CentOS - Nov 2015 - Centos 7, ATI card, 30" monitor

Well, I got my user back to being able to use his system, but I've still
got one issue: it's running on the VESA driver - there is *no* Catalyst
build for this monitor, for CentOS 7. From a lot of googling, nothing's
been done since the summer of '14 (lspci reports it as a FirePro V3900).

Any thoughts, or pointers, as to if/how I can get X - he's running KDE -
to see the full width of the monitor, not just about 4" less, or is that
not possible with the VESA driver?

      mark

On 11/3/2015 7:33 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Well, I got my user back to being able to use his system, but I've
still
> got one issue: it's running on the VESA driver - there is*no*  Catalyst
> build for this monitor, for CentOS 7. From a lot of googling, nothing's
> been done since the summer of '14 (lspci reports it as a FirePro
V3900).
>
> Any thoughts, or pointers, as to if/how I can get X - he's running KDE
-
> to see the full width of the monitor, not just about 4" less, or is
that
> not possible with the VESA driver?
did you try these?
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Linux+x86



-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

On 11/3/2015 8:11 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
> On 11/3/2015 7:33 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Well, I got my user back to being able to use his system, but I've
still
>> got one issue: it's running on the VESA driver - there is*no*
Catalyst
>> build for this monitor, for CentOS 7. From a lot of googling,
nothing's
>> been done since the summer of '14 (lspci reports it as a FirePro
V3900).
>>
>> Any thoughts, or pointers, as to if/how I can get X - he's running
KDE -
>> to see the full width of the monitor, not just about 4" less, or
is that
>> not possible with the VESA driver?
>
> did you try these?
> http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Linux+x86

oops, I meant, this link
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/workstation?os=Linux+x86_64#catalyst-pro



-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

On 11/04/2015 04:48 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Yep. They got nothing for CentOS 7. Btw, we got him the full width by 
> changing the cable, from DVI-I to DVI-D (dual link). Then he had to 
> change it back to not recognizing the full width of the screen via the 
> control ctr, because when it did, everything was distorted - circles 
> were ovals, etc. I suppose I'll get around to writing him a xorg.conf 
> at some time. 
Mark, with the FirePro V3900 the 'radeon' driver should be loading, not 
the VESA one.  Is xorg-x11-drv-ati installed?  I am running a FirePro 
M7820 in my Dell Precision M6500, and everything 'Just Works' with the 
xorg-x11-drv-ati package (and its dependencies) installed.  I even get 
triple monitor support at 1920x1200 while docked, using the dual 
DisplayPort outputs on the dock, on two 24" Dell monitors plus the 
M6500's 17" display.  For using a projector, the DisplayPort connector 
on the laptop works fine, even hotplug works.  I have been very pleased 
for the most part; there are a few artifacts in Thunderbird, like lines 
disappear until scrolled, but that might be a Thunderbird issue, and it 
doesn't happen often.

For my FirePro M7820, here's the lspci output:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. 
[AMD/ATI] Broadway XT [Mobility Radeon HD 5870]
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Juniper 
HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series]

Are you sure you're actually using the VESA drivers?  The Turks chip 
used in the V3900 shows as being supported ('man radeon' will give you a
list of supported chips).

Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see what's going on.

Wolfy is working on the latest Catalyst drivers for ELrepo for EL7 
(fglrx 15.9 as I recall).  There are some challenges, and the kmod-fglrx 
package is still in testing.  But as well as the open radeon driver is 
supporting my M7820 I'm not sure I want to change at this point.  There 
would have to be some compelling reason.

Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 11/04/2015 04:48 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Yep. They got nothing for CentOS 7. Btw, we got him the full width by
>> changing the cable, from DVI-I to DVI-D (dual link). Then he had to
>> change it back to not recognizing the full width of the screen via the
>> control ctr, because when it did, everything was distorted - circles
>> were ovals, etc. I suppose I'll get around to writing him a
xorg.conf
>> at some time.
>
> Mark, with the FirePro V3900 the 'radeon' driver should be loading,
not
> the VESA one.  Is xorg-x11-drv-ati installed?  I am running a FirePro
Yup:
rpm -qa | grep drv-ati
xorg-x11-drv-ati-7.4.0-1.20140918git56c7fb8.el7.x86_64

Note that, as I said earlier, it is over a year old.
> M7820 in my Dell Precision M6500, and everything 'Just Works' with
the
> xorg-x11-drv-ati package (and its dependencies) installed.  I even get
> triple monitor support at 1920x1200 while docked, using the dual
> DisplayPort outputs on the dock, on two 24" Dell monitors plus the
> M6500's 17" display.  For using a projector, the DisplayPort
connector
> on the laptop works fine, even hotplug works.  I have been very pleased
This is, according to what I google, a 27", and it's black for what
could
well be 1.5" on either side... which makes it 24"....
<snip>
> For my FirePro M7820, here's the lspci output:
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
> [AMD/ATI] Broadway XT [Mobility Radeon HD 5870]
> 01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Juniper
> HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series]
>
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
Turks GL [FirePro V3900]
02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
Turks/Whistler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6000 Series]
> Are you sure you're actually using the VESA drivers?  The Turks chip
> used in the V3900 shows as being supported ('man radeon' will give
you a
> list of supported chips).
>
> Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see what's going on.
Did. I am *not* going to paste in almost 3,000 lines (what a *useful*
logfile... NOT!), but the relevant lines, I believe, are
[    18.760] (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
[    18.760] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
[    18.760] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw"
[    18.760] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
[    18.760] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so
[    18.760] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    18.760]    compiled for 1.15.0, module version = 0.0.2
[    18.760]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 15.0
[    18.760] (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
[    18.760] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[    18.760] (II) UnloadModule: "radeon"
[    18.760] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[    18.760] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[    18.760] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[    18.760] (II) UnloadModule: "fbdev"
[    18.760] (II) UnloadSubModule: "fbdevhw"
[    18.760] (II) Loading sub module "vbe"
[    18.760] (II) LoadModule: "vbe"
[    18.760] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libvbe.so
[    18.803] (II) Module vbe: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    18.803]    compiled for 1.15.0, module version = 1.1.0
[    18.803]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 15.0
[    18.803] (II) Loading sub module "int10"
[    18.803] (II) LoadModule: "int10"
[    18.803] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libint10.so
[    18.805] (II) Module int10: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    18.805]    compiled for 1.15.0, module version = 1.0.0
[    18.805]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 15.0
[    18.805] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10
[    18.806] (II) VESA(0): Primary V_BIOS segment is: 0xc000
[    18.806] (II) VESA(0): VESA BIOS detected

Followed by many, many lines that begin with VESA.

That's why I said that at some point I was going to hand-craft an
xorg.conf. Do you know if there's a way to dump the current settings to a
file? I know I can do it with NVidia, but this is just KDE's
settings.
>
> Wolfy is working on the latest Catalyst drivers for ELrepo for EL7
> (fglrx 15.9 as I recall).  There are some challenges, and the kmod-fglrx
> package is still in testing.  But as well as the open radeon driver is
> supporting my M7820 I'm not sure I want to change at this point.  There
> would have to be some compelling reason.
Thanks for the info - I'm looking forward to that.

       mark