openSUSE 11.1, LibreOffice 3.3 and X server or ATI Drivers issue?

Hallo,
I have an openSUSE 11.1 64 bit, in an Athlon 64 with an ATI X800. I use the open source radeon drivers.
I discovered that when I work with OpenOffice 3.2 I had huge delays, that resulted to almost system freeze. I upgraded to LibreOffice 3.3 but still I have the same problem.
System is upgraded to the latest Evergreen packages:


xorg-x11-libX11-7.4-1.29
libreoffice-writer-3.3.2.2-1.4
uname -a: Linux peter 2.6.27.56-0.1-default #1 SMP 2010-12-01 16:57:58 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Symptoms: When I have to work with the LO Writer, after some random (mainly) actions, X takes 99% if system usage, keyboard and system are not responding.
I have noticed that actions that cause most of the time that behavior are:

  1. Trying to drag n drop the boundaries of a table or of the page
  2. Trying to doc/undoc a toolbar
  3. Trying to move a toolbar
  4. Changing a style.
    Also, I have the feeling that this is happening when I press the mouse button for some time when I perform the above functions.

The only way to have input on the system is to connect on it via SSH from another computer. Even if I try to go at runlevel 3, nothing happens. Killing all applications (either with -9 or just with a plain kill <PID>), all of them are stopped, except of X.
Reboot is not working, init 6 is not working, only the “shutdown -r -n -f” now works…

Any ideas?

I could not report earlier because I could not reach the forum (downtime?) Anyway, I switched back to my old ATI 9200 (and they use the same driver). The system now is absolutely slow under medium load, but it’s usable. I managed to finish my work just fine. So, either a hardware issue (Temp? How can I measure an ATI card temp?) or the combination is just bad…

On 06/06/2011 07:36 PM, tpe wrote:
>
> or the combination is just bad…

i just saw your post to our hardware forum pointing over here, and i
can’t really help you except to say:

yes, it could very easily be that the combination of software you have
on that machine is “just bad”…as you know openSUSE 11.1 is no longer
supported, it has reached End of Life…

yes, you also know that there is a project of volunteers of the
community who are making an effort to prolong the useful life of no
longer supported versions…

that info and the following is found on http://tinyurl.com/4aflkpy “As
this is the first trial it’s not fully outlined which scope of the full
distribution can be supported. The plan is to provide updates for as
many components as possible. The same holds true for the time period of
the support.” and “An update policy is not yet in place, but in general
it will align along the regular openSUSE maintenance policies.”

i’m really not sure exactly what all that means except maybe it means
that you do, in fact, have an unstable mix of software…

there is an invitation on that Evergreen page to communicate with the
Evergreen crew via their mailing list…since your help request has had
91 views and no help in almost a week, it might be best for you to chat
with the Evergreen folks…

maybe they can help you decided if upgrade to a supported version is
best, or not…


dd CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
via NNTP openSUSE 11.4 [2.6.37.6-0.5] + KDE 4.6.0 + Thunderbird 3.1.10
Acer Aspire One D255, 1.66 GHz Atom, 1 GB RAM, Intel Pineview graphics

  • When your gecko is broken you have a reptile dysfunction! *

The reason that I posted here is because I found a lot of issues with the specific card and older versions of X in Fedora and Ubuntu forums.
I would love to provide info to the Evergreen project, but I have 2 issues:

  1. I avoid Mailing lists (I don’t find them usefull for me), just a lot of emails.
  2. I don’t have the time right now to check various combinations, due to univrsity finals.

Anyway, on another note, it is encouraging to see that people do read posts and try to help, so thank you.

I’m using the default Gallium driver with nary an issue (12.1 x64) - it is, in fact, the least painful and best performing non-proprietary driver my HD5450 has ever seen. (And that was true back when I was running a Celeron DC E3400 with the same GPU, let alone with the Q6600.)

Some months later…
I decided to install an old proprietary driver. There are a lot of problems and artifacts on the screen but only after a screensaver is activated.

Now, I have perfect playback of youtube and 720p videos, although 1080p is not in question, of course.
And the problems with the LibreOffice, are solved. So, all in all, I still don’t believe on the OSS drivers. On the other hand, there is no power management or temperature control, as I was hoping to.
After 10 minutes of any action (even in idle), the VGA is so hot that it’s fan runs at full speed.

I will try to setup a newer kernel (I know, I know) and see if I can use KMS and if the video performance of OSS driver is better.

On 2011-06-19 10:06, tpe wrote:

> I would love to provide info to the Evergreen project, but I have 2
> issues:
> 1. I avoid Mailing lists (I don’t find them usefull for me), just a lot
> of emails.

  1. That mail list only posted 561 emails from 2010-10-26 to 2011-12-20.
    That’s a ridiculous amount of email.
  2. An email list is their communication channel. You have a problem with
    evergreen, so talk to them where they are, not where you’d like.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)