Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

kingguru · 2011-06-08 17:03:08

Hi all,

Just thought I might not be the only one interested in this:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/8/121

Progress is indeed being made!

From the commit comments it seems very likely that this could be fixing the issue I have been experiencing, but I haven't had that time to test yet.

Mr.Elendig · 2011-06-08 22:10:09

Nice, that backlight problem have been bugging me quite a bit.

canolucas · 2011-06-11 17:37:21

is there any chance to see in the near future Alan Cox, or others, begin coding the Xorg module for 3d accel (though i assume that a kernel driver consolidaton is needed first) ?

triumphguy · 2011-06-14 04:09:16

When Kernel .38 came out and broke the GMA500, I decided to just use the Vesa driver for a few weeks since the .39 was due out and supposedly had the driver native. So over the weekend, .39 came out and of course it broke the video where I couldn't see any terminal windows. So my frustration got the better of me and I loaded Linux Mint 10 LXDE on my netbook. I've decided that Arch's bleeding edge and the GMA500 are not compatible.

nicoadamo · 2011-06-14 19:34:22

Hi all! Yes, it's pretty dissapointing the story between Arch and Poulsbo... Triumphguy I'd stick to 2.6.37 for a while longer untill it's solved. I had a working .37 poulsbo driver, and the tried to test .39 with it's natural support. It didn't work at once... no startx allowd. Then deleted the xorg.conf and had some x support, but with neither good resolution nor clearness. QUESTION: What are the correct contents of xorg.conf to make it work with psb-gfx driver?

kingguru · 2011-06-15 17:28:24

Hi all,

So, I've finally had some success. The recent patches to the GMA500 drivers I posted the LKML link to previously has been merged into 3.0.0-rc3 and into the kernel26-mainline package in AUR. Using that kernel I'm able to boot my system.

I'm also able to start X with the fbdev driver, but performance is far from optimal. I am unable to view even low resolution video fullscreen since, as far as I can tell, the xv extension is not supported.

So, it is indeed a huge step forward for me and things are moving in the right direction, but I guess we still need at least some basic 2D acceleration for X.

To repeat nicoadamos question, has anybody had any luck using an accelerated X driver with the new kernel drivers included in kernel >= 2.6.39?

tista · 2011-07-05 01:22:44

Hi Arch guys.

I'm tista. yeah a contributer of Ubuntu gma500 packages...
then I'm restarting cody/patchworks for psb_gfx for kernel-3.0 or higher:
https://code.launchpad.net/~tista/+junk/psb-gfx-daily

and today we've experienced some badness.
* suspend/resume didn't work properly (expecially resuming).
* mouse pointer often flickered.
* 3D accel wasn't still improved.
* any video accels were not employed yet...
* xrandr didn't work properly...
...etc.

if you guys had experienced any newer issues, let me know!!
I also would keep my eyes open for this thread...

Regards.

tista

Hailstorm · 2011-07-08 13:01:41

Hi tista, i'm glad you joined the forums and decided to continue working on the drivers. I will test it and post any issues to these forums as soon as i sort the following problem:

I have installed the 3.0 kernel from aur and the psb-gfx-bzr package. However, according to modinfo, the kernel still loads the staging driver from /lib/modules/.../kernel/drivers/staging/gma500/psb_gfx.ko.gz
How can i force it to load the newly installed module from /lib/modules/.../extra/psb/psb_gfx.ko instead?

tista · 2011-07-10 15:46:18

Hailstorm wrote:

Hi tista, i'm glad you joined the forums and decided to continue working on the drivers. I will test it and post any issues to these forums as soon as i sort the following problem:
I have installed the 3.0 kernel from aur and the psb-gfx-bzr package. However, according to modinfo, the kernel still loads the staging driver from /lib/modules/.../kernel/drivers/staging/gma500/psb_gfx.ko.gz
How can i force it to load the newly installed module from /lib/modules/.../extra/psb/psb_gfx.ko instead?

Hi Hailstorm.

OK. Arch didn't have any loadable module lists? for example, on Ubuntu there was /etc/modules. and well known psb_gfx is the KMS driver so you should also update initrd to embed desired modules.

Regards.

Hailstorm · 2011-07-10 18:47:32

tista wrote:

OK. Arch didn't have any loadable module lists? for example, on Ubuntu there was /etc/modules. and well known psb_gfx is the KMS driver so you should also update initrd to embed desired modules.

Well i've updated the kernel again, recompiled your module using the pkgbuild again and now it magically works. I'm not sure what went wrong last time.
Anyway, i still have the same issue with both the drivers included in the kernel and your module: the screen starts flickering a few seconds after booting up. I've had this issue since the very first psb_gfx driver. Apart from the consant flickering, it seems to be working fine: X loads, even videos play smoothly with vo=x11. Any idea what could be causing this?

tista · 2011-07-11 00:00:26

Hailstorm wrote:

tista wrote:
OK. Arch didn't have any loadable module lists? for example, on Ubuntu there was /etc/modules. and well known psb_gfx is the KMS driver so you should also update initrd to embed desired modules.
Well i've updated the kernel again, recompiled your module using the pkgbuild again and now it magically works. I'm not sure what went wrong last time.
Anyway, i still have the same issue with both the drivers included in the kernel and your module: the screen starts flickering a few seconds after booting up. I've had this issue since the very first psb_gfx driver. Apart from the consant flickering, it seems to be working fine: X loads, even videos play smoothly with vo=x11. Any idea what could be causing this?

@Hailstorm

Well I'm glad to hear that you could be OK to load psb_gfx as external module.

then, the "quickly flushing screen" might be caused auto-detection/auto-configuration process of psb_gfx. yeah it's based on Intel driver's one. in Ubuntu, powerup -> grub -> cursor blanking on black screen -> flushing -> plymouth splash -> blank -> X starting... here would be the normal boot sequence.

because that blank screen periods must be needed to change the owner of framebuffer while booting up. and my module improves "dithering" on full resolution. so the appearance of color-gradients could be more smoothly, however the performance might be decreased a bit to render dithered images.;) and also if you guys needs the function "acpi_video_register" or not, I've embedded this function as external option. yep. it could be defined in grub as kernel parameters like: "psb_gfx.acpi_register=1". if wasn't defined, psb_gfx boot without any acpi_video_register to help some machine like SONY VAIO series or more.... or Lucazade has acer 751h, it seems to be needed this acpi_register enable to use backlight hotkeys.

cheers.

Last edited by tista (2011-07-11 00:10:46)

Hailstorm · 2011-07-11 06:00:01

@tista
I think you misunderstand my problem.
The boot process is just fine. As soon as it loads the module it switches to native resolution and the screen is perfectly sharp. Then i get the login prompt. No matter what i do at this point, after like 10-15 seconds the screen becomes fuzzy and flickery. The pixels kind of jitter around very quickly. It's readable, but very annoying.
Another thing i observed is the following: if i issue the reboot command then the screen won't even stay sharp for a few seconds after the next reboot. It becomes fuzzy as soon as the module loads and the native resolution kicks in. However, if i power off the computer completely for even a second, and power it up again, it will be sharp when the module loads and only become fuzzy about 10-15 seconds after the login prompt appears.

tista · 2011-07-11 09:22:05

Hailstorm wrote:

@tista
I think you misunderstand my problem.
The boot process is just fine. As soon as it loads the module it switches to native resolution and the screen is perfectly sharp. Then i get the login prompt. No matter what i do at this point, after like 10-15 seconds the screen becomes fuzzy and flickery. The pixels kind of jitter around very quickly. It's readable, but very annoying.
Another thing i observed is the following: if i issue the reboot command then the screen won't even stay sharp for a few seconds after the next reboot. It becomes fuzzy as soon as the module loads and the native resolution kicks in. However, if i power off the computer completely for even a second, and power it up again, it will be sharp when the module loads and only become fuzzy about 10-15 seconds after the login prompt appears.

ah I've got to know.
might it be caused display manager, right?
so which did you use the display manager, gdm, kdm, lightdm, or so? if you could, give it a try "automatic login" at first. because I wanna know whether this issues really caused by the prompt of dm.
the next, if you already used "vt.handoff" in kernel parameters, try to force it disabled. because sometimes plymouth splash or something like that kept holding framebuffer intentionally. or kill the plymouth splash would be useful sometimes...

today's psb_gfx had improved "multiple framebuffer KMS". yeah that's really future work! but unfortunately it might be caused boot sequence issues.

cheers.

