[opensuse] ATI video flashing/strobing?
OK, this is really getting to be a problem... I know, I know, never ever ever buy a computer with an ATI videocard.. sigh... Anyway, I have a bookshelf computer I am using as my media center.. stats... Video card: ATI Radeon 1200 Driver: 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories) OS: openSUSE 11.1 (just did a full wipe and clean install) with KDE4.3 RC1 Display: Toshiba 32" LCD at 1024x768@60Hz I installed the drivers via the repositories, and then used sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to "set it up" (including setting the Display to LCD 1024x768@60Hz). Reboot, and things are working using the fglrx driver. These are settings (and setup process) that I used with my 11.0 install that was working OK-ish up until I reinstalled everything to move to 11.1 this morning. Now the problem. On starting up KDE4 on the green KDE4 startup screen, the screen strobes or flashes until the desktop is loaded (only a few seconds). I can live with this, but... on starting up an application like XBMC, the screen strobes and flashes for at least 15 to 20 seconds. Sometimes things settle down and XBMC will work... other times on starting XBMC, it will keep strobing making XBMC unusable. XBMC is just one of many applications that will mess up the display (ie strobing)... example starting the KDE Control Center and picking a random setup icon.. say... Computer Administration > Display (to set the power management for example) will cause the screen to strobe wildly for a few seconds. Any ideas on this one? Am I going to need to roll back to a much earlier driver? C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 07 July 2009 06:11:57 am Clayton wrote:
OK, this is really getting to be a problem... I know, I know, never ever ever buy a computer with an ATI videocard.. sigh...
Anyway, I have a bookshelf computer I am using as my media center.. stats...
Video card: ATI Radeon 1200 Driver: 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories) OS: openSUSE 11.1 (just did a full wipe and clean install) with KDE4.3 RC1 Display: Toshiba 32" LCD at 1024x768@60Hz
I installed the drivers via the repositories, and then used sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to "set it up" (including setting the Display to LCD 1024x768@60Hz). Reboot, and things are working using the fglrx driver. These are settings (and setup process) that I used with my 11.0 install that was working OK-ish up until I reinstalled everything to move to 11.1 this morning.
Now the problem. On starting up KDE4 on the green KDE4 startup screen, the screen strobes or flashes until the desktop is loaded (only a few seconds). I can live with this, but... on starting up an application like XBMC, the screen strobes and flashes for at least 15 to 20 seconds. Sometimes things settle down and XBMC will work... other times on starting XBMC, it will keep strobing making XBMC unusable. XBMC is just one of many applications that will mess up the display (ie strobing)... example starting the KDE Control Center and picking a random setup icon.. say... Computer Administration > Display (to set the power management for example) will cause the screen to strobe wildly for a few seconds.
Any ideas on this one?
Am I going to need to roll back to a much earlier driver?
C.
Clayton, If you have a driver version 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories), it is *not* the ATI Catalyst (fglrx) driver. Check with "lsmod | grep fglrx". My *guess* is that you have actually installed the radeon or radeonhd driver which would explain the source of the problem. Report back. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
If you have a driver version 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories), it is *not* the ATI Catalyst (fglrx) driver. Check with "lsmod | grep fglrx". My *guess* is that you have actually installed the radeon or radeonhd driver which would explain the source of the problem. Report back.
I HATE ATI :-( Sigh.... lsmod | grep fglrx returned the fglrx module as expected. I had enabled the ATI module and installed the fglrx driver and kernel module... things were... working... ish. Compiz stuff was working etc. Sometimes on a clean boot the strobing would be minimal on KDE4 starting, but starting up XBMC, MythTV etc it would really go crazy for a while.. usually would settle and return to normal... sometimes not, instead just strobing away and making any keyboard interaction take many seconds until I exited the application. I removed the fglrx driver, went to the ATI site and downloaded/installed the ATI Catalyst driver. All seemed to go OK... tried restarting X... didn't work, so rebooted, and now the computer is caught in a boot loop.. rebooting every time it tries to load X. Going to try to sort that now, to see if I can at least get it to boot to a CLI. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
If you have a driver version 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories), it is *not* the ATI Catalyst (fglrx) driver. Check with "lsmod | grep fglrx". My *guess* is that you have actually installed the radeon or radeonhd driver which would explain the source of the problem. Report back.
