Intel GMA 500 problems on Eee

[Colin Brace]

Hi all,

I have installed F11 on an Asus Eee PC 1101HA which has the GMA 500 chipset. After running yum for updates, I now have two kernels installed:

kernel-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586
kernel-2.6.30.9-90.fc11.i586

For the GMA 500, I installed the following:

Oct 28 00:28:57 Installed: psb-firmware-0.30-4.fc11.noarch
Oct 28 00:28:58 Installed: xpsb-glx-0.18-5.fc11.i686
Oct 28 00:28:58 Installed: libdrm-poulsbo-2.3.0-10.fc11.i586
Oct 28 00:29:46 Installed: rhpxl-1.12-2.fc11.i586
Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: system-config-display-1.1.3-2.fc11.noarch
Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: livna-config-display-0.0.23-1.fc11.noarch
Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: kmod-psb-4.41.1-10.fc11.2.i586
Oct 28 00:29:51 Installed: kmod-psb-2.6.30.9-90.fc11.i586-4.41.1-10.fc11.2.i586
Oct 28 00:29:58 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-psb-0.31.0-15.fc11.i586

If I boot the original kernel, X boots OK, only the startup complains about not finding "psb.ko". Ok, that makes sense; I only have the 2.6.30 version installed. But if I boot the latest kernel, the boot process hangs at some point after "Starting UDEV..." (no error message is displayed).

There are a few lines in the system log but they don't tell me much:

Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: psb 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] psb - 5.0.1.0046
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm:psb_do_init] *ERROR* Debug is 0x00000000
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: psb 0000:00:02.0: firmware: requesting msvdx_fw.bin
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: fbcon: psbfb (fb0) is primary device
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] fb0: psbfb frame buffer device
Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] Initialized psb 4.41.1 20090416 on minor 0

Can anyone give me some pointers on how to determine what is going wrong here? The Xorg log isn't much help. Also, is there a way of forcing the boot process to stick with text-only? Booting at run level 3 doesn't seem to do the trick.

Thanks.

[Kam Leo]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Colin Brace <cb@...> wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> I have installed F11 on an Asus Eee PC 1101HA which has the GMA 500 chipset.
> After running yum for updates, I now have two kernels installed:
>
> kernel-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586
> kernel-2.6.30.9-90.fc11.i586
>
> For the GMA 500, I installed the following:
>
> Oct 28 00:28:57 Installed: psb-firmware-0.30-4.fc11.noarch
> Oct 28 00:28:58 Installed: xpsb-glx-0.18-5.fc11.i686
> Oct 28 00:28:58 Installed: libdrm-poulsbo-2.3.0-10.fc11.i586
> Oct 28 00:29:46 Installed: rhpxl-1.12-2.fc11.i586
> Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: system-config-display-1.1.3-2.fc11.noarch
> Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: livna-config-display-0.0.23-1.fc11.noarch
> Oct 28 00:29:48 Installed: kmod-psb-4.41.1-10.fc11.2.i586
> Oct 28 00:29:51 Installed:
> kmod-psb-2.6.30.9-90.fc11.i586-4.41.1-10.fc11.2.i586
> Oct 28 00:29:58 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-psb-0.31.0-15.fc11.i586
>
> If I boot the original kernel, X boots OK, only the startup complains about
> not finding "psb.ko". Ok, that makes sense; I only have the 2.6.30 version
> installed. But if I boot the latest kernel, the boot process hangs at some
> point after "Starting UDEV..." (no error message is displayed).
>
> There are a few lines in the system log but they don't tell me much:
>
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: psb 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level,
> low) -> IRQ 22
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] psb - 5.0.1.0046
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm:psb_do_init] *ERROR* Debug is 0x00000000
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: psb 0000:00:02.0: firmware: requesting
> msvdx_fw.bin
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: fbcon: psbfb (fb0) is primary device
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] fb0: psbfb frame buffer device
> Oct 28 01:13:05 pollux kernel: [drm] Initialized psb 4.41.1 20090416 on
> minor 0
>
> Can anyone give me some pointers on how to determine what is going wrong
> here? The Xorg log isn't much help. Also, is there a way of forcing the boot
> process to stick with text-only? Booting at run level 3 doesn't seem to do
> the trick.

If you are complaining about the graphical boot screen just edit
/boot/grub/menu.lst and delete "rhgb" from the kernel stanza.

