On 16 Oct 02 at 17:33, Javier Marcet wrote:
* Petr Vandrovec [off-list ref] [021016 09:19]:
quoted
quoted
I patched my kernel with fbset-through-vt-2.4.19-rc5.gz,
mga-2.4.19-rc5-tvout.gz was already merged by Alan Cox on his tree.
However I get oopses often when using a console on my TV if I am playing
with matroxset & fbset, which I am right now as I am polishing some
scripts and default config files to include in the package for Gentoo.
I have just removed it from my kernel and I'll see if the oopses show up
again.
quoted
Make sure that you boot with 'video=scrollback:0' if you have more
than one head... It is also very dangerous to use 'fbset -fb /dev/fbX'
By more than one head you mean more than one physical card? Ot does my
G400MAX with its two heads count as more than one?
It counts as two if you are using /dev/fb1...
quoted
in multihead environment, because of PROC_CONSOLE() returns vt
number from the VT for the process, happilly passing VT initialized
by vga16 or primary head of matroxfb to secondary head. And secondary
head is certainly surprised if it is invoked on console saying
8bpp, while it supports only 16/32...
One strange thing I've seen though, is that I cannot use 'fbset -depth
xx' with xx other than 32 or I'll get:
'ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO: Invalid argument'
16bpp should work too on second head.
quoted
If you'll use 'fbset -fb /dev/ttyX', no oops should occur.
Whenever I try to pass a tty as argument to the -fb option I get the
same error I wrote above.
16bpp and 32bpp should work. Because of values in default /etc/fb.modes
are with 8bpp, you must use 'fbset 1024x768-60 -depth 32'. And if
you are using Debian (maybe it is problem with stock fbset, I did not
verified it), make sure that videomode 1024x768-72 in /etc/fb.modes
does not use 10224 as xres/vxres... Most of monitors and videocards does
not handle xres=10224 properly. You need dozen of megabytes vram to
use this mode...
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I tried matroxfb-vsync-irq-patch-2.4.19 too, but with it I cannot use at
all any board on my first PCI slot since the Matrox is using the IRQ.
What is the patch good for? I just have a crowded PC and no free slots.
quoted
I did not wrote that patch... Make sure that request_irq() is done
for shared irq, Matrox hardware has no problem with sharing irq, and
if irq handler in matroxfb-vsync-irq-patch is written correctly, it
should just work.
I know it is not a problem of the card itself, since without that patch
I don't have problems, but with it whenever a card on the 1st PCI tries
to use an IRQ, say a NIC card which is enabled by a 'if eth0 up', the
system blocks. No output, no sysrq, nothing, just a solid freeze.
Maybe that it enables IRQ on card before installing IRQ handler.
In such case nobody is going to clear IRQ in mga IRQ status register,
and your system is processing endless stream of interrupts. Buying
another CPU may give you chance to debug it. Or if you'll send
me pointer to the patch, I can review it...
BTW, of the other two patches available, what is the one quoted at the
top of this message for? I have removed it and since then I get no more
locks when heavily using my second head, which was specially sensitive
when doing lots of 'fbset', 'matroxset' et all.
Which one? fbset-through-vt? It should not change behavior of
fbset when using 'fbset -fb /dev/fb*', it just adds possibility
to use 'fbset -fb /dev/tty*' to set videomode on specific virtual
terminal. And it should not cause any behavior changes to matroxset.
If mga-*-tvout, it adds support for DVI-D and TV outputs available
on G450/G550.
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tvgetty.sh from inittab there aren't any kind of problems, but if I
launch it from another console, the first time works as expected, but
after the first one, not only console 4 changes of mode, but the console
I am calling it from also changes to pal mode.
I couldn't understand why. DO you see any reason?
quoted
Yes. Second time it will call secondary's head set_var with console
argument 0, because of PROC_CONSOLE() will return that...
Use 'fbset -fb /dev/tty4', and all problems will magically disappear.
I'm using
quoted
set -e
What is this for? emacs mode?
I use 'set -vi' :)
Stop on error... so in your case it will stop just immediately
after fbset will fail, instead of performing (now useless and
dangerous) second fbset, matroxset, and chvt.
quoted
con2fb /dev/fb1 /dev/tty8
This is the command less problems has given to me ;-) Simple code and
apparently bug-free :)
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fbset -fb /dev/tty8 1280x1024-60 -depth 16
fbset -fb /dev/tty8 -vyres 3276
I cannot do that, or else I'll get the 'ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO:
Invalid argument'. The only way I've found is to switch to the desired
vt, and run fbset there.
