[solved] How to use AMD RS480M video card in Funtoo?

[bluephoenix]

I am installing funtoo in HP Pavilion laptop. I want to enable X in it but failed.

"lspci" show this laptop has a [AMD/ATI] RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200] video card.

I add 'VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"' in the "make.conf" and did the @world update. I installed "linux-firmware", "xorg-x11". But when I executed "startx" I got the following error message:

(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.

(EE) Fatal server error:

(EE) no screen found

I also checked the Xorg.0.log, but I can't find more useful information from which. So I will not paste it here.

I am sure the hardware is OK because I installed Xubuntu on the same laptop just before and I can enter X then. Just Xubuntu still consumes too much resource so I decide to turn to use Funtoo. But now I stick here. Any hint? Thanks so much!

[bluephoenix]

20 hours ago, jhan said:

The problem could be the kernel or the driver (besides something else).

Have a look at https://www.funtoo.org/Package:Radeon_Video_Drivers to see if it helps.

Hi, jhan, 

I discussed about how to compile kernel with you before. And now I have to face this issue again. Although this time I feel better than before, I still have the following questions about compiling kernel:

1. I feel funtoo's default debian kernel consumes more compiling time than gentoo kernel. Do you think so and why it is ?

2. Can I just go to the folder '/usr/src/linux' and run 'make && make install' and run 'boot-update' to accomplish the kernel update procedure? I used 'make && make install' in gentoo and I know 'boot-update' is funtoo's tool, I don't know if they can work together.

3. I don't understand the benefit of 'genkernel' than the previous method.

4. If I just fine tune a few option of the kernel, how to speed up the compiling time to the kernel. I feel it is not valuable to spend more than one hour to just change a little feature of the kernel.

[cardinal]

[AMD/ATI] RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200]  is ATI rage128 not radeon

rage128 is not supported by MESA

I recommend installing the generic vesa driver in addition to r128 as a backup.

Change

VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"

to

VIDEO_CARDS="r128 vesa"

emerge -avuDN @world

 

[bluephoenix]

Thanks everybody, since I have already get a working kernel and working X, I'd like to report my procedure here.

1. Clear the folder of '/etc/kernels' to let genkernel tool to use its default linux kernel configuration. If you leave this folder not empty, genkernel will use one configuration in the folder.  But the configuration in my folder leads to a bad kernel which cannot work properly.

2. I use 'genkernel all' to generate a new kernel by using genkernel's default kernel configuration. This configuration belongs to genkernel tool because its location is in genkernel installation folder. I think this configuration is different than the one which funtoo default installs because with funtoo's default kernel I cannot start X. The generated kernel works very well.

3. I didn't follow cardinal's advice. I just keep 

VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"

and everything is fine. I don't know why.

4. In my AMD Semperon 3000+ computer, I spent 3 hours to compile the debian kernel. I do think this exceeds my experience when I used gentoo kernel before. Probably I manually deleted many features before I compile gentoo kernel.