Bug 99337 - No dual monitor with Radeon R7 240
Summary: No dual monitor with Radeon R7 240
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: xorg
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Driver/Radeon (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: xf86-video-ati maintainers
QA Contact: Xorg Project Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2017-01-09 23:50 UTC by Jérôme
Modified: 2017-01-10 22:45 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments
Xorg.0.log (88.55 KB, text/plain)
2017-01-10 21:35 UTC, Jérôme
no flags Details
dmesg output (53.05 KB, text/plain)
2017-01-10 21:36 UTC, Jérôme
no flags Details

Description Jérôme 2017-01-09 23:50:30 UTC
I have a Radeon R7 240 card with two HDMI outputs.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Oland PRO [Radeon R7 240]

When plugging a second monitor, I can't access dual monitor features. I'm using Mate's "Monitors" GUI and only one monitor seems to be detected, even when clicking "refresh monitors".

xrandr output:

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1080
default connected 1920x1080+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1920x1080      0.00* 
   1280x1024      0.00  
   1024x768       0.00  
   800x600        0.00  
   640x480        0.00 

The best I can get is a clone, with the display stretched on my widescreen monitor to get a 5:4 resolution on the video-projector.

Anything I can/should do? Is this known issue?

Someone seems to have the same issue with another card:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/326650/how-do-i-make-my-display-a-dual-screen-stretch-with-debian-jessie-and-a-radeon-r

I'm using Debian Jessie with recent kernel 

4.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.8.11-1~bpo8+1 (2016-12-14) x86_64 GNU/Linux

and backported mesa stuff if that matters (see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97827#c8)
Comment 1 Michel Dänzer 2017-01-10 01:24:44 UTC
(In reply to Jérôme from comment #0)
> xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
> Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1080
> default connected 1920x1080+0+0 0mm x 0mm

Output name "default" means you're not using the radeon driver but some kind of generic fallback driver. Please attach the corresponding Xorg log file and output of dmesg.
Comment 2 Jérôme 2017-01-10 21:35:10 UTC
Created attachment 128872 [details]
Xorg.0.log
Comment 3 Jérôme 2017-01-10 21:36:01 UTC
Created attachment 128873 [details]
dmesg output
Comment 4 Jérôme 2017-01-10 21:46:05 UTC
> Output name "default" means you're not using the radeon driver 
> but some kind of generic fallback driver. Please attach the 
> corresponding Xorg log file and output of dmesg.

I just attached both files.

I'm sorry if this is due to some misconfiguration of mine. I tried to search the web for the error messages in Xorg log to sort it out by myself, but to no avail.

From a forum thread [1], I understand that 

> Required kernel driver is not loaded. As a result VESA fallback 
> driver is used

But I don't know why this kernel module is not loaded.

In /etc/modprobe.d, radeonfb is blacklisted, but not radeon, and I read that blacklisting radeonfb has nothing to do with this and is the right thing to do [2].

BTW, I should mention that this computer used to have an NVidia card and used nouveau driver. After it broke, I changed for this ATI card and didn't do anything special to have it supported since xserver-xorg-video-* packages of all kinds are already installed in Debian, including the radeon one, and it all worked well, or so did I think.

Please redirect me to forums/StackExchange/anywhere if I'm wasting your time.

[1] http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/debian-change-resolution-4175593854/
[2] https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/501875-How-to-replace-fglrx-%28AMD-Catalyst%29-with-original-driver?s=7611ada51f704a46b6448961d51c9d87&p=2674872#post2674872
Comment 5 Alex Deucher 2017-01-10 22:13:09 UTC
Looks like you are missing the firmware package.  Please install that.  On debian, it may be called firmware-linux-nonfree.
Comment 6 Jérôme 2017-01-10 22:45:05 UTC
Oh, right. Back when I got the new graphic card, I thought I could do without it so I didn't install it.

Installing this solves the errors in Xorg.0.log and the dual monitor issue.

The Debian wiki [2] says :

> Proprietary, binary-only firmware (aka microcode) was removed from the 
> Debian kernel's radeon DRM driver in linux-2.6 2.6.29-1, to resolve 
> Debian bug 494009.
> The firmware can be provided by installing the firmware-linux-nonfree package.
> 
> Without this package installed, poor 2D/3D performance in the radeon driver 
> is commonly experienced. Some GPUs may require firmware to operate the X
> Window System.

I just added a mention to dual display.

In fact I spent quite some time searching for a 2nd hand card that wouldn't need proprietary drivers, and I thought this one would work with just the radeon driver (as per the feature support table [1]). I must have missed something.

Thanks and sorry for the noise.

[1] https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo#Firmware


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