Do you have 16MB or 32MB device? -vyres 3276 will work only if
you have 8MB available for second head. With 16MB device maybe
only 7.9MB is available for second head. And of course, you must have
fbset-through-vt patch in your kernel, otherwise you'll get -EINVAL
too.
quoted
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Besides, if you read tvgetty.sh, you'll see a line with 'setfont'.
That's because without it I do not get 8bit mode on that console, and
thus can't see extended characters. Is it normal that I have to
re-run that kind of init scripts, which are system-wide (for all the
consoles) on my system, for the second head?
quoted
Probably. Console subsystem tends to load default font to the tty
on mode sets: look at fbcon_setup: it will find whether
some other VT on specified fb uses some font, then it releases
current font, and now, if it found some font in previous step
(i.e. at least two VTs use this fbdev...), it will copy this font
to the VT in question, otherwise it will try fbdev default font
(as specified by video=matrox:font:...), or system global default
font (fbcon_get_default_font()).
That was it, I have to change the font on fb1 at least once and it'll be
in effect from there on on any vt open on fb1.
OK.
Another question. To get a fast vertical scroll I have to run with a
bigger virtual yres than real's. Is this normal?
Yes. With yres=vyres you cannot use hardware panning, hardware must
always move full screen 16 graphics lines up. Even if MGA core
can transfer 1GBps, it takes some time to scroll 3MB (for 1024x768/32bpp)
up - to scroll out all 48 lines it is 144MB read + 144MB written...
Also, with fastfonts
enabled, it's terribly slow, while in the kernel documentation it's
stated than fastfonts is faster on Gx00 cards.
Has that anything to do with the scrollback you told me before? I have
not tried it yet.
No. fastfont should be used only on G200 (if anywhere...). On G200
you'll get about 10% speed gain, on older chips about 10% slowdown.
But (for unknown reason...) on G400 you'll get about 1000% slowdown.
Maybe I should rerun benchmarks listed in Documentation/fb/matroxfb.txt
also on newer hardware.
Anyway, thanks, and I mean a BIG thanks for your detailed quick and
prompt response. I wish I got such a nice help with a bttv/DVB cards
problem I cannot solve.
Buy me one... if it is terrestric digital broadcast, maybe I could
even receive some digital signal here.
Petr
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* Petr Vandrovec [off-list ref] [021016 18:02]:
quoted
By more than one head you mean more than one physical card? Or does my
G400MAX with its two heads count as more than one?
It counts as two if you are using /dev/fb1...
OK.
quoted
One strange thing I've seen though, is that I cannot use 'fbset -depth
xx' with xx other than 32 or I'll get:
'ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO: Invalid argument'
16bpp should work too on second head.
I can only use 32 bits. Don't ask me why.
quoted
quoted
If you'll use 'fbset -fb /dev/ttyX', no oops should occur.
Whenever I try to pass a tty as argument to the -fb option I get the
same error I wrote above.
16bpp and 32bpp should work. Because of values in default /etc/fb.modes
are with 8bpp, you must use 'fbset 1024x768-60 -depth 32'. And if
you are using Debian (maybe it is problem with stock fbset, I did not
verified it), make sure that videomode 1024x768-72 in /etc/fb.modes
does not use 10224 as xres/vxres... Most of monitors and videocards does
not handle xres=10224 properly. You need dozen of megabytes vram to
use this mode...
I have my custom fb.modes, indeed I'm trying to provide find some nice
default values to include in the package I'm writing for Gentoo, which
is the distribution I use, http://www.gentoo.org
Free and completely open source as Debian, but source based.
quoted
quoted
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I tried matroxfb-vsync-irq-patch-2.4.19 too, but with it I cannot use at
quoted
I know it is not a problem of the card itself, since without that patch
I don't have problems, but with it whenever a card on the 1st PCI tries
to use an IRQ, say a NIC card which is enabled by a 'if eth0 up', the
system blocks. No output, no sysrq, nothing, just a solid freeze.
Maybe that it enables IRQ on card before installing IRQ handler.
In such case nobody is going to clear IRQ in mga IRQ status register,
and your system is processing endless stream of interrupts. Buying
another CPU may give you chance to debug it. Or if you'll send
me pointer to the patch, I can review it...
You mean the patch that gives the problem or .. what? It's the
vsync-irq-patch on your ftp server.
Which one? fbset-through-vt? It should not change behavior of
fbset when using 'fbset -fb /dev/fb*', it just adds possibility
to use 'fbset -fb /dev/tty*' to set videomode on specific virtual
terminal. And it should not cause any behavior changes to matroxset.
Oh, I see. That's what I wanted to know exactly, what that patch was
exactly for. Now it's everything more clear :)
If mga-*-tvout, it adds support for DVI-D and TV outputs available
on G450/G550.
OK, I don't need that one but it's already included in -ac branch.
Maybe Alan agrees to include the fbset-through-vt one too, even if
Marcelo, or whoever, refused to include it.
quoted
quoted
set -e
quoted
What is this for? emacs mode?
Stop on error... so in your case it will stop just immediately
after fbset will fail, instead of performing (now useless and
dangerous) second fbset, matroxset, and chvt.
I'll add it then.
quoted
I cannot do that, or else I'll get the 'ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO:
Invalid argument'. The only way I've found is to switch to the desired
vt, and run fbset there.
Do you have 16MB or 32MB device? -vyres 3276 will work only if
you have 8MB available for second head. With 16MB device maybe
only 7.9MB is available for second head. And of course, you must have
I have 32MB device. G400MAX DH. The best one IMHO that matrox did of the
G4xx series.
Yes. With yres=vyres you cannot use hardware panning, hardware must
always move full screen 16 graphics lines up. Even if MGA core
can transfer 1GBps, it takes some time to scroll 3MB (for 1024x768/32bpp)
up - to scroll out all 48 lines it is 144MB read + 144MB written...
I see, then my assumptions were correct.
quoted
Also, with fastfonts
enabled, it's terribly slow, while in the kernel documentation it's
stated than fastfonts is faster on Gx00 cards.
Has that anything to do with the scrollback you told me before? I have
not tried it yet.
No. fastfont should be used only on G200 (if anywhere...). On G200
you'll get about 10% speed gain, on older chips about 10% slowdown.
But (for unknown reason...) on G400 you'll get about 1000% slowdown.
Maybe I should rerun benchmarks listed in Documentation/fb/matroxfb.txt
also on newer hardware.
Tell me if you wanna have results from other systems.
quoted
Anyway, thanks, and I mean a BIG thanks for your detailed quick and
prompt response. I wish I got such a nice help with a bttv/DVB cards
problem I cannot solve.
Buy me one... if it is terrestric digital broadcast, maybe I could
even receive some digital signal here.
Believe me, I would. But being a student with nearly zero income, I just
can't. Indeed, getting a different DVB card might give me some pointer
to where the problem is.
The thing is that without my DVB card installed on the system, I can use
the bttv analog TV card just fine. The kernel recognizes it as a 'WinTV
Go' - it's one of the two bttv cards I have over here -, and it works.
However, once I plug the DVB in a PCI slot, anyone of them, the bttv
card is not even recognized by the kernel.
With both cards inserted I get this out of 'lspci -v':
00:0a.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7146 (rev 01)
Subsystem: Technotrend Systemtechnik GmbH: Unknown device 0000
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 15
Memory at de800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
00:0c.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
Subsystem: Unknown device 0030:13eb
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at e1000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [04] #06 [0290]
00:0c.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
Subsystem: Unknown device 0030:13eb
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at e0800000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [04] #06 [0290]
Whereas if I remove the DVB card, the output is:
00:0a.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV/GO
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 15
Memory at e1000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data
Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2
00:0a.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV/GO
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 15
Memory at e0800000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data
Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2
The most strange thing is that in the past I know they worked under
Windows at the same time, and I believe I once made them work in Linux
at the same time. I've tried kernels from 2.4.18 to latest 2.4.20-pre,
I've come back several revisions of my BIOS, everything. They just
cannot coexist on my system at the same time.
When I try to use the bttv when it's not correctly recognized, I can
load the bttv modules and the card is found, yet If I try to use it, I
can only get sound and lots of SYNC IRQ problems with my SCSI card:
Oct 15 00:51:22 [kernel] bttv0: registered device video0
Oct 15 00:51:33 [kernel] scsi0: PCI error Interrupt at seqaddr = 0x9
Oct 15 00:51:33 [kernel] bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=12670014
Oct 15 00:51:33 [kernel] bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=12670014
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] bttv0: resetting chip
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] scsi0: PCI error Interrupt at seqaddr = 0x8
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=12670014
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=12670014
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] scsi0: PCI error Interrupt at seqaddr = 0x9
Oct 15 00:51:38 [kernel] bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=12670000
This is of course without having loaded any DVB driver.
All right, forgive me for the off-topic. I might make it somewhat
on-topic by saying that the errors above were using 'fbtv' which uses
the framebuffer to show the TV signal.
--
Javier Marcet [off-list ref]
Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus