DaemonForums  

Go Back   DaemonForums > OpenBSD > OpenBSD Installation and Upgrading

OpenBSD Installation and Upgrading Installing and upgrading OpenBSD.

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   (View Single Post)  
Old 13th June 2010
dylanz dylanz is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 13
Default 4.7 Install on MacBookPro (Core i7): Nvidia GT 330M

The Broadcom chipset for the pre-installed wireless card wasn't supported, but I purchased an external rum(0) usb stick (Hawking HWUG1), and wireless is now working great.

Now, on to getting X to work properly. See below for the relevant part of the dmesg:

Code:
> dmesg
...
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 functkion 0 vendor "NVIDIA", unknown product 0x0a29 rev 0xa2
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
azalia0 at pci1 dev 0 function 1 vendor "NVIDIA", unknown product 0x0be2 rev 0xa1: apic 2 int 16 (irq 11)
azalia0: no supported codecs
azalia0: initialization failure, detaching
...
NVIDIA is mostly unsupported (and infamously unhelpful: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...ch/049749.html), and trying to find out if there is any way I can get X to boot up. When running configure on X, I noticed that it does list a slew of NVIDIA drivers, but of course, mine is not listed:

Code:
> X -configure
> startx
> cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
...
(II) NV: driver for NVIDIA chipsets:  RIVA 128, GeForce DDR, GeForce MX 460... etc, etc, etc.
(II) VESA:  driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
(I) Primary Device is:  PCI 01@00:00:0
(WW) NV:  Ignoring unsupported device 0x10de0a29 at 01@00:00:0
(WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found
...
Is there any where I can go from here? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm hoping to get X up so I can install a WM. Thanks!
Reply With Quote
  #2   (View Single Post)  
Old 13th June 2010
ocicat ocicat is offline
Administrator
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 3,318
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by dylanz View Post
Is there any where I can go from here?
Two points:
  • When posting dmesg(8) output, post the entire output. There may be additional details which can be gleaned without creating another iteration of messages.
  • However in this case, this isn't necessary. The configuration of X these days should always start with simply issuing startx & seeing what X's auto-configuration does. Most likely this will work. If not, try setting "vga". Section 11.2 of the FAQ will give additional details.
Reply With Quote
  #3   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
Real Name: N/A, this is the interweb.
Banned
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 2,223
Default

There is no "vga" X driver ocicat, not sure how good VESA VBE support is on the Mac either.

The open source 'nv' driver (xf86-video-nv) was maintained by an nVidia employee, but it only supported basic modesetting and 2D acceleration, recently they decided to drop official support for this driver.. and no new card families will be supported (..however your card may be similar to another, and you may be able to forcefully override detection!).

It's a GeForce GT 330M according to a few sources, which isn't in the driver, but the GT 230M is.. maybe adding ChipID 0x0A2A to your Device section, if this option isn't recognized by the 'nv' driver, you may have to do some source patching, but all of this depends on how desperate you are.

The reverse engineered driver 'nouveau' is not currently supported by OpenBSD, it may not ever be.. as the main DRI/DRM guy is opposed of the hardware.

Unfortunately you're just having some bad luck dylanz, it's unfortunate that this system did not have ATI or Intel graphics.. but try out my above advice and see how things turn out.

Good luck
Reply With Quote
  #4   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
dylanz dylanz is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 13
Default

Thanks guys, extremely helpful.

I played around with the xorg.conf, and unfortunately, it didn't recognize that ChipID (great idea however). After trying to hack around other configurations, I ended up setting it to "vesa", and it looks like it's actually supported quite well. I have a window manager running now, and simply need to start tweaking sync/refresh rates to solve some choppiness issues on window switching.
Reply With Quote
  #5   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
Carpetsmoker's Avatar
Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
Real Name: Martin
Tcpdump Spy
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 2,243
Default

You can't solve that problem by "tweaking sync/refresh rates", LCD screens work quite different from CRT screens, simply put: you can't/shouldn't touch those settings.
The choppiness you experience is probably due to the fact that vesa is a very basic driver, which leaves large parts of the card's functionality untouched. In other words: It's pretty slow.
__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
Reply With Quote
  #6   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
dylanz dylanz is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 13
Default

Thanks for the background Carpetsmoker. I'm going to leave my xorg configuration as is, to ensure I don't blow out any of the hardware on this thing. It's slow indeed... but, I'm not doing anything graphically intensive, so it will do the job for now.

(Side note: I'd actually like to get into driver development, so these issues are great to run into. Now I just need to find out how to get into driver development )
Reply With Quote
  #7   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
Real Name: N/A, this is the interweb.
Banned
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 2,223
Default

With the VESA VBE driver, nothing is offloaded to the GPU for acceleration.. it's just a dumb framebuffer, so rendering graphics will eat up your CPU time.

Driver development is a commendable goal, but unfortunately nVidia does not release documentation for their graphics hardware.. available drivers are reverse engineered, obfuscated, or proprietary.

Just a small note, the detection of an nVidia azalia(4) device is common these days, but unsupported, this is for using audio over HDMI cables, apparently it's being worked on though.

Last edited by BSDfan666; 14th June 2010 at 04:37 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #8   (View Single Post)  
Old 14th June 2010
dylanz dylanz is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 13
Default

Ah, very interesting. Luckily, the frame-buffering isn't "too" slow, so it's actually usable. I'm probably more susceptible to Van Eck phreaking now however (sorry, just finished Cryptonomicon the other day, and it's still on my mind!).

In regard to driver development, my interest is just in general, not specifically for Nvidia chipsets. I'd love to be able to contribute to creating or reverse-engineering some drivers for the community. I just need to start investigating the field and inquiring with some other driver people in the community to find out where/how to get started.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
trying to install php5-core Simon OpenBSD Packages and Ports 8 30th June 2010 02:20 PM
4.7 Install on MacBookPro (Core i7): bwi0 dylanz OpenBSD Installation and Upgrading 8 5th June 2010 06:07 AM
HOWTO: Install and configure NVIDIA drivers on FreeBSD tangram Guides 2 29th March 2009 08:23 PM
how can I get a core file out of this program TerryP FreeBSD General 4 25th February 2009 07:28 AM
Dual core and FreeBSD ViperChief FreeBSD General 13 2nd June 2008 08:30 PM


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:17 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content copyright © 2007-2010, the authors
Daemon image copyright ©1988, Marshall Kirk McKusick