ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

nexus7 · 2012-05-14 18:46:22

Hi all!

I was recently given an old Acer TM 292LMi notebook. Fine box for my DTP stuff though -- except it's got a radeon 9700. Set up a fresh Arch (only), using xf86-video-ati, X is up and running, wm is XMonad.

And like any time I set up a new system, I've been trying some new stuff: grub2 w/ kms, and in some sense also ati drivers as I'm just used to intel and nvidia cards so far.

Probably by mixing up things there's some trouble with the (native) resolution though: I can't get X display some other than standard 1024x768, or change that for framebuffer console; my $USER runs fbterm btw, root doesn't.

Ati cards seem to me to be the most difficult to configure, compared to others. Therefor I was happy to read using this nifty KMS feature would manage things automatically. So I activated it:

MODULES="intel_agp radeon"

is included in mkinitcpio.conf, and the initramfs poperly compiled.

But it doesn't seem so easy however. -- And then, does using it has any effect on X? I'd say no, but I'm actually not sure at all, because of that "gfxpayload"-thing.

Editing /etc/default/grub, I've been playing with many resolutions, same explicitely with X. Also, I always do

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

afterwards.
Then, switching off KMS doesn't change anything, but maybe I put into a wrong section? And no -- I don't have any other framebuffer driver (like uvesafb or radeonfb) installed.

Of course I studied the wikis for Ati, KMS, GRUB2, X, and a couple of forums' topics and searched the web, but I couldn't get it so far, and after struggling for a day, I'm quite lost and confused. So hopefully somebody can give me a helping hand.
So how can I get the native resolutions 1400x1050 or even 1600x1200 for X (and for framebuffer console)?

Some more information ==>

According to Grub2's console, these are the highest resolutions the radeon is capable of:

grub> vbeinfo
        ...
*       0x123   1024 x  768 x 32
        ...
        0x140   1400 x 1040 x  8
        0x141   ...           15
        0x142                 16
        0x143                 24
        0x144                 32
        0x172   1600 x 1200 x  8
        0x173   ...           15
        0x174                 16
        0x175                 24
        0x176                 32
EDID-Version:   1.3
        Preferred mode: 1024x768
Adapter:        "VGA Video Driver"
        No information available.

/etc/default/grub:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Arch Linux"
#orig: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet add_efi_memmap"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet loglevel=3 logo.nologo console=tty1 vbemode=0x176 splash=silent,fadein,fadeout"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="radeon.agpmode=4"     
### vga=blah (e.g. vga=775) makes the terminal go 'beyond the monitor'...

# Preload both GPT and MBR modules so that they are not missed
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="part_gpt part_msdos"

# Uncomment to enable Hidden Menu, and optionally hide the timeout count
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=5GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false

# Uncomment to use basic console
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=console

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
#GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768x32
#GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024  
#GRUB_GFXMODE=1600x1200  
#GRUB_GFXMODE=1400x1050  


# Uncomment to allow the kernel use the same resolution used by grub
#GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep 
###  --> wiki-- ATI#Kernel_mode-setting._(KMS)


# Uncomment if you want GRUB to pass to the Linux kernel the old parameter
# format "root=/dev/xxx" instead of "root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxx" 
GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true

# Uncomment and set to the desired menu colors.  Used by normal and wallpaper
# modes only.  Entries specified as foreground/background.
GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL="light-blue/black"
GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="light-cyan/blue"


# Uncomment one of them for the gfx desired, a image background or a gfxtheme
#GRUB_BACKGROUND="/path/to/wallpaper"
#GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub/themes/starfield/theme.txt"

# Uncomment to get a beep at GRUB start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

Finally I created an /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf then...

### --> wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Radeon"
        Driver  "radeon"   
        Option  "ColorTiling"   "on"
        Option  "AccelMethod"   "EXA"
        
        Option  "MigrationHeuristic"    "greedy"

#       Option  "ZaphodHeads"   "VGA-0"
#       VendorName      "ATI"
#       BusID   "PCI:1:0:0"  
#       Screen  0

EndSection


Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Screen0"
        Device          "Radeon" 
        Monitor         "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth    16
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport 0 0
                Depth   16  
                Modes   "1600x1200 1400x1050 1280x1024"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Despite acpi isn't set up yet, there are no further specific errors ...

$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -e WW -e EE
[   256.472] Current Operating System: Linux atom 3.3.5-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 8 05:10:33 UTC 2012 i686 (
[   256.604] (WW) Open ACPI failed (/var/run/acpid.socket) (No such file or directory)
[   257.986] (EE) synaptics: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad: Synaptics driver unable to detect protocol
[   257.987] (EE) PreInit returned 11 for "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"

... except those for synaptics (which I don't understand, as touchpad and cursor work).

matse · 2012-05-15 19:29:04

Are you sure that your laptop is capable of running resolutions > 1024x768?
According to various online stores and e.g. this review 1024x768 is max resolution, so maybe your grub vbeinfo is just wrong.
Greetings
matse

nexus7 · 2012-05-15 21:59:28

matse wrote:

Are you sure that your laptop is capable of running resolutions > 1024x768?
According to various online stores and e.g. this review 1024x768 is max resolution...

