Hard freezes of ThinkPad T41p (ATI Mobility FireGL T2)

[Valentin Schwamberger]

Jerome Glisse wrote on 30.01.2008 13:48:
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:22:30 +0100
> Valentin Schwamberger <v.schwamberger at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
>> Alex Deucher wrote on 28.01.2008 00:34:
>>> On Jan 26, 2008 8:48 PM, Valentin Schwamberger <v.schwamberger at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> whatever we have already tried yet, my T41p keeps to hard freeze (no
>>>> sysrqs, network, serial connection). So far we have tried an endless
>>>> number of xorg.conf options, several linux kernel versions, kernel
>>>> options, etc.
>>>>
>>>> As you can see from the subject it's an T41p with an ATI Mobility FireGL
>>>> T2 video card. The special setup, however, is the usage of a port
>>>> replicator (IBM portreplicator II) and its DVI output. As far as I can
>>>> tell, the system seems to run stable when I only use the local flat
>>>> panel (not absolutely sure, though). I also don't use it much, but it
>>>> also seems to be stable in windows.
>>>> Now the funny part is it sometime works stable for hours (once the
>>>> desktop was properly started it runs forever). But very often after
>>>> system start up, either the display doesn't come up and stays black (I
>>>> then have to switch to console and back to X and then it suddenly
>>>> works). This problem does more often happen, when the LID is closed.
>>>> The worst problems are the hard freezes, X is already started, login to
>>>> gdm was successful and the desktop is started, mostly at the end of
>>>> gnome initialization the hard freeze occurs.
>>>> The hardfreezes also happen on switching outputs with xrandr between
>>>> LVDS and DVI or after suspend to ram or on switching to the console
>>>> (required due to the other problem above).
>>> Remove all of the options you've tried in your current config.  Do any
>>> of these options help?
>>>
>>> 1. Turn off dynamicclocks.  just remove the option.  It's off by
>>> default.  you'll have to reboot after changing this.
>>>
>>> 2. Option "BusType" "PCI"
>>>
>>> 3. Option "AGPMode" "4"
>>>
>>> 4. Option "DRI" "False"
>>>
>>>
>>> Alex
>> Thanks a lot for your answer! I have tested all the options (and
>> different combinations too), but none of them seem to solve the problem.
>> The freezes still persist, especially when changing from console to X
>> and vice versa, but also when Gnome's desktop comes up. I tested with
>> git version from late December and with current git. This happens on
>> ubuntu 7.10.
>>
>> Any more suggestions? How can we debug this further?
>>
>> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Valentin
>>
> 
> Did you double check that dri was disabled ? (by looking at xorg
> log) iirc some xserver enable dri even with Option "DRI" "False".

Hmm. I think these are the interesting parts:

  valentin at t41p:~$ grep -i "\"DRI\"" /var/log/Xorg.0.log
  (WW) "dri" will not be loaded unless you've specified it to be loaded
 elsewhere.
  (**) RADEON(0): Option "DRI" "False"

This happens, as you said, with the option
  Option          "DRI" "False"
in section "Device" and with
  Disable         "dri"
in section "Module".

I (cold) started the ThinkPad some minutes ago, booted directly to gdm
and changed to the tty1, back to gdm, to tty1, to gdm and ... hard
freeze. I'm trying to get the log from the next freeze (see my reply to
Alex).

The problems seem to happen more often when booting with DVI set as
primary display (such that ttys/the console is shown on the DVI).
This is configurable in IBM's BIOS. It seems to work more stable when
booting with the LVDS as primary display.

I also thought that DRI would be related to my problems earlier.
Therefore I had disabled DRI for about 2 months. Unfortunately, the
freezes persisted also without DRI.
With DRI, there occur even more freezes. In contrast to the hard freeze
described above, SysRQs works then for these additional freezes (but the
hard freezes also occur, of course). I think the DRI-related
freezes can be prevented by
  Option          "AGPMode"       "1"
on my machine.

But today, I tried again
  Option	"AGPMode" "4"
as Alex recommended. No change.

Thanks for all your help!

Valentin