Hailstorm · 2011-07-11 10:51:01

I'm not using any login manager. By login prompt i just meant the default shell prompt. It doesn't seem to be related to X at all, even if i log in quickly and start X the same thing happens. The screen stays sharp for a few seconds after the boot process, and then it gets fuzzy as i explained above. I have a fairly minimalistic system so the problem could not possibly be caused by any eye-candy like a dm or a splash.
Now i timed it. It seems that something goes wrong about 30 seconds after loading the module. I started timing when the screen flushed during bootup and it switched to the native resolution. It doesn't matter if i start X or anything else, it doesn't even make a difference if i don't even log in. It just gets fuzzy after these 30 seconds and won't stop jittering.
And as i said, once it starts jittering, a reboot won't fix it but only a complete power off. I have no idea what to make of this fact but for a more experienced driver developer /and for someone more familiar with the code/ it might be a hint.

Last edited by Hailstorm (2011-07-11 10:53:48)

tista · 2011-07-12 00:50:54

Hi all.

Yesterday Alan had opened completely new userspace drivers for psb_gfx as 2D/3D!!

http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ker … id-ref.git

if any arch contributers were here, give it a try to cloning git and make packages.

tista · 2011-07-12 07:52:04

Hailstorm wrote:

I'm not using any login manager. By login prompt i just meant the default shell prompt. It doesn't seem to be related to X at all, even if i log in quickly and start X the same thing happens. The screen stays sharp for a few seconds after the boot process, and then it gets fuzzy as i explained above. I have a fairly minimalistic system so the problem could not possibly be caused by any eye-candy like a dm or a splash.
Now i timed it. It seems that something goes wrong about 30 seconds after loading the module. I started timing when the screen flushed during bootup and it switched to the native resolution. It doesn't matter if i start X or anything else, it doesn't even make a difference if i don't even log in. It just gets fuzzy after these 30 seconds and won't stop jittering.
And as i said, once it starts jittering, a reboot won't fix it but only a complete power off. I have no idea what to make of this fact but for a more experienced driver developer /and for someone more familiar with the code/ it might be a hint.

Thanks for your detailed report!
yeah I suppose that it might be the new issue. at least I have never seen such "ugly timer" on VT... so it might be caused the auto-detection/auto-configuration process of psb_gfx. yeah we knew psb_gfx had some hardware dependent problems in rarely cases... I would also try to track this issue down in the depth of sources. and talking to the developers, too.

Cheers.

Nekmo · 2011-07-15 02:56:39

Hi all

I managed to run the drivers EMGD in my notebook using kernel 2.6.39 and xorg 1.9 (the xorg 1.10 is not supported). I will explain the procedure:

1. You must downgrade Xorg from 1.10 to 1.9.
You can do this by adding the following repository:

[xorg19]
Server = http://catalyst.apocalypsus.net/repo/xorg19/i686/

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ca … Bxorg19.5D

You can also add packages you're missing from here: http://arm.konnichi.com/extra/os/i686/

Don't forget that you must freeze these packages in /etc/pacman.conf

IgnoreGroup = xorg

2. you must install the experimental version of EMGD with support for 2.6.39:
Download: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/ … a13.tar.gz
Reference: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/emgd-fix

In the future there may be support for 3.0.0

2.1 Extract the package, run "make" and then "make install" as root. You must own the kernel headers.

2.2 Finally, make a symbolic link as root:

# ln /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/emgd/emgd.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/emgd.ko

3. Now you put in your system libraries xorg.
Download: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/ … pa9.tar.gz
Reference: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/emgd/+packages

Extract, access the directory and follow these steps:

# cp -R lib/lib/* /usr/lib/
## (Note: At the time of this manual, the package has a lib directory inside another.)
# cp dri/emgd_video_drv.so /usr/lib/dri/emgd_video_drv.so
# cp dri/emgd_dri.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/emgd_dri.so
# cp drivers/emgd_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/emgd_drv.so
# cp etc/powervr.ini  /etc/powervr.ini
# cp man/emgd4.gz  /usr/share/man/man4/emgd4.gz

4. To generate the xorg.conf, there is a utility in Python (requires python2).
Download: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/ … hive-extra
Extract the archive, access, and from the root, run:

$ python2 src/emgd-xorg-conf.py

The output should be placed at: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

5. enjoy :-)

Any doubt ask.

