[arch-general] Latest Kernel Update Breaks kdm with Radeonhd (abterm of greeter) -- Requires Removal of xorg.conf

[David C. Rankin]

Guys,

I almost had a heartattack tonight when I updated my laptop and X died. I 
though "oh no, here we go again -- the intel story all over again..."

After update I did a clean restart and the first thing I noticed was the 
screen resolution changed (twice) during the boot process:

(1) First few lines ~ 640x480 regular text

(2) Arch console splash displayed, looked like 1024x768

::process a              [result]
::process b              [result]
::process c              [result]

(3) The something switched again and right justified the results:

::process d                                       [result]
::process e                                       [result]
::process f                                       [result]


Then when Runlevel 5 was reached and X started it hung and looked like it was 
frying my screen (started out blackscreened and then became progressively 
brighter until ctrl+alt+F1 to drop to console). I killed kdm (initially using 
kdm3) with /etc/rc.d/kdm3 stop and confirmed all was dead with ps ax | grep 
kdm.

Thinking it could have been a problem with kdm3 versus kdm, I tried to start 
kdm with /etc/rc.d/kdm start -- same result. X hung, same frying screen look 
ctrl+alt+F1 to drop to console.

Crap! Ok, then I decided to try starting X without an xorg.conf to see if the 
defaults would work. /etc/rc.d/kdm start -- same result. X hung, same frying 
screen look ctrl+alt+F1 to drop to console.

Alright, I killed everything off and tried the kde3 greeter with 
/etc/rc.d/kdm3 start -- Ha! It worked (I'm typing now)

Whatever is going on with the modules moving into the kernel, etc. there are 
some very nasty unexpected consequences for users. I am glad I was able to get 
the kde3 greeter to start X, but I suspect that if I only had kde4 installed, 
I would be dead-in-the-water. (I launch kde4 from the kde3 greeter)

An example of the errors.log messages I saw were:

Oct 16 16:37:15 alchemy kernel: ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-
APIC
Oct 16 16:37:15 alchemy kernel: ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
Oct 16 16:37:17 alchemy kernel: Intel AES-NI instructions are not detected.
Oct 16 21:14:39 alchemy kernel: ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-
APIC
Oct 16 21:14:39 alchemy kernel: ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
Oct 16 21:14:39 alchemy kernel: fb: conflicting fb hw usage radeondrmfb vs 
VESA VGA - removing generic driver
Oct 16 21:14:55 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_setparam_kms] *ERROR* invalid 
ioctl with kms radeon_cp_setparam_kms
Oct 16 21:14:55 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_init_kms] *ERROR* invalid ioctl 
with kms radeon_cp_init_kms
Oct 16 21:16:31 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_setparam_kms] *ERROR* invalid 
ioctl with kms radeon_cp_setparam_kms
Oct 16 21:16:31 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_init_kms] *ERROR* invalid ioctl 
with kms radeon_cp_init_kms
Oct 16 21:16:51 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_setparam_kms] *ERROR* invalid 
ioctl with kms radeon_cp_setparam_kms
Oct 16 21:16:51 alchemy kernel: [drm:radeon_cp_init_kms] *ERROR* invalid ioctl 
with kms radeon_cp_init_kms
Oct 16 21:16:56 alchemy kdm_greet[1905]: Cannot load 
/usr/share/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory
Oct 16 21:16:56 alchemy kdm: :0[1903]: Abnormal termination of greeter for 
display :0, code 1, signal 0
Oct 16 21:17:34 alchemy kdm_greet[1949]: Cannot load 
/usr/share/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory
Oct 16 21:17:34 alchemy kdm: :0[1947]: Abnormal termination of greeter for 
display :0, code 1, signal 0

So far performance is fine with the new setup. To be honest, I don't even know 
what driver is being used at the moment (I haven't had time to check. I 
thought I would get this post out in case some other radeonhd user is freaking 
out after update). I have captured the following information and I'm making it 
available to the devs if anyone is interested in what happened here. This 
laptop is an old Toshiba P205d (Radeon RS690M graphics card). The information 
I saved is: (hostname is alchemy)

dmesg.alchemy.txt
dmidecode.alchemy.txt
errors.log
everything.log
kdm.log
kernel.log
lspci.alchemy.txt
messages.log
pacman.log
Xorg.0.log
Xorg.0.log.old
Xorg.1.log
Xorg.1.log.old
xorg.conf

All of the files are contained in a bzipped tar archive at (~126k):

http://www.3111skyline.com/download/Archlinux/alchemy/alchemy.X.crash.tar.bz2

Each of the files can be accessed individually at:

http://www.3111skyline.com/download/Archlinux/alchemy/

Let me know if I can provide more information.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com