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Old 16th October 2021
shep shep is offline
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Default Most efficient approach to build new via openchrome video driver

I have an old, but still functional, laptop that is Via C7 based. The i686, single core 1500mHz cpu would take over a day to build a modular xorg.

Support for the embeded video was broken upstream 3.34 -> 5.0/6.0. A young idealistic programer made a number of commits which were to fix the issues:

https://github.com/freedesktop/openc...deo-openchrome

NetBSD/FreeBSD still use xf86-video-openchrome V6.0 while OpenBSD incremented to a slightly newer version (A developer had an x86_64 Via mobo and it fixed his video). Also in OpenBSD, the atheros wifi is broken but it does work in FBSD/NBSD. I'm mulling over testing in OpenBSD and if successful, replacing the wifi card.

My NBSD question is whether to approach this via Modular xorg or the Monolithic xorg? I would like to minimize time spent compiliing.. I'm willing to go the Modular route if it optimizes my chances of success.
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Old 16th October 2021
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I remember a number of years ago having openchrome on a computer (can't even remember which one off-hand) and yes, the video drivers were badly broken. It's nice to hear it may be fixed now.

As to your question, I'd start by doing a basic install of monolithic Xorg ... no need for any packages or configuration/customization. That is a very quick test with which you can run X. You will probably be able to tell very quickly if there's a video driver problem or not ... at least that was my experience back then. If there are problems you could consider if it's worth trying modular.
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Old 17th October 2021
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shep View Post
My NBSD question is whether to approach this via Modular xorg or the Monolithic xorg? I would like to minimize time spent compiliing.. I'm willing to go the Modular route if it optimizes my chances of success.
Binary packages for NetBSD are built against xsrc/native X, so anybody willing to minimize time spent compiling, and use precompiled packages, is better off performing a full installation with X and rely on the native Xorg distribution. Generally, it is recommendable for NetBSD users to simply use native X.

Modular Xorg is only useful for development (e.g. only get the XCB libs against which you want to link your packages); testing purposes (e.g. test the latest changes from pkgsrc-current which haven't made their way yet into the xsrc tree); on embedded systems and servers where you plan to build anything from source and reduce the size footprint of the system, by only installing the X bits possibly pulled as dependency by packages; to use pkgsrc outside of NetBSD (illumos, macOS, Linux, Minix). This is why things like synaptics and libinput get packaged even though NetBSD doesn't rely on them.
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Last edited by Sehnsucht94; 17th October 2021 at 05:13 PM. Reason: spacing
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Old 18th October 2021
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@ldOp It is broken with monolithic xorg. The screen comes up but has no definition, I'm trying to avoid building an entire modular xorg on a less-than powerful laptop.

Years ago, I had a xenocara sis-video driver that was broken and the developer walked me through rebuiliding just the sis driver in xenocara. I was looking for a guide on just rebuilding the video driver in the monolithic xorg.
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Old 18th October 2021
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@ldOp It is broken with monolithic xorg. The screen comes up but has no definition, I'm trying to avoid building an entire modular xorg on a less-than powerful laptop.
Since this is NetBSD ... would it be possible to cross-compile modular Xorg with the latest driver code on a more powerful machine? If the result of that still doesn't work then the answer is easy. But if it works, you could continue to look for a more efficient way to build just the driver.
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Old 20th October 2021
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Cross-compiling is new territory for me. I'll look in to it. Thanks
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Old 20th October 2021
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My experience with cross-compiling NetBSD was just doing the kernel. That was maybe ~ 7 years ago. At the time, I wrote a guide on how to do that, but never posted it. Looking at it again there are a couple of references that might be useful:

Cross-compiling NetBSD with build.sh (from the online Guide)

build.sh: Cross-building NetBSD (PDF by Mewburn & Green)
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Old 22nd October 2021
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The last real change for x11/xf86-video-openchrome is the update to v6, dated 2017 (which makes xsrc in -9 is in par with it), so how is modular X this supposed to fix the issue? Or do you mean to import OpenBSD's fixes by applying a local patch? I think I'm missing something
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Old 31st October 2021
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I was hoping to apply a local patch in the monolithic xorg. Basically have it use the latest version and adjust the checksums accordingly.
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Old 1st November 2021
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I was hoping to apply a local patch in the monolithic xorg. Basically have it use the latest version and adjust the checksums accordingly.
Oh, I see...nice! and best luck with that. You don't need to adjust checksums as long as you use LOCALPATCHES. A convenient way of making custom packages.
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Old 15th November 2021
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Some time ago there was an older dual core machine with a VIA chipset I tried to resurrect. In the end it was so slow that it was basically not usable - neither with BSD nor with Linux.
It made me realise that the only more or less usable option with that GPU would be Vista. Not sure if the Openchrome situation has changed by now, but it's really sad if a company like VIA does not care at all about opensource developments.
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Old 15th November 2021
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@bradley

I did manage to get it running with up-to-date software but not with NetBSD.

I initially tried the modular-xorg suggestion to build but infrastructure for xorg-server (llvm and cmake) was still grinding away after 36 hours. I noted that nycdn.netbsd.org had modular xorg builds but the pkgsrc I downloaded was out of sync. I did a Makefile/distinfo/PLIST generated a build that crashed with a libary mis-match.

I was going to try Crux, there are some archived i686 isos and the pkg build for xf86-video-openchome had not changed but I worried that additional packages would all have to be built from source.

What did work was Arch32. I found in the Arch AUR a build that used a git pull. Some caveats, kernel modesetting for video needs to be disabled.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/x...penchrome-git/
I modified it to pull the latest tag and the driver works. If you have a dual core board with Via graphics, it is likely x86_64 ( my package was optimized for pentium 4-32bit). You're welcome to the package build - PM me if interested.

In your case I would also give OpenBSD 7.0 a try. Frederic Cambus updated it to a more recent git tag to get it to run on his dual-core x86_64 board. If you're lucky, your board matches.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=155238665419616&w=2

Last edited by shep; 17th November 2021 at 03:07 AM.
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Old 16th November 2021
bradley bradley is offline
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Sounds interesting, thank you for the details. I wonder if something like watching a yt video in Chromium on a 32 bit P4 with Openchrome does work? That old dual core I mentioned was indeed x86_64 and I tested OpenBSD with Mate. The install went like a charm. The whole system was terribly slow though. I might go back to that machine some time later, thanks for the encouragement.
When I dig into the situation some time ago, it turned out there used to be one developer but in general that driver was still problematic.
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