I removed the fglrx driver, went to the ATI site and downloaded/installed the ATI Catalyst driver. All seemed to go OK... tried restarting X... didn't work, so rebooted, and now the computer is caught in a boot loop.. rebooting every time it tries to load X. Going to try to sort that now, to see if I can at least get it to boot to a CLI.
OK, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I managed to convince X to start up. Turns out.. since I had a clean install, I forgot to install gcc and the kernel-sources, so the manual install (from the GUI) failed, but did not actually report back any errors.. it just said install was successful... but since no gcc, and no sources, the kernel driver was not built... and well... splat... So installed the kernel-sources and gcc.. reinstalled the ATI catalyst driver from the CLI this time... used sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to config xorg.conf... init 5 and X started. There is still some strobing/flashing as KDE4 starts up, and also when I launch XBMC, MythTV and various other apps, including KDE4 native apps like the applets in the Configuration. it isn't currently killing performance like before. I wonder if this is a KDE4 thing since this is the first time I've ran KDE4 on this bookshelf/media center PC. I haven't tried Gnome at all on this computer... and when it was running on 11.0 (up until this morning) it was using KDE3. I could switch to Gnome easily enough... the underlying GUI is somewhat irrelevant since it's almost always in XBMC or MythTV. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 07 July 2009 11:01:23 am Clayton wrote:
If you have a driver version 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories), it is *not* the ATI Catalyst (fglrx) driver. Check with "lsmod | grep fglrx". My *guess* is that you have actually installed the radeon or radeonhd driver which would explain the source of the problem. Report back.
I removed the fglrx driver, went to the ATI site and downloaded/installed the ATI Catalyst driver. All seemed to go OK... tried restarting X... didn't work, so rebooted, and now the computer is caught in a boot loop.. rebooting every time it tries to load X. Going to try to sort that now, to see if I can at least get it to boot to a CLI.
OK, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I managed to convince X to start up. Turns out.. since I had a clean install, I forgot to install gcc and the kernel-sources, so the manual install (from the GUI) failed, but did not actually report back any errors.. it just said install was successful... but since no gcc, and no sources, the kernel driver was not built... and well... splat...
I'll say "splat", not reporting lack of the kernel source and reporting a successful fglrx.ko module build is nuts. Even stranger is how the fglrx module got loaded to show with lsmod to begin with. At least in my understanding if the build failed due to lack of gcc and kernel-source, there should be no way the module should ever load to begin with to be reported by lsmod??? Mr. Dirsch -- what says you?
So installed the kernel-sources and gcc.. reinstalled the ATI catalyst driver from the CLI this time... used sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to config xorg.conf... init 5 and X started.
Here is my current xorg.conf for my laptop x1200 (RS690M). http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/ati/xorg.conf.x1200.txt Take a look and compare with yours and see if anything jumps out at you. I don't get any strobing, but then I don't use mythTV. The only killer for me is trying to display video while compiz is running. In that case, yes, I get I guess what you call strobing. Hell, video will barely display -- ATI.... I have tried all the different video backends (xine, etc..) I still haven't found a working combination for that situation. Other than that, I get great performance with the 8-9 fglrx driver. Anything later than 8-9, is a complete letdown. Performance either drops to 50% of where it was with the 8-9 driver or my box just continually reboots (9-2 driver specifically) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On July 7, 2009 5:04:01 pm David C. Rankin wrote:
On Tuesday 07 July 2009 11:01:23 am Clayton wrote:
If you have a driver version 2.1.8494 (from standard 11.1 repositories), it is *not* the ATI Catalyst (fglrx) driver. Check with "lsmod | grep fglrx". My *guess* is that you have actually installed the radeon or radeonhd driver which would explain the source of the problem. Report back.
