Bug 104640

Created attachment 46015 [details]
SaX.log

Created attachment 46016 [details]
xorg.conf

Created attachment 46017 [details]
Tarball containing the .inf files found on the vendor CD for the 920T

Hmm, the configuration file looks good to me. Matthias / Andreas do you know 
if we have such a Notebook here for testing ? I think this setup will come 
up very often so it would be nice to be able to test it at SuSE 

I have a similar laptop here, ask Coolo for it.

We have a T42p, I'll fetch it for tests today anyway. I don't know exactly
whether this is the same configuration, though.

I tested with T40p and it worked for me and Matthias except the 
MetaModes handling refering to Matthias radeon patch 

Well, it certainly did not work for me. Any hints on how I can reproduce this
for you so you can investigate it better? I'd like to start "from scratch", to
be sure you have only the needed info.

No need to provide additional info, MetaModes parsing is appearantly corrupt.
Working on that.

It is actually not the MetaModes parsing, but the SaX Screen Section / Modeline
inclusion code. I've reproduced the problem, we're working on that.

In the meantime you can circumvent the problem as follows:

Always call 'sax -r' with the secondary monitor *detached*. Only attach after
Xserver startup (if you're 'test'ing your configuration in SaX, a new Xserver is
started). This seems to be a limitation of the Bios, swapping Primary and
Secondary output when a monitor is attached, and you loose the internal panel
information then.

Enable dual view, configure the external output (monitor & maximum resolution).

Last but not least select your primary monitor and just confirm it (if it is
selected correctly, that is) or select your model and confirm it.

This worked fine on this T42p. Some lower resolutions are not selectable in
krandr yet, that is another bug.

If you do *not* enable dual view, the external output can create any signal it
likes to. I have seen no signal at all, perfect clone signals, broken
synchronization, noisy signals, and more. And combinations of that.

*** Bug 104597 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Ok, basically this boils down to:

- bug #104728 - you have to confirm the monitor

- SaX does not (yet) include some possible resolution metamodes

- maybe related to some patches of bug #61858:
  - radeon secondary monitor output is severely broken (unsteady image),
    if external monitor is attached and no dualhead is configured
  - radeon switches primary and secondary display, somehow disabling the
    detection of internal panels correctly

The primary / secondary monitor switching can be disabled with
  Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,AUTO"
Of course, this only works for laptops.

Some additional observations: the new radeon driver module also seems to mess
with the BIOS settings - after a reboot the bootup messages were suddenly
displayed on the external screen instead of the Laptop display. I needed to
reconfigure this in the BIOS (you can select the primary screen there), as
booting from the external display causes the kernel to complain about an unknown
video mode and asks me to select a VGA text mode instead (no Framebuffer on the
external display?).

Behavior changes again, if the laptop is booted with external monitor attached.

That the BIOS thinks the external monitor is now the primary is intentional, you
couldn't have a laptop just driving an external display otherwise.

However, the driver either seems to get confused about internal and external
displays (fetching DDC info from different plug than BIOS panel information).
And/or the backlight is no longer turned on. At least I couldn't get a display
on the internal display if I booted the machine with external display plugged
in, even with MonitorLayout option.

I also just checked, behavior of the drivers didn't change from 9.3 to now. The
old laptop profile also didn't add any MonitorLayout option for radeon. So no
regression. The behavior of the drivers is - say - suboptimal, though.

(In reply to comment #12)
> - maybe related to some patches of bug #61858:

Wrong bugnumber, should have been bug #76860

Dualhead still doesn't work in beta3 on my laptop :-( 
 
As a workaround, I'm using radeon_drv.o from SUSE 9.3 which works. 

Did you try to invoke 'sax2 -r' in runlevel 3, with the external monitor
detached?  If you then configure dualhead mode in sax and save it, and connect
your external monitor only *after* Xserver startup, does it work or not? If not,
please attach the new xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log.

Results after calling sax2 -r (with external monitor disconnected): 
- when the Xserver starts with the external monitor connected, the  
  laptop display is switched off - but I can move the mouse or any  
  window to it 
- when I start the Xserver with the external monitor disconnected (and  
  connect it later), it works 
 
This means I have to disconnect the external monitor *before every Xserver 
startup*. Sorry, but this is _unreasonable_. 
 
BTW: It worked in 9.3 without disconnecting the external monitor - what about 
taking back the changes done for 10.0? ;-) 

Created attachment 48266 [details]
xorg logs and xorg.conf (in a .tar.bz2) (system: Acer TravelMate 803, ATI Mobility Radeon 9000

(In reply to comment #18)
> - when I start the Xserver with the external monitor disconnected (and  
>   connect it later), it works 
>  
> This means I have to disconnect the external monitor *before every Xserver 
> startup*. Sorry, but this is _unreasonable_. 

But that's the current state of the driver. As I said in comment 14, the
behavior of the driver is suboptimal. Our major target WRT laptops are people
giving presentations, thus plugging in projectors during runtime has to work.
 
