[SOLVED] R9 280X - neither amdgpu or radeon enabled

[th24]

Hi all

I've just finished installing a fresh install of MX 19. I have 3 monitors, all plugged into the gpu ports. grub etc displayed fine on monitor 2 (main monitor) but as soon as I was autologged in, monitor 2 went blank and monitors 1 and 3 were mirrored. xfce4-display-settings reported seeing only 1 monitor, with the only resolution options being 1920x1080 or 640x480. The graphical performance was also extremely choppy and laggy. No options are listed for rotation and reflection, and the refresh rate is given as "0.0 Hz".

i'm not certain whether i need the radeon or amdgpu package, but

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lspci -k

reports both are there, but neither seem to be active:

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01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

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sudo modprobe radeon

returns

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modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'radeon': Invalid argument

and

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sudo modprobe amdgpu

causes a black screen which requires a restart.

I've also tried adding things like

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radeon.si_support=0
amdgpu.si_support=1

to MX Boot Options, but haven't had any luck.

inxi -G reports that vesa is being used as the display driver:

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$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: AdMD Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X] driver: N/A 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: vesa resolution: 1920x1080~N/A 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 256 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 

i'm not confident enough with xorg etc to try to fix this myself. The only files in xorg.conf.d are:

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$ pwd
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
$ ls
10-evdev.conf  synaptics.conf

Quick System Info:

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System:    Host: fractal Kernel: 4.19.0-6-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-6-amd64 
           root=UUID=9353e6ae-fcfc-4af1-b363-8c04e76bcc32 ro quiet splash radeon.si_support=0 
           amdgpu.si_support=1 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.1 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-19_x64 patito feo October 21  2019 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: H97-Gaming 3 v: x.x serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: F7 date: 08/03/2015 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4690 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Haswell 
           family: 6 model-id: 3C (60) stepping: 3 microcode: 27 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 27935 
           Speed: 3826 MHz min/max: 800/3900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3835 2: 3813 3: 3889 
           4: 3867 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT disabled 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT disabled 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, 
           STIBP: disabled, RSB filling 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X] 
           vendor: PC Partner Limited driver: N/A bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:6798 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: vesa resolution: 1920x1080~N/A 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 256 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.1 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 9 Series Family HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:8ca0 
           Device-2: AMD Tahiti HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7870 XT / 7950/7970] 
           vendor: PC Partner Limited driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
           chip ID: 1002:aaa0 
           Device-3: GYROCOM C&C type: USB driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid 
           bus ID: 2-3:2 chip ID: 1852:7022 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-6-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E220x Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Gigabyte driver: alx 
           v: kernel port: d000 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 1969:e091 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl 
           v: kernel port: d000 bus ID: 06:00.0 chip ID: 14e4:43a0 
           IF: wlan0 state: dormant mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 4.34 TiB used: 5.96 GiB (0.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Intel model: SSDPEKKW512G7 size: 476.94 GiB block size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> 
           rev: PSF100C scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST2000DM001-1ER164 size: 1.82 TiB block size: 
           physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> 
           rev: CC43 scheme: MBR 
           ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Hitachi model: HDS723020BLA642 size: 1.82 TiB block size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> 
           rev: AA10 scheme: MBR 
           ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Crucial model: CT256MX100SSD1 size: 238.47 GiB block size: 
           physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: MU01 
           scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 231.02 GiB size: 226.40 GiB (98.00%) used: 5.93 GiB (2.6%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/sdc5 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 7.45 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sdc1 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 53.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb http://iso.mxrepo.com/antix/buster buster main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 195 Uptime: 10m Memory: 15.57 GiB used: 1.28 GiB (8.2%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

[JayM]

First, welcome to the forum. Second, thank you for providing all that information including Quick System Info (QSI) in this, your very first post!

A quick peek at the specs of your motherboard show that it has an onboard Intel HD GPU, so I take it that Radeon Tahiti XT is an added PCI-E video card?

How are the three monitors connected? One each to D-SUB (VGA), DVI and HDMI?

