Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:10:11 +0100 Gary Jennejohn gljennj...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:08:31 + Matt Dawson m...@chronos.org.uk wrote: [1] I have three Radeon X850XT cards here which were, until the r600 import, the fastest 3D cards supported by FreeBSD's DRI subsystem[2]. While they worked, FSVO work, the humble GF 210 wipes the floor with them in terms of stability, ease of maintenance and functionality. I have a GF 210 and Xorg gets a signal 11 and dumps core when I use nvidia-driver (with kern.sugid_coredump=1). Trying to debug the cause is basically impossible because nvidia_drv.so is a binary blob with no debugging symbols (stripped). Luckily, nv_drv.so works and so I can at least use the card with Xorg, even if performance isn't exactly stellar. Just for the record it turns out that the signal 11 was apparently the result of having AIGLX (default) set for xorg-srerver. After disabling the option Xorg appears to be running stabily using nvidia-driver. -- Gary Jennejohn ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Tuesday 13 Dec 2011 22:21:55 Dieter BSD wrote: Matt writes: [The n]Vidia binary blob and the support from nVidia on the forums is generally accepted as a best-effort endeavour. Binary blobs are completely unacceptable, and there are multiple good reasons for this. There are advantages and disadvantages. I've already given one example of a binary blob that is integrated into the kernel for pragmatic reasons. There was ath_hal for a while. I'm sure if I look a bit harder, I'll find some more. iwi(4) springs immediately to mind. It's all down to weighing up the pros and cons. It's easy to become polarised on this issue but it really doesn't help when you are sitting in front of a box that you require certain functionality from that is sitting there flipping you the digital bird and stubbornly refusing to fulfil its general purpose computing remit. Given the choice between the not-quite-fully-derrierred OSS support of the Radeon [1] and Intel integrated devices coupled with lagging behind in the DRI2/KMS/GEM/TTM/Gallium alphabet-soup-eating contest due to other OS bias within X.org or the excellent quality of the nVidia 64 bit driver it's a no-brainer, especially when the portion of the driver that has the most potential for freedom and privacy breaches is supplied as source. I, for one, am not prepared to abandon FreeBSD over these issues, so a compromise was necessary. Christian Zander was very open and approachable while the amd64 driver was being developed and worked closely with the community to see that goal come to fruition. He also did an interview for the BSDtalk podcast to discuss the importance of FreeBSD support at nVidia. Do we really need to rehash this over and over again? No, no we don't. We pragmatists will continue to run what fits the purpose best for as long as the option is available and the idealists will continue to complain when they'd be better served by a release from that other OS such as gnewsense (a *very* apt name indeed) or similar that emphasises politics over function. There's no need for a discussion at all unless it's to point out to people such as the OP that there are options. Here in the FreeBSD world, such decisions are made by the user or sysadmin. It is never going to be the default but it will be made available as painlessly as possible for those who wish to use it. That's the key factor: Choice. We have it, it's not going away and nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head. It fits very nicely into the BSD ethos: Here's some software. Use or use not, there is no pressure. [1] I have three Radeon X850XT cards here which were, until the r600 import, the fastest 3D cards supported by FreeBSD's DRI subsystem[2]. While they worked, FSVO work, the humble GF 210 wipes the floor with them in terms of stability, ease of maintenance and functionality. [2] I'm not just blindly ranting, nor am I a fanboy; I have been through the gamut of graphics support on FreeBSD. if you want to know just how thoroughly I went into this, I wrote a full Handbook chapter on DRI a couple of years ago but didn't submit it due to it rapidly becoming outdated. You can view that here and make your own mind up: http://www.chronos.org.uk/handbook/dri.html -- Matt Dawson MTD15-RIPE m...@chronos.org.uk ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 14:22 -0500, Dieter BSD wrote: Have you tried setting your own modeline? I managed to get a crappy onboard ATI RAGE XL to do 1920x1080. (With help from some nice folks on the questions@ list.) I tried the modeline reported by the monitor without the x60.0. The monitor reports 1920x1080x60.0. Is there some syntax that will allow the Vesa driver to recognize it? tomdean ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Monday 12 Dec 2011 19:22:55 Dieter BSD wrote: Full support requires full documentation or full reverse-engineering. nVidia is openly hostile towards FLOSS, I don't expect any documentation from them in the forseeable future. AMD/ATI is working on documenting their chips, but seems to be concentrating on features for games, and never getting around to UVD (video decode) or GPGPU, etc. The only fully documented card I know of is the Open Graphics Project's OGP-D1, which is a PCI-X FPGA development card. It has linux drivers, but I suspect it doesn't have support in BSD. Just a quick comment on this: One of the reasons I choose FreeBSD over $OTHER_OS is that a lot of us are remarkably free of political encumbrance when we're trying to get things working, ergo the nVidia binary blob and the support from nVidia on the forums is generally accepted as a best-effort endeavour. When you're sitting in the living room setting up and HTPC with SWMBO looking on and making clicking noises and muttering things like the XBox can already do this stuff because of your dislike of decisions being imposed by large corporations, the ability to cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver make config make make install to get something that Just Works [TM] rather than trying to get around other people's political views can be the difference between violent rejection and passive acceptance. There are reasons why nVidia cannot release specifications, particularly on their PureVideo technology, which happen to be the same reasons AMD can't release theirs: They don't fully own those technologies. As it stands, I'm resigned to trading off full freedom of code for functionality. The important part, the interface between the kernel and the blob, is fully open in that you can see what passes between the two and ensure there's nothing freedom and privacy threatening going on. Idealism is all well and good, but general acceptance in the real world requires a certain amount of compromise. There's another example right in our kernel: The Highpoint RocketRAID (hptrr(4)) driver has a closed binary component. It's right there in the man page for all to see. -- Matt Dawson MTD15-RIPE m...@chronos.org.uk ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
Matt Dawson writes: There are reasons why nVidia cannot release specifications, particularly on their PureVideo technology, which happen to be the same reasons AMD can't release theirs: They don't fully own those technologies. As long as any of it remains closed, there will be speculation it is at least modestly in excess of what is covered by various contracts and NDAs (even after one factors in lawyerly caution). That may be a price a company is willing to pay (video cards on FreeBSD being a rather small market) but it does provide evidence for the avsolutists among us. Robert Huff ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Tue, 2011-12-13 at 03:33 +0100, Gary Jennejohn wrote: Try running ``make config'' and turn off Linux support, which is on by default. Works, thanks. Now, hurry, hurry UPS. tomdean ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On 12/13/2011 04:54, Matt Dawson wrote: On Monday 12 Dec 2011 19:22:55 Dieter BSD wrote: Full support requires full documentation or full reverse-engineering. nVidia is openly hostile towards FLOSS, I don't expect any documentation from them in the forseeable future. AMD/ATI is working on documenting their chips, but seems to be concentrating on features for games, and never getting around to UVD (video decode) or GPGPU, etc. The only fully documented card I know of is the Open Graphics Project's OGP-D1, which is a PCI-X FPGA development card. It has linux drivers, but I suspect it doesn't have support in BSD. Just a quick comment on this: One of the reasons I choose FreeBSD over $OTHER_OS is that a lot of us are remarkably free of political encumbrance when we're trying to get things working, ergo the nVidia binary blob and the support from nVidia on the forums is generally accepted as a best-effort endeavour. When you're sitting in the living room setting up and HTPC with SWMBO looking on and making clicking noises and muttering things like the XBox can already do this stuff because of your dislike of decisions being imposed by large corporations, the ability to cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver make config make make install to get something that Just Works [TM] rather than trying to get around other people's political views can be the difference between violent rejection and passive acceptance. There are reasons why nVidia cannot release specifications, particularly on their PureVideo technology, which happen to be the same reasons AMD can't release theirs: They don't fully own those technologies. As it stands, I'm resigned to trading off full freedom of code for functionality. The important part, the interface between the kernel and the blob, is fully open in that you can see what passes between the two and ensure there's nothing freedom and privacy threatening going on. Idealism is all well and good, but general acceptance in the real world requires a certain amount of compromise. There's another example right in our kernel: The Highpoint RocketRAID (hptrr(4)) driver has a closed binary component. It's right there in the man page for all to see. Very well said, and I agree 100%. I've been using nvidia exclusively for many years now, and their support of FreeBSD is one of the reasons why. The only thing I can add to your excellent text is that some of us in the FreeBSD community understand the realities of the business world, and are happy that companies like nvidia are willing to work with us within those limitations. Doug -- [^L] Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
John writes: As an open source developer I am in regular contact with developers from nvidia who support the nvidia driver on FreeBSD that they actively maintain. I wasn't aware that nvidia was maintaining an open source driver for their cards. When did this happen? Seems like this would have been major news. Matt writes: Vidia binary blob and the support from nVidia on the forums is generally accepted as a best-effort endeavour. Binary blobs are completely unacceptable, and there are multiple good reasons for this. Do we really need to rehash this over and over again? ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On 12/13/2011 14:21, Dieter BSD wrote: John writes: As an open source developer I am in regular contact with developers from nvidia who support the nvidia driver on FreeBSD that they actively maintain. I wasn't aware that nvidia was maintaining an open source driver for their cards. When did this happen? Seems like this would have been major news. Matt writes: Vidia binary blob and the support from nVidia on the forums is generally accepted as a best-effort endeavour. Binary blobs are completely unacceptable, ... to you. So, don't use them. No worries. Do we really need to rehash this over and over again? Nope. In fact it would be great if you just stopped. :) Doug -- [^L] Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On 12/12/11 06:22, Thomas D. Dean wrote: ASUS P9X79 Motherboard, Intel i7-3930K, Diamond Radeon HD 6870 Vide, ASUS VS228 Monitor. I have been looking for a video card that FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64 supports fully. Nothing, so far. If you recall, I had to use the Vesa driver with the existing card because KMS is not implemented. And, it seems not likely in the near future. My monitor reports several modes that are not supported with the Vesa driver. The ones I am interested in are 1920x1080x0.0, which I do not understand and 1920x1080x60.0. I want a 1920x1080 display. I need a video card that will support my monitor but not require KMS. Any suggestions? tomdean FreeBSD has fallen far behind the actual development of opensource drivers and techniques due to the lack of KMS and on the other hand the X11 developer seems to have forgotten that they have been called open in the golden years of UNIX. But now they have a narrowed down view that only focuses on Linux and its rapid, crappy development. AMD isn't a good choice anymore for graphics cards. I have used a lot of HD48XX and HD46XX and HD 47XX cards since two years now with the open source driver on FreeBSD 8 through 10. You'll be able to display all resolutions, but ending an X session will wind up the box frozen. This issue is with all cards we have from AMD as mentioned in the lab. From HD5000 on, it seems to exist no support for the GPU on opensource drivers. It is insane to recommend buying a legacy graphics card apart from HD5000 or HD6000. My recommendation would be to try nVidia. I started to equipt all FreeBSD boxes in our lab with GTX560Ti or GTX570. The nVidia native FreeBSD 64Bit driver is pretty stable and works fine. But for GPGPU purposes you need to have Linux, if you want to use that. We use dual boot options for that and feel not very lucky. At the end, a native 64Bit driver fully supported by nVidia is maybe a foundation for mor in the future in terms of broader support of all facilities on and of the GPU to be used and therefore I recommend buying an nVidia board. Regards, Oliver signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Monday 12 Dec 2011 05:56:31 you wrote: These are two different requirements. A fully supported video card would mean that you can access all the features of the video chip set. On 64bit FreeBSD, that pretty much lets out NVidia and ATI - neither release full docs or 64bit proprietary drivers for FreeBSD (though NVidia has been working on theirs). You'll need to try some other manufacturers chip sets. Um, no. nVidia and the x11/nvidia-driver port supports 6xxx series cards with full acceleration and VDPAU for 8xxx cards on amd64 and has done for quite some time. nVidia is currently the *only* way to go for fully supported graphics past basic DDX. Radeons can be coerced into some semblance of 3D support but there's no xvmc or stream decode support at all for us. fglrx has it, but that's Linux only and isn't as well supported as VDPAU on things like MythTV and mplayer. I have an HTPC running FreeBSD into a generic full HD 32 LCD and the el-cheapo GeForce 210 in that box with the ports nvidia-driver binary blob works fine with full 1920x1080 resolution over HDMI on amd64. It even supports the on-board Azalia (snd_hda(4)) capabilities of that connection so I don't have to faff about with speakers. F the OP's I: xorg.conf: Section ServerLayout Identifier X.org Configured Screen 0 Screen0 0 0 InputDeviceMouse0 CorePointer InputDeviceKeyboard0 CoreKeyboard Option AIGLX True EndSection Section Files ModulePath /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/ FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/ FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/ FontPath/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/ EndSection Section Module Load dbe Load extmod Load glx Load record EndSection Section InputDevice Identifier Keyboard0 Driver kbd Option XkbLayout gb EndSection Section InputDevice Identifier Mouse0 Driver mouse Option Protocol auto Option Device /dev/sysmouse Option ZAxisMapping 4 5 EndSection Section Monitor Identifier Monitor0 Option DPMS False Option DPI 80x80 # Some Chinese imports don't supply # the correct EDID information. DisplaySize695 390 # See above, same reason. EndSection Section Device Option AllowGLXWithComposite True Option RenderAccel True Option DamageEvents True Option TripleBuffer True Identifier Device0 Driver nvidia EndSection Section Screen Identifier Screen0 Device Device0 MonitorMonitor0 DefaultDepth24 Option metamodes 1920x1080@60 +0+0 SubSection Display Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section Extensions Option Composite Enable EndSection $ ls /var/db/pkg | grep nvidia nvidia-driver-285.05.09 nvidia-settings-285.05.09 $ pciconf -lv [...] vgapci0@pci0:3:0:0: class=0x03 card=0x chip=0x0a6510de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation' device = 'Nvidia 200 Series (GeForce 210)' class = display subclass = VGA hdac0@pci0:3:0:1: class=0x040300 card=0x chip=0x0be310de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation' class = multimedia subclass = HDA In /boot/loader.conf (to get HDMI audio running): dev.hdac.0.polling=1 hw.snd.default_unit=1 $ uname -m amd64 -- Matt Dawson MTD15-RIPE m...@chronos.org.uk ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 12:31 +, Matt Dawson wrote: I found a MSI N210-MD512D3/LP GeForce 210 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127603 Is this the kind of video card for xterm and gnuplot? This is about 1/5 the $ I paid for the Radeon. What I get for not reading the man page, and all the references, carefully. tomdean ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
Thomas D. Dean wrote: I have been looking for a video card that FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64 supports fully. Nothing, so far. Full support requires full documentation or full reverse-engineering. nVidia is openly hostile towards FLOSS, I don't expect any documentation from them in the forseeable future. AMD/ATI is working on documenting their chips, but seems to be concentrating on features for games, and never getting around to UVD (video decode) or GPGPU, etc. The only fully documented card I know of is the Open Graphics Project's OGP-D1, which is a PCI-X FPGA development card. It has linux drivers, but I suspect it doesn't have support in BSD. My monitor reports several modes that are not supported with the Vesa driver. The ones I am interested in are 1920x1080x0.0, which I do not understand and 1920x1080x60.0. I want a 1920x1080 display. Have you tried setting your own modeline? I managed to get a crappy onboard ATI RAGE XL to do 1920x1080. (With help from some nice folks on the questions@ list.) O. Hartmann wrote: FreeBSD has fallen far behind the actual development of opensource drivers and techniques due to the lack of KMS and on the other hand the X11 developer seems to have forgotten that they have been called open in the golden years of UNIX. But now they have a narrowed down view that only focuses on Linux and its rapid, crappy development. Is anyone working on KMS? ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:31:41 + Matt Dawson wrote: nVidia is currently the *only* way to go for fully supported graphics past basic DDX. Radeons can be coerced into some semblance of 3D support but there's no xvmc or stream decode support at all for us. fglrx has it, but that's Linux only and isn't as well supported as VDPAU on things like MythTV and mplayer. I have an HTPC running FreeBSD into a generic full HD 32 LCD and the el-cheapo GeForce 210 There's a useful table on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo It's probably best to avoid those in feature set A and B. I have a GT 430, which like the 210 has feature set C, and handles everything I've thrown at it. ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 22:46 +, RW wrote: ports/x11/nvidia-driver requires linux to install. Building the port works fine. Installing the port requires 'kldload linux' before the port will install. Seems like something is mixed-up. But, kldload nvidia also loads linux. I guess this means there is no native FreeBSD AMD64 driver, but, linux emulation of a driver. Or, do I mis-understand linux emulation? tomdean ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:50:00 -0800 Thomas D. Dean tomd...@speakeasy.org wrote: On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 22:46 +, RW wrote: ports/x11/nvidia-driver requires linux to install. Building the port works fine. Installing the port requires 'kldload linux' before the port will install. Seems like something is mixed-up. But, kldload nvidia also loads linux. I guess this means there is no native FreeBSD AMD64 driver, but, linux emulation of a driver. Or, do I mis-understand linux emulation? Try running ``make config'' and turn off Linux support, which is on by default. -- Gary Jennejohn ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:50:00 -0800 Thomas D. Dean wrote: I guess this means there is no native FreeBSD AMD64 driver, but, linux emulation of a driver. Or, do I mis-understand linux emulation? The driver *is* a 64 bit native driver. The linux support is there so linux binaries can get the hardware support that native applications get. As has already been mentioned, it's optional. ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Video Card for FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64
ASUS P9X79 Motherboard, Intel i7-3930K, Diamond Radeon HD 6870 Vide, ASUS VS228 Monitor. I have been looking for a video card that FreeBSD 9.0 (RC2) AMD64 supports fully. Nothing, so far. If you recall, I had to use the Vesa driver with the existing card because KMS is not implemented. And, it seems not likely in the near future. My monitor reports several modes that are not supported with the Vesa driver. The ones I am interested in are 1920x1080x0.0, which I do not understand and 1920x1080x60.0. I want a 1920x1080 display. I need a video card that will support my monitor but not require KMS. Any suggestions? tomdean ___ freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-amd64 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-amd64-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
