From owner-freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 29 00:26:52 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 469DA694; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:26:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mueller6721@twc.com) Received: from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com (hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com [71.74.56.122]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E957823AB; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:26:51 +0000 (UTC) X-Authority-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=DqnUCRD+ c=1 sm=0 a=68NkTaeYMVLl2m++3813FQ==:17 a=i4YerQ4AwY4A:10 a=2nbQus8neRsA:10 a=DvSzqBOGy98A:10 a=pedpZTtsAAAA:8 a=ayC55rCoAAAA:8 a=KGjhK52YXX0A:10 a=alFmtWT1AaIA:10 a=6I5d2MoRAAAA:8 a=9eE5tM5AgMFw13IAlokA:9 a=c6gvhQW5lNsA:10 a=68NkTaeYMVLl2m++3813FQ==:117 X-Cloudmark-Score: 0 X-Authenticated-User: X-Originating-IP: 74.130.200.176 Received: from [74.130.200.176] ([74.130.200.176:58101] helo=localhost) by hrndva-oedge02.mail.rr.com (envelope-from ) (ecelerity 2.2.3.46 r()) with ESMTP id D5/8E-14028-4459E125; Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:26:45 +0000 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:26:44 +0000 Message-ID: From: "Thomas Mueller" To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ports/156405: x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati driver: no hardware rendering Cc: Matthew Rezny , Niclas Zeising X-BeenThere: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: X11 on FreeBSD -- maintaining and support List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:26:52 -0000 >From my previous post and Niclas Zeising's response: > > I had this type of problem with NetBSD 5.1_STABLE and 5.99.x even with native X that is part of the base system, as opposed to pkgsrc X. > I can't comment on how NetBSD does things, since I haven't used it. You aren't missing anything, judging from my experience. FreeBSD is decidedly more advanced. > > I could return to a text console in the dark and type "shutdown -r now" or even type the command to go back into X, successfully. > In general, this can work. It did last time I tested, but that was some > time ago so things might have changed. When I tried with new Xorg and KMS in 9-STABLE, my system froze immediately, not just the console. I finally managed to downgrade to the old Xorg after considerable difficulty. I'd like to try again on a new computer, with FreeBSD-current/HEAD (10.0 is in the not-so-distant future?). With 3 TB hard drive and GPT, I have plenty of space and partitions to experiment, and probably less hazardous than the stablest versions of NetBSD. > > With serial ports becoming obsolete, what can one use for or in place of a serial console? > FireWire. I haven't tested myself, but have a look at > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug-dcons.html > for instructions on how to use FireWire as a console. This still leaves the question of how to set it up in terms of hardware. I don't think there are any FireWire consoles. Would I plug anything into the motherboard's FireWire port? I just thought of FireWire-to-HDMI cable but haven't looked to see if these exist. > > Would it work to have two xorg.conf files, one with Intel driver and the other with vesa? Then could you go back to a working console when using the vesa driver? > Once you've loaded the KMS awawre kernel module, there is no way to get > the console back short of a reboot of the system. But would starting X with vesa driver load the KMS awawre kernel module? What about "xorg -configure" which I might want to do the first time? > > I've wondered (call it X acrobatics) how to switch between root and nonroot, and between window managers, without going back to text console. > You could try some sort of desktop manager, such as gdm or kdm. I've > not used them on FreeBSD, but on linux they make it possible to have > several users logged into X at once, and switching window manager, and > so on. As for root, it is generally considered a bad idea to run X as > root. If it's just a root terminal you need, you can always open an > xterm (or your favorite terminal emulator) and use su or sudo. > Regards! > -- > Niclas Zeising On Linux (Slackware) I was only able to have one user at a time using xdm. But I remember one menu item in KDE was konsole as root user (konsole is KDE's X terminal). On NetBSD, xdm completely failed to run. But I got some ideas from Gentoo Linux emailing list, haven't tried yet. Tom