On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:51:11 -0700 (MST) j...@bitminer.ca wrote:
> It's not working well at all. I get this, after specifying
> videoram=8000
>
> (WW) intel(0): VideoRam configuration found, which is no longer
> recommended.
> (II) intel(0): Continuing with default 131072kB VideoRam
> instead of 8000 kB.
> (II) intel(0): Kernel reported 112640 total, 0 used
> (II) intel(0): I830CheckAvailableMemory: 450560 kB available
> (EE) intel(0): [dri] I830CheckDRIAvailable failed: dri not loaded
>
> which seems a little out of bounds (it's an IBM netvista with 8MB
> video RAM). I tell it 8MB and it decides 128MB is a better
> experience!
>
> It does work on 4.3, but that xorg.conf does not work on the current
> 4.5 beta.
>
> Any hints? I've tried the usual on/off with dri, dbe, GLcore, dga,
> and defining various videoram levels including none, of course,
> starting with Xorg -configure.
>
> Can someone suggest any better places to look for a diagnostic
> process?
>
> thanks
>
> --John
Hi John,
The new intel(4) driver has issues with the 845G chipset. If you search
misc@, you'll find a bunch of posts from me and people smarter than me
on the list.
Your xorg.conf file from 4.3 or 4.4 will not work. The reason is
because the intel(4) driver did not exist in those releases, so on the
previous releases, you're actually running the old i810(4) driver.
According to the intel(4) man page, there is no longer any way to
control the amount of video ram on chipsets 830 and above, because the
option is now silently ignored.
Option "VideoRAM" "integer"
The "Video RAM" setting in your system BIOS has never been honored. The
X video driver (either intel(4) or i810(4)) tells the system agp(4)
to modify the amount of ram available for video. In your case, it seems
like you will be stuck with 25% of your RAM going to video. I stuffed
2GB of ram into each of my netvista boxes a long time ago, so the
default grab of 128MB for video is only 1/16th of available memory.
On my IBM Netvista 8310-XXS, Matthieu Herrb (matthieu@) told me a
partial work-around, but it's not perfect. Basically you tell the new
intel(4) driver to use the old XAA (Xfree86 Acceleration Architecture)
acceleration rather than the new default EXA acceleration.
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Even with the old XAA acceleration, things are not perfect, but they are
generally usable.
As for DRI not being loaded, it's because you made the same mistake I
did, namely forgetting to create the drm0 device.
$ cd /dev
$ sudo MAKEDEV drm0
Since you might not have the exact same make of "Netvista" boxes as I
do, you should help Owain Ainsworth (oga@) in collecting PCI statistics.
You should send the output of:
$ sudo pcidump -v
and
$ sudo pcidump -xx
privately to zerooa{at}googlemail.com
Though the marc.info mail archive is a bit slow this morning, you
should check out this test request from tech@
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=123307709522306&w=2
It's a newer version of the intel(4) driver than is currently in the
xenocara tree.
If you'd be so kind as to send me (off list) your Xorg.0.log and
xorg.conf, I'd like to take a look at them. Also, please include the
make and model of the display you are using. The new intel(4) driver
has all sorts of funky magic to guess "proper" settings for various
types of displays. Some of the details are in the intel(4) man page.
--
J.C. Roberts