> Thanks.
>
> -----
>  Colin Brace
>  Amsterdam

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[Colin Brace]

Colin Brace wrote:

But if I boot the latest kernel, the boot process hangs at some point after "Starting UDEV..." (no error message is displayed).

I have since discovered that the Eee isn't actually stopping at this point. The screen flickers and then displays nothing. But the system continues to boot. At a given moment, I can even ssh into the Eee. According to ps, both gdm and X are running. But the screen is blank

As I mentioned above, the Eee boots the 2.6.29 kernel fine, Gnome comes up... only screen resolution is limited to 800x600 and there is no acceleration.

Any ideas?

[Chris Mocock]

2009/10/31 Colin Brace <cb@...>:
> As I mentioned above, the Eee boots the 2.6.29 kernel fine, Gnome comes
> up... only screen resolution is limited to 800x600 and there is no
> acceleration.

Can't help you, sorry, but you might find the wikipedia article interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500

To quote "Rather than being developed in-house, this core is a PowerVR
SGX 535 core licensed from Imagination Technologies. Since PowerVR is
not cooperative with the open source movement, this has resulted in
the dependence on outdated closed source Linux drivers."

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[Jurgen Kramer-5]

On Mon, 2009-11-02 at 17:25 +0000, Chris wrote:

> 2009/10/31 Colin Brace <cb@...>:
> > As I mentioned above, the Eee boots the 2.6.29 kernel fine, Gnome comes
> > up... only screen resolution is limited to 800x600 and there is no
> > acceleration.
>
> Can't help you, sorry, but you might find the wikipedia article interesting:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500
>
> To quote "Rather than being developed in-house, this core is a PowerVR
> SGX 535 core licensed from Imagination Technologies. Since PowerVR is
> not cooperative with the open source movement, this has resulted in
> the dependence on outdated closed source
>  Linux drivers."
>

There is a Linux driver for F11 in rpmfusion. It's only partial
opensource with closed bits for 3D support.


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[Colin Brace]

Chris Mocock wrote:

Can't help you, sorry, but you might find the wikipedia article interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500

To quote "Rather than being developed in-house, this core is a PowerVR
SGX 535 core licensed from Imagination Technologies. Since PowerVR is
not cooperative with the open source movement, this has resulted in
the dependence on outdated closed source Linux drivers."

Chris, the situation appears to be changing. See this article just published at Phoronix:

Is An Open-Source Poulsbo Driver Coming?
Posted by Michael Larabel on November 01, 2009

Intel's Poulsbo Linux driver is a bloody mess. The Poulsbo chipset is known commercially as the GMA 500 that's found in many netbooks as of late, but it isn't actually an Intel design but the graphics processor design was licensed from PowerVR. With that, there is no open-source driver but just an ill-maintained binary blob that is notorious among Poulsbo customers. The Poulsbo DRM, which is open-source but without any open-source client (driver), was previously rejected from entering the mainline kernel as well. The situation for Intel's GMA 500 on Linux is not good, but could this soon be changing?

We were tipped off this weekend that on YouTube are two videos (shown below) courtesy of the German NetbookNews.de that shows off Quake III Arena running in full HD on a Poulsbo netbook and a full 1080p HD film running off another Moblin-powered netbook. To sum up the video descriptions for those less experienced in German, Martin Mohring of the Linux Foundation was showing off Quake III Arena at 1080p on an Intel Atom Z-series netbook with a GMA500 graphics solution using "special drivers" that will come with Intel's Moorestown platform. This game was running at about 35~40 FPS with this Moblin system. The HD video sample was done on another Poulsbo netbook with a Z-Series Atom under Moblin, again using these "special drivers" for Moorestown. These videos were recorded at MobileDevCamp09.

Unless there was just too much (wonderful) Augustiner being drunk at this development camp in Munich, this would leave us to understand that there is some sort of new driver for the Intel Poulsbo coming out for Linux with Moorestown. For those not up on codenames, Moorestown is the successor to Intel's Menlow platform, which will launch late this year or early next year. New Linux drivers that run fast are one thing, but if the Linux Foundation is showing off this "special driver", we have to wonder if this Poulsbo driver will be open-source. If not, what is the Linux Foundation doing showing off binary blobs on Moblin? Only time will tell.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MA

See also the follow-up from a day later:

Intel's Special Driver For Poulsbo Uses Gallium3D
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg