Issues with Radeon driver in one of the latest updates

English Hardware
#1

I’m using Tumbleweed, and I keep it fairly updated (usually every day).

One of the latest updates seemed to have cause some problems with the video card (an ATI Mobility Radeon, quite an old model): there were many graphical glitches during the regular laptop use, and without anything fancy going on, just Chromium and Dolphin running. I accessed the virtual console with CTRL+ALT+F1 and this was what I got (sorry for the picture instead of a text log, but the screen became unresponsive and I could not get it):

https://i.imgur.com/SRqEcll.jpg

I rolled back to a snapper snapshot of a couple of days ago, and everything runs smoothly as usual.

If this is helpful:

~> LANG=C sudo zypper search -s radeon                                                                    
[sudo] password for root:  
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S  | Name                    | Type    | Version      | Arch   | Repository              
---+-------------------------+---------+--------------+--------+------------------------
v  | libdrm_radeon1          | package | 2.4.92-1.2   | i586   | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
i+ | libdrm_radeon1          | package | 2.4.92-1.2   | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | libdrm_radeon1-32bit    | package | 2.4.92-1.2   | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
v  | libvdpau_radeonsi       | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | i586   | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
i+ | libvdpau_radeonsi       | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | libvdpau_radeonsi-32bit | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
v  | libvulkan_radeon        | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | i586   | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
i+ | libvulkan_radeon        | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | libvulkan_radeon-32bit  | package | 18.1.4-202.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | radeontop               | package | 1.1-2.1      | i586   | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | radeontop               | package | 1.1-2.1      | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
   | radeontop-lang          | package | 1.1-2.1      | noarch | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss

How can I diagnose and solve this problem?

#2

A rather simple place to start is with the other FOSS driver, which should automatically be utilized after restarting the server or rebooting after doing:

zypper rm xf86-video-ati

First collect output from

inxi -Gxx

for posting here if it doesn’t help. After making the change, do it again. It’s not installed by default, so it may be necessary to first

zypper in inxi Mesa-demo-x
#3

Thank you and sorry for answering so late.

Here is the output of “inxi -Gxx” before uninstalling “xf86-video-ati”:

Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV610/M74 [Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT] driver: radeon            v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:94c8 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.0 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           compositor: kwin x11 resolution: 1280x800~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RV610 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.17.13-1-default LLVM 6.0.1) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.1.5 
           compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes

and after

Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV610/M74 [Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT] driver: radeon            v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:94c8 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.0 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa alternate: ati 
           compositor: kwin x11 resolution: 1280x800~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RV610 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.17.13-1-default LLVM 6.0.1) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.1.5 
           compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes

It seems that now the driver “modesetting” is used instead of the default “ati”; what are the differences between these two? How can i compare the performances / capabilities of both of them?

#4

For many the modesetting driver is more than sufficient, and in some cases outperforms the ati driver. Does using it eliminate the glitches you reported in your opening post? That would be reason enough for me to use it. :slight_smile:

This old utility might give a qualitative idea as well…

glxgears
#5

FWIW: Tw is updated by ‘zypper dup’? If not, only use that to update/upgrade.