uvesafb error

fileunderwater · 2010-02-24 23:08:43

I have an asus 1101 with poulsbo graphics. X is working with vesa but is laggy and I cannot get the correct resolution. The intel driver do not work. So I'm trying to get uvesafb to work after reading the wiki and some posts here in the forum.

However I get an uvesafb error when booting, also found in error.log

Feb 24 23:32:30 AsusArch kernel: uvesafb: cannot reserve video memory at 0x7f800000

Any suggestions on how to solve this? It doesn't matter if Im running wioth or without xorg.conf. I have i915.modeset=0 in menu.lst and am (trying to) using 915resolution-static.

fileunderwater · 2010-02-26 14:10:14

Nobody? Maybe it should go under Newbie corner? As an update I can mention that after rerunning mkinitcpio I get the correct resolution (through 915resolution-static), but I still get the same uvesafb error during boot. Nice with a good looking desktop and decent font rendering, but still with wobbly windows and lag when scrolling.

Last edited by fileunderwater (2010-02-26 14:10:46)

klimas · 2010-02-27 04:41:17

The vesa driver is going to be laggy as there will be no/minimal 3d acceleration supported. I have the intel i810 video card (which used to work fine), but does not function with the new intel drives. In my case, enabling KMS crashes X if I use the new intel driver. Too bad the old i810 isn't supported anymore! It worked great!

Wikipedia states that "Poulsbo's graphics core GMA 500 is currently not well supported by Intel for the Linux platform."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poulsbo_%28chipset%29

However, following the links from wikipedia, I found that the poulsbo videocard is now somewhat supported
http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/08/10 … z-support/

The arch driver seems to be available in AUR (not sure if it made it out to the binary repo's yet) as xorg-x11-drv-psb.
The aur PKGBUILD is available here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=31995

If you cannot get it to function, i would contact the package maintainer for some info (chris.griffith). Unfortunately I don't have this hardware so I cannot tell you how functional/stable this driver is. If you can get this working, i'm sure it would solve your lag issues.

Hope this helps!

skottish · 2010-02-27 05:04:56

You can drop the i915.modeset=0 line. It isn't necessary if you're going to run uvesafb as your only driver.

Are you sure that it's using uvesfb and not falling back on Vesa? A quick check would be:

grep -i vesa /var/log/Xorg.0.log

If you get no output, then it's not using Vesa.

By the way, you're going to get slow scrolling with uvesafb. It won't be as bad as with Vesa, but it won't be anything like a proper video driver.

fileunderwater · 2010-02-27 19:22:10

klimas wrote:

The vesa driver is going to be laggy as there will be no/minimal 3d acceleration supported. I have the intel i810 video card (which used to work fine), but does not function with the new intel drives. In my case, enabling KMS crashes X if I use the new intel driver. Too bad the old i810 isn't supported anymore! It worked great!
The arch driver seems to be available in AUR (not sure if it made it out to the binary repo's yet) as xorg-x11-drv-psb.
The aur PKGBUILD is available here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=31995

Thanks for suggestions, but I've looked at the psb-driver. Its however not working with the latest xorg-server, and because a driver looks to be coming soon the maintainer of the package is holding out to see what happens (that is at least how I have understood the situation)

skottish wrote:

Are you sure that it's using uvesfb and not falling back on Vesa? A quick check would be:

No its not using uvesafb right now (falling back to vesa). As I wrote, I get a uvesafb error when booting, and if I try to use it in xorg.conf X fails. My question is basically how to solve the error (ie "cannot reserve video memory").

mulenmar · 2010-03-15 21:09:49

Do you have v86d installed and listed in your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf's "HOOKS=" ?

Do you have a "vga=" option on your GRUB kernel line? That overrides the uvesafb with the basic VESA framebuffer.

Don't bother with the Poulsbo drivers, the only advantages are controlling the brightness at any time (as opposed to in the GRUB menu) and working suspend/hibernate (properly optimized, my netbook boots too fast to bother with such things). I can't even get them to work with the 2.6.32-ARCH or 2.6.33 vanilla kernels.

fileunderwater · 2010-03-21 11:11:06

mulenmar wrote:

Do you have v86d installed and listed in your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf's "HOOKS=" ?
Do you have a "vga=" option on your GRUB kernel line? That overrides the uvesafb with the basic VESA framebuffer.
Don't bother with the Poulsbo drivers, the only advantages are controlling the brightness at any time (as opposed to in the GRUB menu) and working suspend/hibernate (properly optimized, my netbook boots too fast to bother with such things). I can't even get them to work with the 2.6.32-ARCH or 2.6.33 vanilla kernels.