I removed the fglrx driver, went to the ATI site and downloaded/installed the ATI Catalyst driver. All seemed to go OK... tried restarting X... didn't work, so rebooted, and now the computer is caught in a boot loop.. rebooting every time it tries to load X. Going to try to sort that now, to see if I can at least get it to boot to a CLI.
OK, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I managed to convince X to start up. Turns out.. since I had a clean install, I forgot to install gcc and the kernel-sources, so the manual install (from the GUI) failed, but did not actually report back any errors.. it just said install was successful... but since no gcc, and no sources, the kernel driver was not built... and well... splat...
I'll say "splat", not reporting lack of the kernel source and reporting a successful fglrx.ko module build is nuts. Even stranger is how the fglrx module got loaded to show with lsmod to begin with.
At least in my understanding if the build failed due to lack of gcc and kernel-source, there should be no way the module should ever load to begin with to be reported by lsmod???
Mr. Dirsch -- what says you?
So installed the kernel-sources and gcc.. reinstalled the ATI catalyst driver from the CLI this time... used sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to config xorg.conf... init 5 and X started.
Here is my current xorg.conf for my laptop x1200 (RS690M).
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/ati/xorg.conf.x1200.txt
Take a look and compare with yours and see if anything jumps out at you. I don't get any strobing, but then I don't use mythTV.
The only killer for me is trying to display video while compiz is running. In that case, yes, I get I guess what you call strobing. Hell, video will barely display -- ATI.... I have tried all the different video backends (xine, etc..) I still haven't found a working combination for that situation.
Other than that, I get great performance with the 8-9 fglrx driver. Anything later than 8-9, is a complete letdown. Performance either drops to 50% of where it was with the 8-9 driver or my box just continually reboots (9-2 driver specifically)
If I can interject.... In your xorg,conf file, I have noticed in the section Section "Module" Load "extmod" Load "type1" Load "glx" Load "freetype" Load "dbe" Load "dri" EndSection You no longer have to use Load "type1" as it has been replaced by Load "freetype". Roman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I'll say "splat", not reporting lack of the kernel source and reporting a successful fglrx.ko module build is nuts. Even stranger is how the fglrx module got loaded to show with lsmod to begin with.
Well, originally I had installed the ATI driver (fglrx) from the ATI/openSUSE 11.1 repo. So, originally.. when I did the lsmod, the module should have shown... which it did. The splat happened after I removed the repo version of the driver, and installed... or attempted to install the driver i downloaded from the ATI/AMD website. The installer from ATI did not report back that there were any problems at all when I installed from within the GUI. It reported a successful install - although, there is no way there could have been a successful install since the kernel module was not built. After I got the rapid continuous reboot under control, I tried installing from the CLI. The installer unpacked the driver, asked a few questions, and then when it tried to build the kernel module, it just crashed with a couple screens of somewhat random appearing text mixed in with various system directories. No useful information at all... and it "broke" the terminal (I have to type "reset" to gt control back). That was about when I twigged that I had forgotten to install gcc and the kernel-sources before attempting to manually install the driver.
Here is my current xorg.conf for my laptop x1200 (RS690M).
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/ati/xorg.conf.x1200.txt
Take a look and compare with yours and see if anything jumps out at you. I don't get any strobing, but then I don't use mythTV.
My xorg.conf is almost identical. You have a few options different though... my xorg is here: http://www.digitaldragon.ca/xorg.1200.txt
The only killer for me is trying to display video while compiz is running.
I have Compiz turned off, so hopefully it's not a culprit here.
In that case, yes, I get I guess what you call strobing.
Well, if you are getting it, you would certainly notice... the whole screen flashes like a strobe light... rapid flashing.
Other than that, I get great performance with the 8-9 fglrx driver. Anything later than 8-9, is a complete letdown. Performance either drops to 50% of where it was with the 8-9 driver or my box just continually reboots (9-2 driver specifically)
Don't you LOVE the driver naming scheme that ATI uses? Sigh... Anyway, now I am using the latest driver I could find on the ATI website... strobing is still an issue, although it is not as bad using the manually installed driver as it was using the repo driver. I still have to find time later today to install Gnome and see if it's more a KDE4 thing, or what. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 08 July 2009 12:11:37 am Clayton wrote:
In that case, yes, I get I guess what you call strobing.
Well, if you are getting it, you would certainly notice... the whole screen flashes like a strobe light... rapid flashing.
Mine isn't the same then. The strobing I'm talking about is only in the video window itself (like in the mplayer window) I have gotten so used to using the ATI driver packages (before ATI disowned all its "new legacy" card owners) that I had written a script to automate the process. The basics were to: 1. confirm kernel-source 2. drop to runlevel 3 3. rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i fglrx) 4. sh ATI..driver-installer --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE110-AMD64 5. rpm -Uvh fglrx-nameOfNewPkg.rpm 6. watch the compile output from the post-install script 7. reboot Then on kernel update: fglrx-kernel-build.sh That was pretty much it for driver management. Now, I just have the rpm for 8-9 save for both x86 and x86-64 that I install on new boxes (limited to 11.0 - no ATI driver support for the x1200 in 11.1 or later due to xorg 7.4 and the crippled ATI driver in the 8-10 through 9-3 releases. Now it's just try and help with the radeonhd project to hopefully have a working driver for my laptop in the future. Just wait until 11.2 is released and all the laptop users realize there is no fglrx support for their hardware and -- the radeonhd driver will just about set their laptops on fire with gpu temperature increase. (at the very least it will fry your nuts if you actually put your laptop on your lap) But, the radeonhd folks are really doing a great job and making headway with gpu chipset powerdown code. The same level of cooling as the fglrx driver is still along way off and performance is still way down compared to the fglrx driver. (KDE4 Desktop Effects will shut down compositing and kill Desktop Effects due to radeonhd driver slowness on my hardware) So performance impacts on KDE4 is very real. All we can do is help support the radeonhd project in any way we can to help get that driver up to speed in time for 11.2 Anything is possible -- I never thought KDE4 would be usable by 11.2 either... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Well, if you are getting it, you would certainly notice... the whole screen flashes like a strobe light... rapid flashing.
Mine isn't the same then. The strobing I'm talking about is only in the video window itself (like in the mplayer window)
This is full screen flashing. It even happens on the main login screen... select user, type password, and then flash flash flash several times before the desktop is drawn. I thought maybe this might be a KDE4 thing, so I wiped the root partition again, and installed Gnome. Same thing... flashing on login... loads of flashing on launching apps like XBMC, MythTV, and many other randomly selected apps (but not all). I tried Ubuntu 9.04, but... they've managed to really mess up the ATI driver somehow. The vid card I have (x1200) is supported by the latest binaries from ATI, but... the Ubuntu guys have removed the 1200 from the repo based driver somehow. The result is.. I can only just barely use Ubuntu... or more realistically, at least on this machine, I can't use it at all. no biggie.
Just wait until 11.2 is released and all the laptop users realize there is no fglrx support for their hardware and -- the radeonhd driver will just about set their laptops on fire with gpu temperature increase. (at the very least it will fry your nuts if you actually put your laptop on your lap)
I think there will be a lot of very unhappy people :-( There already are with a lot of Ubuntu 9.04 users who are already out in the proverbial cold.
But, the radeonhd folks are really doing a great job
True (from what I read). It's looking like the radeonhd driver is really improving. That's good.. the pressure will be on them now though :-) Anyway, at this point.. I'm not sure what to do. openSUSE 11.1 on Gnome or KDE4 is the same... I guess I either put up with it.. roll back to 11.0.. or remove the repo based fglrx driver and try the older manual install binary I have squirreled away on my storage drive. One thing about this... I am glad I have a nVidia card on my main machine... C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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Clayton
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David C. Rankin
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Roman