> BTW: It worked in 9.3 without disconnecting the external monitor - what about 
> taking back the changes done for 10.0? ;-) 

Unfortunately the only changes of the drivers we are aware of are added graphics
hardware. That's something we cannot take back! There is a lot of discussion
going on on xorg-devel and in the bugzilla about changes WRT display detection
in the radeon driver, but all patches I've seen so far typically make things
even worse.

So expect this to change in one of the next driver versions, but as long as
you're stuck with this driver (and it worked in 9.3) you can just copy the
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.o from the 9.3 Xserver to your new
installation. The ABI hasn't changed.

If you already got rid of your 9.3 installation, I can send you the file.

Closing this as LATER, because it sort-of works, and we currently cannot do
anything about the driver.

Can you please post the X.org bugzilla URL (with bug number)?  
 
 
BTW: I guess it's too much effort to ship a "radeon_old" driver. Or am I wrong  
in this point? ;-)  

Just search for 'radeon', and you'll get 91 bugs.

WRT dual head:               xorg #3621, #2273,
WRT DGA / monitor detection: xorg #2176, #3015, #1559
WRT FN+F7 switching:         xorg #2000
Special issues:              xorg #2069, #2674, #2074, #2157

Yes, you are right, it is much too much overhead shipping a seperate driver.

I have tried this as suggested (keeping the external monitor disconnected until
the X Server has started up) and this indeed works. I am seeing the same issues
that were reported in Comment #18 (internal display stays black, when the
monitor is connected during X server startup).

I must agree that it is a bit suboptimal to always having to disconnect the
monitor when starting up X - I hope the VGA connector on my Laptop will survive
this until the radeon driver is fixed :(

Let's hope this is fixed upstream soon. We don't have register documents here
right now :-(

You can just copy the /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.o from the 9.3
Xserver to your new installation. If SuSE Linux 9.3 worked on your machine, this
should do it. If you don't have a 9.3 installation, I can send you the file.

I finally had the time to look at the xorg bugs you mentioned (thanks for the 
bug numbers!). 
 
It seems nobody has added a comment that the external monitor must be 
disconnected at startup now - I'll do so at 
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1559 

The current CVS driver from bug #115283 has several issues fixed. You can
download it in compressed form from:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=49796

Please test this driver (replace the one in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/
after backing it up).

It certainly fixed this issue for me. Please test and report your outcome.

Tested that driver module and can confirm that it's an improvement! It now
starts up in dualhead mode, even if the second display is attached, the internal
display does no longer turn black. Great! Thanks a lot. I hope it's not too late
to make it into the final release.

It's definitvely not on the final release, because this driver is based on CVS
code, which probably will break other use cases. Especially as I heard of
several complains WRT CVS code and X600 cards.

SUSE Releases are always based on X.org releases, with several patches added. It
seems that we're missing one of the latest additions WRT monitor detection. I
don't think that we will identify this in time, and even if we did, it would not
make it into the distribution.

X.org 7.0 will fix the problem.
For SUSE 10.0 I'll create a Wiki entry with this driver attached for download.

Christian, this should work for you as well, please check.

> The current CVS driver from bug #115283 has several   
> issues fixed. Please test this driver.  
  
Unfortunately, it makes things even worse.  
  
The "good" news: when I start X with external monitor _disconnected_, it works  
- so this did not change (and is still annoying).  
  
The bad news: when I start X with the external monitor _connected_,   
- the laptop display is still swithed off (backlight also off)  
- additionally, when switching to tty1 (Ctrl-Alt-F1), the laptop display   
  stays black (but backlight is swithed on). This is a regression   
  compared to the driver from beta3 :-(  
  Typing "rcxdm restart" blindly after disconnecting the external   
  monitor brings the tty back.  
 
Note: I'm still using beta3. 

This is too bad :-(
Beta3 shouldn't have any differences to release WRT this.

Setting to minor, because it works with attaching monitor after Xserver startup.

For radeon display detection there exists a patch collection ('radeon
superpatch') which I'll compile tomorrow and attach for testing.

BTW - wiki entry is now
http://www.opensuse.org/Laptops_and_external_VGA

Tried the radeon superpatch. Unfortenately, it crashed hard (no ping) all
systems I tested it on, so I cannot really suggest trying it.

If we get better relations with ATI, we can try to debug these issues in the
mid-term future. But without having a reproduction of the bug in house, this is
almost impossible as well.

Christian, if the 9.3 driver works for you, continue to use it. The ABI hasn't
changed, so it should be running stable. There are too many changes compared to
current CVS code, no chance to identify monitor setup changes w/o register
documentation.

Closing this as FIXED, as the original reporter has his problem fixed.
Christian, please reopen if in the upcoming 6.9 or 7.0 Xorg release (which
Stefan will package for 10.0 as well as soon as it is ready) the problem persists.