Known issues:
Theoretically it is possible to watch videos in 720p using vaapi, but I've had the following problem:

$ mplayer -vo vaapi Sintel.2010.720p.mkv 
MPlayer SVN-r33161-4.6.0 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
162 audio & 354 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing Sintel.2010.720p.mkv.
libavformat file format detected.
[matroska,webm @ 0x9291600] max_analyze_duration reached
[matroska,webm @ 0x9291600] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (ac3), -aid 0, -alang eng, AC3 5.1 @ 640 Kbps
[lavf] stream 2: subtitle (unknown), -sid 0, -slang ger
[lavf] stream 3: subtitle (unknown), -sid 1, -slang eng
[lavf] stream 4: subtitle (text), -sid 2, -slang spa
[lavf] stream 5: subtitle (text), -sid 3, -slang fre
[lavf] stream 6: subtitle (text), -sid 4, -slang ita
[lavf] stream 7: subtitle (text), -sid 5, -slang dut
[lavf] stream 8: subtitle (text), -sid 6, -slang pol
[lavf] stream 9: subtitle (text), -sid 7, -slang por
[lavf] stream 10: subtitle (text), -sid 8, -slang rus
[lavf] stream 11: subtitle (text), -sid 9, -slang vie
VIDEO:  [H264]  1280x544  0bpp  24.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Load subtitles in ./
libva: libva version 0.32.0
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/emgd_drv_video.so
libva error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/emgd_drv_video.so failed: /usr/lib/libemgdsrv_um.so: undefined symbol: drmDropMaster
libva: va_openDriver() returns -1
[vo_vaapi] vaInitialize(): unknown libva error
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

To support VAAPI, install from Community "mplayer-vaapi."

Special thanks to:
- GMA500 Team: https://launchpad.net/~GMA500/
- Infestator: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 77#p941477
- sL1pKn07

Last edited by Nekmo (2011-07-15 14:36:43)

skottish · 2011-07-15 03:17:03

Nekmo wrote:

Hi all
...snip...

No offense intended, but blocking a group from pacman, installing replacement software from an unknown source, then manually making changes to the root structure in a machine? No one should do this.

Nekmo · 2011-07-15 05:30:03

skottish wrote:

Nekmo wrote:
Hi all
...snip...
No offense intended, but blocking a group from pacman, installing replacement software from an unknown source, then manually making changes to the root structure in a machine? No one should do this.

I have commented on how I managed to run my graphics card after upgrade to 2.6.39, everyone is free to do whatever he wants :-)

The danger is the same as using proprietary software (such as psb) and I have limited myself to update the solution of another user. The repository "adslgr32" appears in the official Arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Poulsbo) and Launchpad packs are the same team that makes psb packages that have been used in this same thread. There is a danger, but not so great. I understand that would be much better to make a PKGBUILD, but I have not had time. Sorry.

I just hope that this information can help someone in the same situation where I been.

Thanks

maevius · 2011-07-15 10:06:19

@Nekmo
That's just great! Thanks for sharing. We should change the wiki asap. It would be awesome if you could write a PKGBUILD though. As for the given repository above, it's the greek's community unofficial one in which I happen to be a maintainer.

So, I've been trying for the last week to make a repo with poulsbo-old (kernel<=.37, xorg<=1.9). Feel free to check it and report. I think it's good to have these many alternatives since we're stuck with this crappy driver. Our hope currently rests in Allan Cox who's trying to implement a driver in the kernel tree, but until that happens we should try everything we got.

apefish · 2011-07-15 19:38:14

I can confirm Hailstorm's jitter issue, I also get jitter a few seconds after it goes into native resolution. The jitter is on and off, usually off, but annoying when on. It's like rows of pixels get shifted or blanked for one frame, making things blurry and jittery.

Also, the whole screen seems to be shifted left one or two pixels such that the first column of characters gets shaved. Has anyone else seen this? I hope this is easy to
fix with some shift parameter somewhere.

As for X, startx works, but I get a blank grey screen. if I try to switch back to vc1-6,
They are all blank grey screens except vc1, which looks like it has my window manager drawn
on it at 640*480 but then smeared out as if the driver still thinks it's in 1366*768. It is
NOT stretched or modified at all, it is smeared; the first row of pixels on the screen looks
like a concatenation of the first and second rows, and a few from the third from the 640*480.
It is like X couldn't figure anything out and drew in 640 (usual behavior), but then
the driver is reading the framebuffer at 1366. I hope you understand what I mean.
anyways, is there anything I can do to make X draw correctly and stay on it's own vc?
As is, startx is point of no return and I have to hard power off, because I can't get to a text login to kill X.
X -configure fails complaining about xgi, vmwgfx, and something about symbol lookup.
This is all on a Asus eee 1101HA if that helps. Everything default, have not installed anything special.

EDIT: I got x working by adding xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf with:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "fbdev"
Endsection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device "Device0"
    Monitor "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Modes "1366x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Basically I explicitly told X it can draw at 1366.

So the only issue remaining is the 1 pixel shift and the jitter. The jitter I can live with, the shift is really bad.
I can even see the extra column of black pixels on the right. Should I file a bug report? (Where?)

Last edited by apefish (2011-07-16 06:42:40)

sl1pkn07 · 2011-07-17 15:46:06

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=50793
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=50794
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=50795
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=50796
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=50797

i'm upload packages for:

dkms-emgd : Driver DKMS for kernel
dkms-emgdbl : Driver DKMS for kernel to support control Backlight
xf86-video-emgd : Module for Xorg (using ONLY with Xorg 1.9 series) see Nekmo post
emgdui : GUI for control emgd driver
emgd-xorg-conf : program for create xorg.conf

all programs only for 32bits (except DKMS)

please. test it

greetings

Last edited by sl1pkn07 (2011-07-17 15:46:34)

dergachev · 2011-08-03 19:52:04

please. test it

Very very nice, just installed emgd from aur and it works so far.
That's what i've noticed:
1. Brightness control works, but brightness keys on my keyboard don't. Old psb kernel module used to add support for them, but now the keys don't even create any event when they are pressed.
2. emgdui doesn't seem to be working; something similar to this problem: https://bugs.launchpad.net/emgd/+bug/711151
3. 2d acceleration seems to be a bit slow; i even sometimes see windows filling themselves with background color from top to bottom when they appear. Is there any way to improve it? Probably some xorg.conf tweaking? In fact, the only problem is window resizing, but "don't show contents while dragging" doesn't help; it also affects only gtk apps (i'm using kde4); everything else is pretty fast, and this effect wasn't there when i was using the old psb driver.

Last edited by dergachev (2011-08-04 07:01:11)

dergachev · 2011-08-07 18:05:29

The gtk slowdown i mentioned in the previous message (the whole #3) depends heavily on the gtk theme you pick. It works well with clearlooks, only things like oxygen or qtcurve make it slow down.

peterjohnhartman · 2011-08-24 13:35:57

Hi, two quick questions.

First, what precisely is http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ker … id-ref.git ... I'm in the process of cloning it. Is it the same as what is in 3.0.3?

Second, I'm running psb-gfx from 3.0.3 and xorg 1.10. Things seem to be (finally) fine. However, I can't resume from suspend, neither from console nor from X. Anyone else experience this? All I do is

echo -n mem > /sys/power/state

I get a black screen upon resume

Best,
Peter

Arch Linux

#401 2011-06-08 17:03:08

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#402 2011-06-08 22:10:09

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#403 2011-06-11 17:37:21

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#404 2011-06-14 04:09:16

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#405 2011-06-14 19:34:22

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#406 2011-06-15 17:28:24

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#407 2011-07-05 01:22:44

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#408 2011-07-08 13:01:41

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#409 2011-07-10 15:46:18

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#410 2011-07-10 18:47:32

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#411 2011-07-11 00:00:26

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#412 2011-07-11 06:00:01

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#413 2011-07-11 09:22:05

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#414 2011-07-11 10:51:01

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#415 2011-07-12 00:50:54

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#416 2011-07-12 07:52:04

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#417 2011-07-15 02:56:39

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#418 2011-07-15 03:17:03

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#419 2011-07-15 05:30:03

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#420 2011-07-15 10:06:19

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#421 2011-07-15 19:38:14

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#422 2011-07-17 15:46:06

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#423 2011-08-03 19:52:04

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#424 2011-08-07 18:05:29

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

#425 2011-08-24 13:35:57

Re: Poulsbo aka Intel GMA500 drivers PKGBUILD

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