Bug 8079

Created attachment 6755 [details]
xorg configuration file (mergedfb, agp, dri, glx)

Created attachment 6756 [details]
kernel messages

Can you try with the latest radeon ddx?  This may be related to keeping the CP
clock forced on:
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati.git;a=commit;h=4b1904017caa976c138594a86e75feaf470e72b5

Created attachment 6757 [details]
lspci -v

Created attachment 6758 [details]
xorg log file (no freeze because of glxgears running all the time)

The card is an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro 128 MB.

(In reply to comment #3)
> Can you try with the latest radeon ddx?  This may be related to keeping the CP
> clock forced on:
> 

nevermind.  looks like you are already using 6.6.2.

(In reply to comment #0)
> The system will not freeze. Not while glxgears are causing the cpu to waste
> resources.

FWIW, I doubt it's the CPU that matters but more likely the GPU. Tweaking the
driconf settings vblank_mode and fthrottle_mode may help reduce CPU usage while
hopefully preserving the same effect. Also, making the window smaller may
preserve the effect as well. I know it's still an ugly workaround, but maybe
this'll make it a little more bearable. :)


> Workaround: Changing various AGP and driver options will not make any
> difference, only disabling glx or setting BusType PCI will help.

So you've tried commenting out all AGP options, BackingStore, ColorTiling,
EnablePageFlip and DynamicClocks?

PS: Why do you set NoMTRR?

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > The system will not freeze. Not while glxgears are causing the cpu to waste
> > resources.

> FWIW, I doubt it's the CPU that matters but more likely the GPU. Tweaking the
> driconf settings vblank_mode and fthrottle_mode may help reduce CPU usage while
> hopefully preserving the same effect. Also, making the window smaller may
> preserve the effect as well. I know it's still an ugly workaround, but maybe
> this'll make it a little more bearable. :)

fthrottle_mode=0, vblank_mode=0: 100% CPU usage, but no freezes.
fthrottle_mode=0, vblank_mode=3: 0% CPU usage, even with big window. Freezes
after a while.

fthrottle_mode=1, vblank_mode=0: CPU usage is very low. After a few minutes,
both monitors suddenly go blank (switch off), keyboard is dead, I have to push
the reset button. Nothing in log files.
fthrottle_mode=1, vblank_mode=3: 0% CPU usage. Again, freezes.

fthrottle_mode=2, vblank_mode=0: System seems to run stable (testing for at
least 25 minutes now). But this is strange: CPU usage is at medium level (around
55-70%) at normal size. When I resize the glxgears window so that it becomes
smaller, CPU usage *increases* to around 80-90%.  Now I increase the window so
that it is bigger than the standard size. CPU usage goes down to 10-25%. I have
no clue why, this makes no sense to me. When I increase the window once more,
CPU usage will slightly go up again. A nearly full-size window will consume
about 50% cpu resources. However, the smaller the glxgears window, the more
responsive the other applications become; a bigger glxgears window makes
everything else become a bit slower.
fthrottle_mode=2, vblank_mode=3: 0% CPU usage. Freezes.

So far, fthrottle_mode=2, vblank_mode=0 seems to be the best option. I'm not
quite sure this is 100% stable though, but until now it works. If it freezes,
I'll report this of course.

I agree this is not a problem with the CPU usage, but it seems to be somehow
related to it. Generating high CPU usage without OpenGL applications still
freezes the system. Maybe, now at least we can narrow the problem to a specific
module? I actually don't expect it to be Mesa but I have no knowledge of these
things...

Is there anything else I could try?

> > Workaround: Changing various AGP and driver options will not make any
> > difference, only disabling glx or setting BusType PCI will help.

> So you've tried commenting out all AGP options, BackingStore, ColorTiling,
> EnablePageFlip and DynamicClocks?
Yes, but to be on the safe side, I've tried it again. It didn't help though.
These options are on when using BusType PCI and don't have any bad influence there.

> PS: Why do you set NoMTRR?
For no particular reason. I've just searched for solutions on various forums and
tried out all the options I could find. I have turned it off now, but it doesn't
make any difference either.

(In reply to comment #8)

> So far, fthrottle_mode=2, vblank_mode=0 seems to be the best option. I'm not
> quite sure this is 100% stable though, but until now it works. If it freezes,
> I'll report this of course.

Update: The system crashed with these settings while performing emerge --sync in
background on tty1.

> fthrottle_mode=0, vblank_mode=0: 100% CPU usage, but no freezes.
But this seems safe. No freezes even when emerging packages... so far.

Can you try setting AGP speed to 8x in your BIOS settings? This is reported to
help for people having similar problems in Ubuntu https://launchpad.net/bugs/67487
I wonder if this is the same issue, or if a new bug should be filed here for
that Ubuntu issue. (There is a lot of noise in that bug report, but it boils
down to 9200-9800 AGP cards.)

Sorry, I meant 4x (instead of 8x).

I just want to let you know that this was indeed a hardware failure. The ATI card exhibited the same issues on another computer, while a Nvidia card works fine.

Thanks for your help so far.