I/O @
0x00009000/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072 (according to Xorg.0.log)

Running Fedora 12 and kept current with the latest updates.
Desktop is KDE4, 1024x768@24bit

If you need more information (including the complete Xorg.0.log) then just let me know.

Best regards,

Nicholas Redgrave

Hey Bolo - Was wondering if you were able to get the acceleration working on F12 on that lappy. Amazingly I'm sitting here typing this on an IDENTICAL laptop, only difference is I'm pushing 512MB RAM (though last week I was only running 320MB (256+64), found a stick at a thrift shop and figured it couldn't hurt Anyway, only thing that keeps this system from being perfectly usable is this feature (for me, anyway). As an aside, I also have the Intel version of this same lappy (PCG-F540 I think it is, not by it now)..

[Hlingler]

Hello exitRooster:

Unfortunately, I have not yet finished the project for F12 - Real Life™©®, and more importantly some problems here with F12 VBox VM have interfered (and ominously, the are all video-related, which bodes ill). However, as fate would have it, earlier this evening I fired up the F12 VM and started poring over the pile. I'll try to attend to it this weekend. NOTE that, due to the VBox issues with the latest kernels, I will be limited to building kmods for kernel-2.6.31.12-174.2.19.fc12.i686 and earlier (and only i686, no PAE, no x86_64), unless something should change (I might be able to build for newer kernels, but the results would have to be regarded as "experimental"). If you are running a PAE or x86_64 kernel, you would have to build the kmods yourself (or maybe I could swing it, I'd have to check that out, but it would take more time...).

Please post the info requested in Post #67, as well as results of:
uname -r
su
lspci | grep VGA

@Bologrew: sorry for the delay, reasons as noted.

I'll post back here when I'm done.

V

[Bologrew]

Greetings exitRooster and Hlingler,

First of all, I copied my laptop specification out of the manual which stated that the maximum RAM was 256MB. I did consider later that it was running F12 rather well with only that much and then remembered that I had found a posting saying that it could be expanded to 512MB and I did, in fact, expand it to that much. It was several years ago and I had clean forgotten about it. So, exitRooster, our machines are even more similar.
Hlingler - no need to apologise. Looks like you might have two guinea pigs. :-)

Best regards,

Nicholas Redgrave

[exitRooster]

Hey all - Great to hear for sure!

I totally understand the delay, no worries (not that there should be worries, lol) - I know all about real life getting in the way, hehe, but that said, I'm super psyched that someone might be able to get this lappy working and looking a little better. It's great to see that there are people out there willing to do what it takes - stuff I have no clue about - to make/get/support the vast hardware out there! One thing I wanted to inquire out - Will this solution work with F11 as well as F12?

I too switched from an older version (F8 specifically) to well, F11.. F12 came out soon after, which to be honest is why I didn't go that route - I skip versions generally depending on how much use that particular system gets. I too noticed a difference in speed between the two - And ironically switched for similar reasons. I have both a PCMCIA linksys wireless card as well as a USB one. With F11 the PCMCIA card still doesn't work, but the USB did natively!! (WOOT!!). I spent countless hours, days even probably trying to get either adapter working on previous versions.

Interestingly (as a useless rant/aside/tangent) my other old lappy previously mentioned I THINK is faster, it's tough to compare AMD to Intel sometimes - But the big advantage is the video card/chip difference - The Intel one is coupled with the NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV+ which is much worse than what this Duron lappy has

[Hlingler]

Hello exitRooster:

Somehow, I never saw your last post until just now.

One thing I wanted to inquire out - Will this solution work with F11 as well as F12?

Already been working in F11 here: see Posts #1 (general), #5 (links to RPMs and kmods), and #63 above (fix problems due to Xorg changes). I realize that those are a bit much to wade through, and it might seem a little confusing/intimidating, but actually is quite easy. NOTE that I have only built i586 kmods (no PAE). I can build PAE kmods if needed, but not x86_64. Post back if more questions, or if you need help with working through the installation procedure.

Sorry again, still haven't finished on F12.

V

[exitRooster]

ROFL.. This, and I mean absolutely no offence to you, is why I hate linux.
I have spent the past two days fighting with this machine.

I had to use the force nodeps options on the rpms I downloaded. None of them would work otherwise, kept throwing me error after error (using the gui package installer and terminal prompt) without the flags). Finally got the two of them installed.
Was unable to take the *.ko files and easily place them - For some moronic reason I'm not allowed to copy files into the requested folders (no commentary on this necessary, I finally learned the cp command after hours of searching why in the world I could cut/paste). I had a drm.ko file already, and I made the assumption (please correct me if I'm wrong, God knows I've no clue what I'm doing) that I am supposed to shorten the files I downloaded to simply drm.ko and mach64.ko instead of their massively long version including names as downloaded.
I then spent another x hours trying to figure out if my chmod was working, doesn't report any success or failure or tell you anything.. I was trying chmod -rwxr--r-- /lib/... (path to said file) and it just gave me the prompt, so I assumed it worked, only to learn the ls -l command, which told me it did nothing. After fighting x more hours trying to decipher what numberic three digit code that line meant, I ended up just 777'ing both of them. Hope that's cool..
Brings me to my complete and utter fail point.

I did the dep -a thing, seemed to work fine. (Meaning, it whirred away for about a minute and then gave me the prompt once again).
But here's what I got when I tried the two modprobe commands:

[root@VAIO2 Download]# modprobe drm
WARNING: Deprecated config file /etc/modprobe.conf, all config files belong into /etc/modprobe.d/.
FATAL: Error inserting drm (/lib/modules/2.6.30.10-105.2.23.fc11.i686.PAE/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm.ko): Invalid module format
[root@VAIO2 Download]# modprobe mach64
WARNING: Deprecated config file /etc/modprobe.conf, all config files belong into /etc/modprobe.d/.
FATAL: Error inserting mach64 (/lib/modules/2.6.30.10-105.2.23.fc11.i686.PAE/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/mach64/mach64.ko): Invalid module format
[root@VAIO2 Download]#

I'm lost, frustrated, and clueless as to what to do. Please advise Obi-Wan Fedora, you're my only hope.