From: Chris M. <cme...@sp...> - 2004-05-25 19:29:08
|
Hi, When I originally built this machine, I picked up a Matrox G550 video card on the advice of several people who told me 1) that it was a very good 2D card (which is most of my work), and 2) that Matrox is the most open source-friendly video card maker. The second one mattered a lot to me -- I wanted to reward a company that reportedly tried to make things easier for the open source development community. Since I got the card, everything's been fine in 2D; but 3D use has been perilous, with repeated hard lockups. This card isn't designed to excel at 3D; I expected performance to be poor. But I didn't expect to have to stay away entirely from 3D intensive stuff for fear of locking up the machine. I went a while without reporting the bug because I didn't know enough to finger any particular component (kernel modules, X drivers). With Debian finally getting X 4.3 not too long ago, I upgraded; I still get the lockups during DRI-intensive stuff, but now at least I'm getting a diagnostic. Upon reboot, the old XF86 log is filled with "(EE) MGA(0): [dri] Idle timed out, resetting engine..." messages. Aha. So, I went ahead and filed a bug at Debian. They marked it upstream; so I filed a bug here, which got reported in dri-devel, about two weeks ago. When doing research for the bug report, I noticed a couple of other bug filings that seemed relevant; but I couldn't tell whether it was the same bug or not. One that seemed most relevant had been posted on the X.org bugzilla. I'm a bit concerned by the fact that my bug report didn't get an acknowledgement from anyone, so I dunno whether it got read or not; but more worrisome to me was that the similar bug posted on the X.org bugzilla had been posted over a month ago, and hadn't received any acknowledgement either. I've since learned that the bug reporting/tracking system for DRI is in a bit of flux right now; and that could result in people not really seeing the bugs. But I notice in the mailing lists a lot of discussion about fixing radeon and nvidia stuff, and not much discussion of mga issues. Maybe that's a measure of popularity. But nonetheless, all this makes me wonder: are the Matrox drivers still being actively supported? I'm not completely averse to changing video cards; I'd just rather not if I don't have to. I worry that it seems like I'm complaining; I promise I'm not. I'm tremendously grateful for the effort that the developers put into this. Even if the drivers are still being maintained, I wouldn't expect any fix to be quick. I'm just trying to figure out what the future is likely to hold, so that I can decide what my best course of action is now. If the support is still there, then I'm happy to wait for a fix to appear eventually. But if DRI support for Matrox cards is waning, then I wanna know that so that I can give up on this card and work on getting another, rather than wait for fixes that probably aren't going to be coming along. Thanks for reading all this, -c -- Chris Metzler cme...@sp... (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear |
From: Alex D. <ag...@ya...> - 2004-05-26 00:57:39
|
My G550 was always rock solid. you might try a new DRI cvs snapshot: http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Download Alex --- Chris Metzler <cme...@sp...> wrote: > > Hi, > > When I originally built this machine, I picked up a Matrox G550 video > card on the advice of several people who told me 1) that it was a > very > good 2D card (which is most of my work), and 2) that Matrox is the > most open source-friendly video card maker. The second one mattered > a lot to me -- I wanted to reward a company that reportedly tried to > make things easier for the open source development community. > > Since I got the card, everything's been fine in 2D; but 3D use has > been > perilous, with repeated hard lockups. This card isn't designed to > excel at 3D; I expected performance to be poor. But I didn't expect > to have to stay away entirely from 3D intensive stuff for fear of > locking up the machine. I went a while without reporting the bug > because I didn't know enough to finger any particular component > (kernel > modules, X drivers). With Debian finally getting X 4.3 not too long > ago, I upgraded; I still get the lockups during DRI-intensive stuff, > but now at least I'm getting a diagnostic. Upon reboot, the old XF86 > log is filled with "(EE) MGA(0): [dri] Idle timed out, resetting > engine..." messages. Aha. So, I went ahead and filed a bug at > Debian. They marked it upstream; so I filed a bug here, which got > reported in dri-devel, about two weeks ago. > > When doing research for the bug report, I noticed a couple of other > bug filings that seemed relevant; but I couldn't tell whether it was > the same bug or not. One that seemed most relevant had been posted > on the X.org bugzilla. I'm a bit concerned by the fact that my bug > report didn't get an acknowledgement from anyone, so I dunno whether > it got read or not; but more worrisome to me was that the similar > bug posted on the X.org bugzilla had been posted over a month ago, > and hadn't received any acknowledgement either. > > I've since learned that the bug reporting/tracking system for DRI > is in a bit of flux right now; and that could result in people not > really seeing the bugs. But I notice in the mailing lists a lot > of discussion about fixing radeon and nvidia stuff, and not much > discussion of mga issues. Maybe that's a measure of popularity. > But nonetheless, all this makes me wonder: are the Matrox drivers > still being actively supported? I'm not completely averse to > changing video cards; I'd just rather not if I don't have to. > > I worry that it seems like I'm complaining; I promise I'm not. I'm > tremendously grateful for the effort that the developers put into > this. Even if the drivers are still being maintained, I wouldn't > expect any fix to be quick. I'm just trying to figure out what > the future is likely to hold, so that I can decide what my best > course of action is now. If the support is still there, then I'm > happy to wait for a fix to appear eventually. But if DRI support > for Matrox cards is waning, then I wanna know that so that I can > give up on this card and work on getting another, rather than > wait for fixes that probably aren't going to be coming along. > > Thanks for reading all this, > > -c > > -- > Chris Metzler cme...@sp... > (remove "snip-me." to email) > > "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace > since I > have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear > > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ |
From: Chris M. <cme...@sp...> - 2004-05-28 05:12:18
|
On Tue, 25 May 2004 17:57:32 -0700 (PDT) Alex Deucher <ag...@ya...> wrote: > > My G550 was always rock solid. If you don't mind, can you elaborate on this? Do you still have it? With what versions of DRI/Mesa/XF86 did it work for you? What kind of motherboard was it sitting on? I would love for it to be stable in 3D, even if the performance were poor; it locked up on me again today, with nothing for it but the reset button, making three times in the last week; and always with the same (EE) MGA(0): [dri] Idle timed out, resetting engine... errors being written to XFree86.0.log. I don't know what's up; but I know I'm not the only one having trouble. My original bug report is in http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=954295&group_id=387&atid=100387 These three may be the same bug (no way for me to tell): http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=473 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=546281&group_id=387&atid=100387 http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=10571 . . .and googling turns up lots of people in various fora mentioning suspicious lockups with the G550 under Linux, but typically with very little info about the circumstances so they're not too useful. The only other thing I can think of other than a driver is a heat issue on the video card (my motherboard and cpu temps are fine). It's odd, though, that it always fails in the same way, and that I can still move the mouse cursor around OK. I'd naively expect a more spectacular, and stochastic, failure if it was heat -- not complaints from the DRI module every time.. But maybe that's wrong. > you might try a new DRI cvs snapshot: > http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Download That's up next. Thanks, -c -- Chris Metzler cme...@sp... (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear |
From: Alex D. <ag...@ya...> - 2004-05-28 12:33:12
|
--- Chris Metzler <cme...@sp...> wrote: > On Tue, 25 May 2004 17:57:32 -0700 (PDT) > Alex Deucher <ag...@ya...> wrote: > > > > My G550 was always rock solid. > > If you don't mind, can you elaborate on this? Do you still have it? > With what versions of DRI/Mesa/XF86 did it work for you? What kind > of motherboard was it sitting on? Other than occasional testing I haven't used my G550 in quite a while. As I recall, the last time I used it was under redhat 9. VIA KT133A based motherboard. OTOH, my G550 used to lock up all the time in windows. > > I would love for it to be stable in 3D, even if the performance were > poor; it locked up on me again today, with nothing for it but the > reset button, making three times in the last week; and always with > the same > > (EE) MGA(0): [dri] Idle timed out, resetting engine... I've heard of several people getting that message, but I've never experienced it myself. > > errors being written to XFree86.0.log. > > I don't know what's up; but I know I'm not the only one having > trouble. > My original bug report is in > > http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=954295&group_id=387&atid=100387 > > These three may be the same bug (no way for me to tell): > > http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=473 > http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=546281&group_id=387&atid=100387 > http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=10571 > > > . . .and googling turns up lots of people in various fora > mentioning suspicious lockups with the G550 under Linux, but > typically with very little info about the circumstances so > they're not too useful. > > The only other thing I can think of other than a driver is a heat > issue > on the video card (my motherboard and cpu temps are fine). It's odd, > though, that it always fails in the same way, and that I can still > move > the mouse cursor around OK. I'd naively expect a more spectacular, > and > stochastic, failure if it was heat -- not complaints from the DRI > module > every time.. But maybe that's wrong. > > > > you might try a new DRI cvs snapshot: > > http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Download > > That's up next. > > Thanks, > > -c > > -- > Chris Metzler cme...@sp... > (remove "snip-me." to email) > > "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace > since I > have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear > > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ |
From: Chris M. <cme...@sp...> - 2004-06-01 21:55:48
|
On Fri, 28 May 2004 05:33:05 -0700 (PDT) Alex Deucher <ag...@ya...> wrote: >--- Chris Metzler <cme...@sp...> wrote: >>On Tue, 25 May 2004 17:57:32 -0700 (PDT) >>Alex Deucher <ag...@ya...> wrote: >>> >>> My G550 was always rock solid. >> >> If you don't mind, can you elaborate on this? Do you still have it? >> With what versions of DRI/Mesa/XF86 did it work for you? What kind >> of motherboard was it sitting on? > > Other than occasional testing I haven't used my G550 in quite a while. > As I recall, the last time I used it was under redhat 9. VIA KT133A > based motherboard. OTOH, my G550 used to lock up all the time in > windows. Reading this, I realized something, and went back and checked . . . and indeed, we swapped email about two years ago over problems with a G550 (the "fullscreen tuxracer wavy/flickering" problem). >> I would love for it to be stable in 3D, even if the performance were >> poor; it locked up on me again today, with nothing for it but the >> reset button, making three times in the last week; and always with >> the same >> >> (EE) MGA(0): [dri] Idle timed out, resetting engine... > > I've heard of several people getting that message, but I've never > experienced it myself. I just tried a DRI snapshot; things got worse. The same problem, plus lots of other little issues before the lockup. Should I file a bug at X.org? I filed one at sourceforge, but that bugtracker doesn't seem to be used. Plus, this is with a snapshot (and thus current), rather than the DRI stuff contained in Debian's XF86 packages. Oh, one other question -- do the snapshots contain a bunch of debugging stuff, so that they'd run slower? OpenGL stuff involving texturing seems a lot slower with the snapshot, and I don't wanna mention that in any bug report if it's to be expected because of debugging code present. Thanks much, -c -- Chris Metzler cme...@sp... (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear |