no 3D acceleration on Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M (and maybe others)

[AndyAirey]

I have a Compaq Presario 2100 (2104EA to be precise) running Xubuntu 8.04.1
with Mobile Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.00GHz and an ATI Radeon mobile graphics card.

The card shows up in lspci as:
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M

When I installed Xubuntu a few days ago, it worked fine but I noticed it didn't have 3D acceleration enabled.

After some searching I found this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=310018
Now still to prove if it actually worked.

[AndyAirey (aairey)]

I fixed it whilst following:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

and then

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=310018

As this is not the way it's supposed to go, I filed a bug report (this one).
Especially adding the option irqpoll in /boot/grub/menu.lst is weird ...
> That's what actually enables the direct rendering.

zuzuzzzip@geordie:~$ glxinfo | grep vendor
server glx vendor string: SGI
client glx vendor string: SGI
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
zuzuzzzip@geordie:~$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

Hope to help someone with this!

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Please provide the output from "lspci -nn|grep VGA" and your Xorg.0.log.

[AndyAirey (aairey)]

$ lspci -nn|grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M [1002:4337]

There is not much to see in the log but you can see it deciding to use VESA.
After X tried to start a few times I had to go in low-graphics mode.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Can you please try to get the log from when Xorg starts and fails? For example, log in on a console and run:
 sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
 sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf{,.moved}
 startx
 sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf{.moved,}
 cp /var/log/Xorg.0.log ~/Desktop
 sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

[AndyAirey (aairey)]

when you do "startx" there is no xorg.conf created.

but I have the other results in the attachment.

As I said, I had to use the "irqpoll" boot option to take advantage of my original-xorg.conf. So there is a difference between the original-xorg.0.log with irqpoll and the one without irqpoll. Between the second ones there is no difference, as it does not need to use these thingys, I guess. (yeah that's right, I don't know alot about it :P)

What I've found is strange, he DOES recognize it is RADEON now ... maybe I need to try a reboot, with no xorg.conf?
(The problem was it went in to low-graphics mode when adding "ati" as Driver though, with no Driver specified it would use vesa -> which is not the case here either.)
I will post again after hard reboot.

Hope you got enough info, and that it makes sense (cause I don't realy get it anymore with it recognising Radeon in the end...)
Thx for your help.

PS: I have added a few options that are not helping it seems in my original-xorg.conf as I was experiencing alot of Xorg cpu usage. When I restarted X in these test cases it was only 4% cpu usage instead of a massive 30% ...

[AndyAirey (aairey)]

So here's a log after reboot without irqpoll.

I remember now the irqpoll was to enable 3D Acceleration :$
sorry, I'm doing this in the middle of my exams, so more focus on those things right now.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

No problem, take your time. Maybe you then can reexplain the problem please. I thought the problem was that the "radeon" driver was not picked automatically. It should, with the original xorg.conf (after installation) which does not specify any driver. In your test.tar.gz you have manually specified "ati" so those logs can't help me find out why the driver is not picked correctly.

If X doesn't start, it will after 3 attempts use a special xorg.conf.failsafe which specifies the "vesa" driver. So this log does not help much either.

Your last log (without irqpoll) seems to have picked the correct driver, running without any xorg.conf. Is this correct?

[AndyAirey (aairey)]

I updated the description.
I just tried the xubuntu live-cd which recognizes it's ati from the start.

So some confession to do:
When I first installed xubuntu, the litte effect that there were looked crap and often distorted which did not seem right (being xubuntu has nothing to do with it imo). Then I've been trying to find ati drivers, I first I was trying ati installers and restricted drivers till I found the help,ubuntu.com page (see first post) which said to use the opensource driver. I followed that howto, but was getting weird errors doing aticonfig (Segmentation Faults), I tried reinstalling the xserver-xorg-video-ati, had to remove it completely and install it again. Then it worked! Still looked the same so added that irqpoll boot option and DRI (.drirc file) in the hope to be have 3D Acceleration.

So actually the problem is, as the title says, out-of-the-box 3D acceleration on the card.
Now I'm not sure this is being used with or without the "irqpoll" boot option, so maybe those to logs are to be compared (original-Xorg.0.log)

Hope this clears it up a little ...

-----
with irqpoll enabled and standard xorg.conf
$ glxinfo | grep rendering
direct rendering: Yes

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Thanks. We'll need to get logs from when you boot without irqpoll to see what goes wrong. Xorg.0.log if X writes something to it. /var/log/gdm/:0.log if it doesn't. And /var/log/dmesg and the output from "sudo dmidecode". All in separate attachments, please.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

As another thing, you could play around with different values for AGPMode to see if that solves it (wrong AGPMode values is a common source of symptoms similar to these with -ati). For more details on this, please see the "ATI AGP Mode Quirk" section at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Quirks

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The xorg.conf at http://launchpadlibrarian.net/16840955/xorg.conf and attached to this bug is problematic for the following reason:
There cannot be Broken References:
{'Device': {}, 'InputDevice': {}, 'Screen': {}, 'Monitor': {'Configured Monitor': None}, 'ServerLayout': {}}

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Everything looks fine, from looking at your logs. Do you still have any issues? If yes, please also try the Intrepid beta live CD or newer.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.