Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:31:42 -0700 From: Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com> To: Thomas Mueller <mueller6724@bellsouth.net> Cc: "freebsd-x11@freebsd.org" <freebsd-x11@freebsd.org>, Matthew Rezny <mrezny@hexaneinc.com>, Niclas Zeising <zeising@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: ports/156405: x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati driver: no hardware rendering Message-ID: <CAN6yY1vC3PX3oMVtAjntA0XwfuvzeHGV92LGvFyoZyt%2BrEK_TQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <D5.8E.14028.4459E125@hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com> References: <D5.8E.14028.4459E125@hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com>
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On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Thomas Mueller <mueller6724@bellsouth.net>wrote: > > From my previous post and Niclas Zeising's response: > > > > I had this type of problem with NetBSD 5.1_STABLE and 5.99.x even with > native X that is part of the base system, as opposed to pkgsrc X. > > I can't comment on how NetBSD does things, since I haven't used it. > > You aren't missing anything, judging from my experience. FreeBSD is > decidedly more advanced. > > > > I could return to a text console in the dark and type "shutdown -r > now" or even type the command to go back into X, successfully. > > In general, this can work. It did last time I tested, but that was some > > time ago so things might have changed. > > When I tried with new Xorg and KMS in 9-STABLE, my system froze > immediately, not just the console. I finally managed to downgrade to the > old Xorg after considerable difficulty. > > I'd like to try again on a new computer, with FreeBSD-current/HEAD (10.0 > is in the not-so-distant future?). > > With 3 TB hard drive and GPT, I have plenty of space and partitions to > experiment, and probably less hazardous than the stablest versions of > NetBSD. > > > > With serial ports becoming obsolete, what can one use for or in place > of a serial console? > > > FireWire. I haven't tested myself, but have a look at > > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug-dcons.html > > for instructions on how to use FireWire as a console. > > This still leaves the question of how to set it up in terms of hardware. > I don't think there are any FireWire consoles. > > Would I plug anything into the motherboard's FireWire port? I just > thought of FireWire-to-HDMI cable but haven't looked to see if these exist. > > > > Would it work to have two xorg.conf files, one with Intel driver and > the other with vesa? Then could you go back to a working console when > using the vesa driver? > > Once you've loaded the KMS awawre kernel module, there is no way to get > > the console back short of a reboot of the system. > > But would starting X with vesa driver load the KMS awawre kernel module? > > What about "xorg -configure" which I might want to do the first time? > > > > I've wondered (call it X acrobatics) how to switch between root and > nonroot, and between window managers, without going back to text console. > > You could try some sort of desktop manager, such as gdm or kdm. I've > > not used them on FreeBSD, but on linux they make it possible to have > > several users logged into X at once, and switching window manager, and > > so on. As for root, it is generally considered a bad idea to run X as > > root. If it's just a root terminal you need, you can always open an > > xterm (or your favorite terminal emulator) and use su or sudo. > > Regards! > > -- > > Niclas Zeising > > On Linux (Slackware) I was only able to have one user at a time using xdm. > > But I remember one menu item in KDE was konsole as root user (konsole is > KDE's X terminal). > > On NetBSD, xdm completely failed to run. > > But I got some ideas from Gentoo Linux emailing list, haven't tried yet. > > One very common mistake people make when attempting to use Intel KMS is to either add the KMS driver to loader.conf or to load it manually after booting. The result will be an immediate system lockup. Actually, I suspect the system is not frozen, but the display is frozen and nothing will accept keyboard or mouse input, so it looks frozen. Starting X will load the driver at the proper time so that X can takeover the display, keyboard, and mouse properly. I might also note that Intel KMS requires: WITH_NEW_XORG, WITH_KMS, and the build of graphics/libdrm with the KMS config option enabled. If I sent this to you in the past, sorry. I have posted this information a few times and it may or may not make a difference for you. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer E-mail: rkoberman@gmail.com
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