Have you explored Settings/ARandR and see if you can set up your monitors there? If so, you can save the configuration as a script and add it to Settings/Session & Startup, Autostart Applications tab so it runs automatically when you log in.
Perhaps https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/4.14/display will be helpful as well.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

i'm not certain whether i need the radeon or amdgpu package

Your card should be using the radeon kernel driver, according to radeon(4).

Do you have nomodeset or any other kernel parameters that may be interfering?

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cat /proc/cmdline

This bug may be relevant: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/issues/854

But I think the dmesg output should show exactly what's happening.

[th24]

Thanks for the warm welcome :)

Yes, the Radeon is an external PCI-E card (the Intel onboard graphics have been disabled in the bios). The monitors are connected via displayport, hdmi, and dvi (the monitor on the dp is connected to the monitor's dvi port via an active displayport -> dvi adapter). I've run this exact setup on Xubuntu a year or two ago and it worked out of the box.

ARandR gives me very similar results to xfce4-display-settings aka Display (described in my first post) - there is only 1 output (screen) listed ("default"), and the same limited set of resolution options. when I run arandr in the terminal, i get the warning

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/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/screenlayout/xrandr.py:66: UserWarning: XRandR wrote to stderr, but did not report an error (Message was: 'xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default\n')
  warnings.warn("XRandR wrote to stderr, but did not report an error (Message was: %r)"%err)

the overall user experience is so laggy and stuttery that I feel something must be seriously wrong.

[th24]

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$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-6-amd64 root=UUID=9353e6ae-fcfc-4af1-b363-8c04e76bcc32 ro quiet splash

dmesg output is https://pastebin.com/TR9v1jeU

[Head_on_a_Stick]

dmesg output

Well the bus address for the card is listed so the kernel knows about it (and it even applies a quirk) but it doesn't load the radeon module, not sure why.

I suppose you could try adding radeon (on it's own line) to /etc/modules and then rebuild the initramfs:

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sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

But I have no idea if that will actually make a difference.

If it doesn't help then please post back with a link to the X.Org log. Thanks!

[th24]

when adding 'radeon' to /etc/modules and rebuilding initramfs, the following error flashes up for a second or two after rebooting:

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[drm:radeon_init [radeon]] *ERROR* No UMS support in radeon module!

contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log at https://pastebin.com/2jXYHH6P

EDIT: after quickly googling the UMS error, i added radeon.modeset=1 to MX Boot Options as suggested as at https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... eon-module. it looks like this has helped - the error does not re-appear, and the overall performance is much better. However, radeon is still not reported as being in use in lspci -k:

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01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

and inxi -G still reports vesa as the display driver:

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Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X] driver: N/A 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: vesa resolution: 1920x1080~N/A 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 256 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 

(i just noticed 'N/A' as the device driver above... is that a concern?)

xfce4-display-settings and arandr do not detect any more monitors or give me any more options.

furthermore, attempting to run modprobe radeon does not return any errors, but it also doesn't seem to alter the output of lspci -k or inxi -G.

[kmathern]

...radeon is still not reported as being in use in lspci -k:

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01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

You could maybe try these options.

To use amdgpu driver:

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amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0

To use radeon driver:

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amdgpu.si_support=0 radeon.si_support=1

I wouldn't bother using MX Boot options when trying them, I would just type them in while at the grub screen (press 'e', add the options to the linux line {for radeon remove the radeon.modeset=1 option if it's present}, then press f10 to boot)

[timkb4cq]

Other reports on the 'net from folks who got your card working properly in linux indicate this set of grub parameters is required for the amdgpu driver to work. The radeon driver support for your card is poor so amdgpu is preferred.

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radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.modeset=0

[th24]

after trying various different combinations of kernel parameters and not getting anywhere, i noticed that when booting up the liveusb that everything looked ok - radeon was enabled and working fine, and all monitors were detected. i thought i may as well try a fresh install to see if it helped, and lo and behold everything was fine:

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01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
	Kernel driver in use: radeon
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

perhaps something got corrupted during the install? sorry for wasting everyone's time!