ATI: open-source driver could hang in some 3D applications.

[PowerUser]

Hardware configuration:
 AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ on MSI K9N Platinum motherboard (NForce 570 chipset), 5Gb RAM installed.
 Video card is ATI x1300.

Software:
 1. Ubuntu 9.04 with default install. It uses by default opensource 3D radeon driver for ATI x1300 and AMD dropped support for these cards in recent proprietary drivers.
 2. Nexuiz 2.5 game (OpenSource, you can download it free of charge at http://alientrap.org/nexuiz/)

To reproduce:
 Try to play Nexuiz for some time on some system with ATI x1300 card+OpenSource ATI driver.

Results:
 1) With default settings 3D is pretty slow compared to proprietary driver (you can lower default setting to cope with this).
 2) System usually hangs after several minutes of playing Nexuiz.

Expected:
 1) Decent 3D performance
 2) In no event driver should cause deadlocks.

Note:
 This bug seems to be quite similar to bug 237080 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24/+bug/237080)
 AMD had fixed this problem and their proprietary drivers no longer haves this issue. However OpenSource driver still haves similar problem.

Note:
 This time I did not detected any avaialble crash dumps or smth like this. System just hangs, no extra data written to logs. Looks like kernel debugging guru needed and I'm not yet one of these, unfortunately.

[Srik (maxpower-email)]

I can confirm the crashes after few minutes playing nexuiz.

I've tried to have a backtrace but all the system hangs and no key combination is functional (ctrl + alt + backspace (i've reactivated it), ctrl + alt + fx, etc).

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi i-am-sergey,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[PowerUser (i-am-sergey)]

1) I did not modified xorg.conf.
2) lspci output from machine with ati x1300 card added...
3) When trying to get xorg logs, I encountered "hard" deadlock with Nexuiz and I have had to use "reset" button since I did not figured out other methods to reboot. I was not able to find any events anyhow related to crash time in these logs (and this is ok due to such deadlock). When I got issue for first time, I at least managed to reboot system correctly (since deadlock was not complete and I managed to switch to console and use ctrl-alt-del). Maybe I should retry again when time permits (maybe tomorrow).

[PowerUser (i-am-sergey)]

I added lspci and another user added both lspci and xorg logs.Marking as "new" since it probably not "incomplete" anymore.

[Vangelis Tasoulas (cyberang3l)]

My system hangs when I try to play warzone2100.

I have a similar setup.
AMD64 3500+ using Kubuntu 9.04 64bits with an ATI X700+ and the open source driver of course cause as you already mentioned AMD dropped support for these cards :(

[RPHegde (rphegde)]

I installed 2.6.29 kernel per bug 355155. It looks like it is much better now. So for all my 3-D apps are
working fine

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.29.4/

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

I can confirm that RPHegde's solution is working. I had no freeze since I've upgraded the kernel and it's been more than a week now.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

One more thing: during a boot I noticed that something called DKMS loaded fglrx even tho I uninstalled everything fglrx related. Turned out that this DKMS was still loading fglrx so this might have had something to do with my freezes.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notification.]

A new version of the -ati driver is now available in Karmic.

This is a significant update to -ati which brings in kernel mode-setting
(currently disabled) and scores of fixes for DRI2, EXA, etc.

I've posted the new version of this driver to the following PPA,
would you mind testing it and seeing if it resolves the bug you
reported?

  https://edge.launchpad.net/~bryceharrington/+archive/ppa/+sourcepub/709908/+listing-archive-extra

If you're not running this release of Ubuntu, you can try booting the Karmic
LiveCD and loading the PPA onto it, and then log out/in to restart X.
ISOs are available at http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/

After testing Karmic, report back here whether it's still an issue or not,
and if it is please post a fresh Xorg.0.log and 'dmesg' output.

Note there could be new bugs... please file these as new reports using
the command 'ubuntu-bug xorg'.

[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.