Yes to "v86d" and no to "vga=". I still haven't solved this, but haven't had much time lately to fiddle around with it. Basically I'm silently hoping that new driver versions will solve the issue.

Thanks for your suggestions though.

Jonhoo · 2010-04-12 04:27:05

I am having the exact same issue on my Sony Vaio X13 running latest kernel...
Will be playing around a bit, but don't really know where to start..

synorgy · 2010-06-05 18:57:06

((Yes, I know I'm reviving a dead thread, but this is the only relevant thread to this problem and the thread where this solution was posted isn't based around this error, meaning that any searches for this error will make this thread the relavant place to look. ))

I had exactly this same error and managed to resolve it with help from a post by 6Fman that can be found here:http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=78719&p=9. Basically, you'll need to 'pre-reserve' the memory in grub.

How to do this:
1) determine which offset range is affected.
If you scroll upwards in your dmesg output (or simply grep for 'system') you'll probably notice that there are multiple instances of a line that reads:

system 00:01: iomem range 0x3f800000-0x3fffffff could not be reserved

or similar. The one that matches the offset of the error you're getting is the one you'll need to pre-allocate.

2) determine the base offset and amount of memory to pre-allocate.
The first value is the 'base offset' (in the above example, 0x3f800000). The amount of memory to pre-allocate can be determined by basic subtraction and addition (0x3fffffff - 0x3f800000 = 7fffff; 7fffff + 1=7ffffe and 7ffffe is the amount you'll need to pre-allocate). You can find calculators that can do hexadecimal calculations for you or, if you're so inclined, you can do it by hand. I did it first by hand and then verified my mathematics using this calculator: http://www.csgnetwork.com/ipv6hexcalc.html

3) format your grub line:
This is easy - add the kernel parameter 'memmap='{amount_to_preallocate}${base_offset}' to the end of your 'kernel=' line in /boot/grub/menu.lst. For example, mine looks like this:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-label/root ro memmap=0x7FFFFE$0x3f800000

You should now be able to reboot and enjoy.

I hope this helps. If this post is confusing, please post back and I'll attempt to clarify.

EDITED a bit for clarity, attribution and the topline disclaimer.

Last edited by synorgy (2010-06-05 19:06:08)

fileunderwater · 2010-06-20 14:19:16

synorgy wrote:

((Yes, I know I'm reviving a dead thread, but this is the only relevant thread to this problem and the thread where this solution was posted isn't based around this error, meaning that any searches for this error will make this thread the relavant place to look. ))
I had exactly this same error and managed to resolve it with help from a post by 6Fman that can be found here:http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=78719&p=9. Basically, you'll need to 'pre-reserve' the memory in grub.
. .
. .
. .
I hope this helps. If this post is confusing, please post back and I'll attempt to clarify.

EDITED a bit for clarity, attribution and the topline disclaimer.

It works!! Thanks a million! Finally a usable desktop on this computer.
You should really add this to the "poulsbo" wiki-entry.
A keyboard language problem that I hadn't been able to solve also went away after fixing this (dont ask me why).

edit:
By the way; are you sure that it shoudl read "7fffff + 1=7ffffe" in your example and not an addition? When running the HEX calculator I get that 7fffff - 1=7ffffe (ie subtraction) and the addition yields 800000. I have never done manual hex-math so maybe I'm mistaken.

My first subtraction yielded 7fffff as well, so I just followed your example and used 7ffffe in my kernel line as well.

Last edited by fileunderwater (2010-06-20 16:40:10)

synorgy · 2010-07-23 17:26:07

Again with the reviving of a dead thread, yadda yadda yadda

First, I'm glad it works. Second, you're right - I was looking at the mathematics wrong and got confused. It's -1 rather than plus one.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-24 23:08:43

uvesafb error

#2 2010-02-26 14:10:14

Re: uvesafb error

#3 2010-02-27 04:41:17

Re: uvesafb error

#4 2010-02-27 05:04:56

Re: uvesafb error

#5 2010-02-27 19:22:10

Re: uvesafb error

#6 2010-03-15 21:09:49

Re: uvesafb error

#7 2010-03-21 11:11:06

Re: uvesafb error

#8 2010-04-12 04:27:05

Re: uvesafb error

#9 2010-06-05 18:57:06

Re: uvesafb error

#10 2010-06-20 14:19:16

Re: uvesafb error

#11 2010-07-23 17:26:07

Re: uvesafb error

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