You're welcome, but who cares about what was possible with windows (which was sold, too, on these boxes in those days, probably XP)?

It should at least do 1400x1050 fine, see this.

matse wrote:

maybe your grub vbeinfo is just wrong.

How can that be?

matse · 2012-05-15 22:11:04

Very trustfully... a german review where a guy writes that the display is automatically set to "1400x1050".
Believe me I don't care about limits with windows, but I guess you are just experiencing hardware limits.
And when we are talking about doubtful sources, have a look at another linux report here

Configuring X at 1280x1024 made the LCD display works at 1024x768 (native resolution) but switched to 1280x1024 when an external display is in use.

And if you didn't get a proper manual with the notebook you better ask the manufacturer directly about max resolution instead of blindly trusting vbeinfo output and trying to achieve something which is just not possible with your laptop.

nexus7 wrote:

How can that be?

Right, programs *never* have bugs. never.
I further couldn't find a proper manual to grub2 and especially vbeinfo, so maybe it just shows you which resolutions your card supports and not the one which are supported by your screen? Just a guess, as I said I couldn't find an *official* manual where vbeinfo is described.

So instead of making speculations here, look at the manual or ask the manufacturer.
Or of course try further to go beyond your hardware limits.

//Edit:
On the official acer ftp server the manual to your laptop series is still available and on page 18 it clearly states that 1024x768 is max resolution.
Nevertheless here a guy states that

[...] it can have XGA or SXGA resolution [...]
It seems that 1400x1050 resolution doesn't work out of the box; Paolo antinori has given me a solution. It's a tool you can download here (new 04/07/04).

So it seems that there was a self-made patch available to overcome this limit. Nevertheless link is broken and as I said the official support goes just up to 1024x768. So next time you might have a look at your desired max resolution before you buy a "new" laptop.

Last edited by matse (2012-05-15 22:45:59)

nexus7 · 2012-05-16 01:51:51

matse wrote:

... instead of blindly trusting vbeinfo output and trying to achieve something which is just not possible with your laptop.
...
So next time you might have a look at your desired max resolution before you buy a "new" laptop.

Very nice, thanks pal.
What do you think I did in the beginning, even before any vbe-blah stuff, huh...?

And there's even another "trustful German review" I read, that mentions:

To enable the framebufffer console at the correct resolution, add the statement "video=radeonfb:off vga=834" to you bootloader setup,

-- where "834" means 1400x1050 (in legacy-grub).

Btw. a) if there'd be a bug with such an old card, they'd found (and probably fixed it)
b) don't worry, I didn't buy that box, it was a gift. So why not make use of it?

However, thanks for your little research though. I'll see tomorrow, if I can find that patch somewhere (else).

On the other side I can't image, that this 15" machine (I had got a similar model before) would only be able to display some sparse 1024x768... Well, xrandr says it can do up to 1600x1200, but then it doesn't match the screen and 'goes beyond'. Hm.

matse · 2012-05-16 02:06:17

nexus7 wrote:

To enable the framebufffer console at the correct resolution, add the statement "video=radeonfb:off vga=834" to you bootloader setup,
-- where "834" means 1400x1050 (in legacy-grub).

Have you realized that all your sources that use resolutions > 1024x768 use radeonfb? So maybe just radeonfb supports this (as I said officially unsupported) resolutions, because it might simply not care about destroying your nice hardware and assumes that customers take a look at the manual before setting their resolutions
So give it a try (don't know whether it works together with radeon nowadays though).
Oh btw. just setting this resolution in your menu.cfg doesn't mean that it is acually working... you are the best example for this
So don't trust such "nice finds" on the web.
[edit] and in your linked article exactly this line is commented out in the config... [/edit]

nexus7 wrote:

Btw. a) if there'd be a bug with such an old card, they'd found (and probably fixed it)

I don't think it's a bug in the radeon driver if it just supports resolutions which are officially supported by the manufacturer. That's just perfectly OK. And in the *official* manual that belongs to your laptop it is clearly stated the the display resolution is limited to 1024x768. It is not mentioned that this limitation is bound to a specific OS like Windows.

On the other side I can't image, that this 15" machine (I had got a similar model before) would only be able to display some sparse 1024x768... Well, xrandr says it can do up to 1600x1200,

Man again you can read that in the *official* manufacturer manual. Imagine whatever you want, this is a thing where you should depend on *facts*, not believe.

Anyway I don't think I have anything more useful to say here
Have fun with experimenting.

Last edited by matse (2012-05-16 02:20:42)

nexus7 · 2012-05-21 14:51:38

Sorry for the delay. I had just some more important real life business to do.

ts...
On the one side, I appreciate any insight, on the other, I've been a bit bored. In the meantime I indeed had some fun with "experimenting" then, thanks.

matse wrote:

nexus7 wrote:
To enable the framebufffer console at the correct resolution, add the statement "video=radeonfb:off vga=834" to you bootloader setup,
-- where "834" means 1400x1050 (in legacy-grub).
Have you realized that all your sources that use resolutions > 1024x768 use radeonfb? So maybe just radeonfb supports this...
[edit] and in your linked article exactly this line is commented out in the config... [/edit]

May or may radeonfb not be used in whatever of my "nice finds" -- in this very quote it is obviously switched off.
And this line looks like it's commented out, for whatever reason, yes. But if this guy's method wouldn't work, he wouldn't mention it, right?

I never said that I use some kind of fb, or intended to. Since I came across this radeonfb lately, I couldn't yet find something useful for me as there are hundreds of entries for it in this forum anyway. That framebuffer so far seems to me quite outdated, as there's no specific package or pkgbuild (on my box there's only a file /usr/include/linux/radeonfb.h). So probably radeonfb is not important for my ambitions to make my screen display >1024x768px (at mindst in X).

matse wrote:

nexus7 wrote:
Btw. a) if there'd be a bug with such an old card, they'd found (and probably fixed it)
I don't think it's a bug in the radeon driver...

We were talking about grub's vbeinfo, weren't we?

matse wrote:

... "nice finds" on the web. ... resolutions which are officially supported by the manufacturer. That's just perfectly OK. And in the *official* manual that belongs to your laptop it is clearly stated the the display resolution is limited to 1024x768. ... *official* manufacturer manual. ...

So now it's time to confess: I'm a believer!

I believe in my experiences and in what I saw with my own eyes. For example, that at dark times, long before I got to know Arch, I had got a similar Acer TM 2xx or 3xx model about this age with a 15" LCD and this very radeon card that ran at 1400x1050 right out of the box.

And yes, I knew that famous *official manual* for the TM 290 (series). It says at the bottom on p49: "The computer display has a native resolution of 1024 x 768 (XGA) for the 14.1”/15.0”. Man, that's trivial. But also, you know, for facing hardware specs and limitations, I give less to nothing on that kind *official manual* for a basic model telling only half the truth, not even mentioning what components this box got in it. -- In a similar case, if I would have trusted only the limited output of a similar kind of "official manual" for an other old machine (a thinkpad) and would not have followed a "nice finding" in a howto, I hadn't got it to run with a stronger CPU and more physical memory than that manual stated as maximum.

So I prefer to believe 1st) in the facts of the data printed on the TM's outer shell, which say it has got the enhanced "Ati Mobility Radeon 9700" (compared to the standard 9600 on TM 290), which is a model of the r300 family. This is an important fact to look for! As this machine is definetely capable of displaying >1024x768px with 1280x1024, 1400x1050, and 1600x1200px modes, 2nd) I rather believe in what linux ressources on board like lspci, X, atl. are telling me -- unless here Xorg.0.log, vbeinfo, cvt, and xrandr are a bunch of bugs alltogether.

3rd), I believe in resources on the web including reports and experiences of others to achieve this. (And even you use "nice findings" yourself for debating, so what?) There are plenty of sources, also showing xorg.confs (not talking about dual-head), e.g. -1- -2-.

Next step then: Acer is not Ati. However, there are no specs like memory or resolutions available for this card provided by AMD itself. There are on the other side some open source resources, like -1- -2- -3- -4-, although there aren't reliable lists of resolutions.

Second important factor is the built-in monitor of course. -- What made me >:| then after I let read-edid parse the lcd's data ((edit: and put this data into the radeon.conf; however, the given panelsize was much too small)), I was left with a few vesa-modes, and a sort of crippled or crashed xrandr with no output for nothing anymore, even no lower internal, external, or [maximum] virtual resolutions, except the actual 1024x768px for an unspecified device, wtf?

Things I did afterwards were reinstalling some X stuff including vesa and ati, and trying to build (admittedly mostly orphaned) ati/radeon- or mesa-git-drivers (while the latter is mainly for acceleration, it contains the r300) from the AUR, what failed so far. Or, next to playing with some more radeon.conf-parameters and looking for possible X bugs (e.g. -1- -2-), or I just used the vesa drivers. What I didn't consider seriously was looking for catalyst (this card is probably too old for this anyway) or a crab like mergedfb.

So this time I don't succeed, for the lcd does internally indeed not display >1024x768px, the graphics card or the lcd is defective; that little issue surely won't cure my dislike for ati cards. -- But I would do it like this again, because that's the way to go: looking for some more reliable information, and testing.

Enough for now, I yet won't dig deeper here. I just spent too much time on this old box, that would only be my fifth one at home.
It's all history anyway. While playing with some other new stuff then, for some reason I crashed Arch while converting filesystems.

I finally removed all partitions and am going to give the thingy to a boy in the neighborhood. I can later ask him or his parents for the maximum resolution they managed to get with windows then.

Last edited by nexus7 (2012-05-21 16:11:14)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-05-14 18:46:22

ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#2 2012-05-15 19:29:04

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#3 2012-05-15 21:59:28

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#4 2012-05-15 22:11:04

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#5 2012-05-16 01:51:51

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#6 2012-05-16 02:06:17

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

#7 2012-05-21 14:51:38

Re: ATI vs. grub2/kms (and X) -- can't change resolution ...

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