Lucid - radeon kms causes iwl3945 to drop connection on youtube but not with mainline

Several Launchpad bug reports in process report radeon KMS conflicts with Intel wifi and audio output, causing wireless to hang/drop until power cycle and audio to crackle during any high GPU load. Disabling KMS as a workaround returns normal system operation.

Relevant Launchpad reports:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/564376
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/578342
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/571770
And one on Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15912

My own hardware is a Thinkpad T60 with Radeon X1400 and Intel wireless (iwl3945 driver) running vanilla Ubuntu 10.04. Users of Radeon X1250, X1300, and Xpress 200M chipsets have also reported the same behavior, on Lenovo, Dell and LG laptops. Using a mainline kernel does not change the behavior.

This may possibly be due to a difference in PCI configuration between KMS and UMS, they use different IRQs for "Pin A" as detailed in the Bugzilla report linked above.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide! And thanks for all your hard work!

Confirming this one, Thinkpad Z61m, ATI X1400. However, the IRQ difference does not seem to matter for the audio problems (I've tested with radeon KMS both with and without MSI, which is the difference between the two PCI configs listed in bug at https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15912).

Is there an option in your bios to assign different irqs to different pci devices? Some systems set every device to the same irq.

I don't think it is directly an IRQ issue that can be solved in the BIOS.
Because on my girlfriend's laptop which is also hit by this problem the radeon takes IRQ 17 with IO-APIC-fasteoi and hda_intel takes IRQ 24 with PCI-MSI-edge

Created attachment 48007
dmesg from Ubuntu 11.04 - unaffected

Created attachment 48008
dmesg from Fedora 15 - affected

I've added dmesg output from Ubuntu 11.04 which is not affected with the bug (at least on my laptop - Thinkpad T60, 2623P2U, X1300) and Fedora 15 which does have the problem. Unless I missed something, the only relevant difference is DRM version reported, which is 2.8 for Ubuntu and 2.10 for Fedora (how come that's possible is another question).
So far, the following does not help:
- disp_priority=1
- agpmode=1
- gartsize=64
- dynclks=0

(In reply to comment #45)

Dynamic Powermanagement is disabled here (powermanagement profile is fixed to "default", what means, that all pcie lines stay allways enabled).

I played a bit with power_profile settings and it turns our that whenever profile is set to high, mid, sound stuttering is pronounced. Yet, once set to low, stuttering is gone (or unnoticeable).
If anyone wants to try (adjust path to suit your hardware):
echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
Then the actual frequency can be verified by:
cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info

Also dynpm power_method does not really work, there was another bug report recenty that the frequency is never lowered if dynpm is used.

Additionally, given the recent fuss about pcie_aspm=force (and possible effect on PCIe), sound stuttering is present regardless of the setting.

(In reply to comment #50)
> I played a bit with power_profile settings and it turns our that whenever
> profile is set to high, mid, sound stuttering is pronounced. Yet, once set to
> low, stuttering is gone (or unnoticeable).
> If anyone wants to try (adjust path to suit your hardware):
> echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
> Then the actual frequency can be verified by:
> cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info

Confirming this on ATI X1400 mobile, Ubuntu 11.04 x86. When using the "low" power profile, audio stuttering/crackling is much less prevalent (or maybe not even noticable) in Youtube fullscreen vids. Using the "high" setting results in definite audio crackling when switching to fullscreen. This is with the very latest Flashplayer 11 beta for Linux released today.

On my card, low setting results in:
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
default engine clock: 392000 kHz
current engine clock: 128250 kHz
default memory clock: 350000 kHz
current memory clock: 135000 kHz
PCIE lanes: 1

High setting gives:
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
default engine clock: 392000 kHz
current engine clock: 391500 kHz
default memory clock: 350000 kHz
current memory clock: 342000 kHz
PCIE lanes: 0

There's a difference not only in board frequencies, but also the PCIE lanes number (0 means full throttle, or is "more performant" than 1 I guess ??).

(In reply to comment #51)
> There's a difference not only in board frequencies, but also the PCIE lanes
> number (0 means full throttle, or is "more performant" than 1 I guess ??).

The PCIe lanes information seems to be read from the card itself (at least that's for RV515), look here:
http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.39/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r300.c#L553
While 1 is understandable (PCIe x1), 0 value is confusing and I can't tell if that'x x16 or not. Maybe one of the driver authorsa can provide some input.

I've failed to locate any docs that contain information on the registers exposed on the PCI.

Does adding noapic to the kernel commandline in grub help? See the last few comments in bug 37679.

(In reply to comment #53)
> Does adding noapic to the kernel commandline in grub help? See the last few
> comments in bug 37679.
No, it seems to have no effect on the problem, at least on my setup.

I'd like the importance of this bug being corrected to 'major' because disabling KMS in fact means a major loss of functionality. I'm now on kernel 2.6.40 and sadly this heavy bug still is there.

I skipped form Windows to Linux, mainly because the ATI Driver for the x1400 in my Thinkpad T60 (with iwl3945 od course) is crap.Now having tried many different distributions and kernels, i can confirm the bug still is there, and is making the notebook unusable. There's no 3D acceleration available at all on this GPU with KMS disabled. When playing a flash video it needs about 30 seconds fpr reaction if I clock some control with the mouse. Compiz or DirectX in Wine aren't working at all, and make the display crash. The GPU is wasting much energy and the notebook is running very hot, and overall just sluggish and not enjoyable in any fashion, I'd rather use my old Pentium M notebook, if it wasn't defective.

Please consider creating a solution fot this problem, as there's no single alternative for many Notebook owners, of expecially good notebooks (Thinkpad, Dell and more).

Problems with KMS enabled remain as before:
-iwl3945 WLAN gets slower and slower, until disconnect.
-heavy video (especially fullscreen) make the sound stutter in a fashion that makes it impossible to understand spoken word

Thanks,

Seems worse than ever on Ubuntu 11.10 just released (kernel 3.0, libdrm 2.4.26, xserver 1.10.4, using the new Unity-interface-thing). Just moving the mouse pointer is enough to disturb audio now, apparently. And moving windows around turns audio into bubbling porridge.

Unity is sluggish on the X1400. Guess it's too old to cope now, with the latest desktop tech. Anyways, audio interruption is more or less constant after a while. Don't even need to move anything. Got these:

[ 931.698537] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 515452 nsec
[ 1019.733804] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 773178 nsec
[ 1023.203405] hrtimer: interrupt took 7398146 ns
[ 1171.028962] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 1159767 nsec

(In reply to comment #57)
> Unity is sluggish on the X1400. Guess it's too old to cope now, with the latest
> desktop tech.
Not really. Worked great with UMS. Compiz with way more advanced effects than fade in/out was smooth, same for ioquake running at decent framerate.

I get this on my Thinkpad T60, Radeon X1300 running debian sid.

As well as crackle on the internal intel audio, I get even worse crackle and popping when using my Logitech V20 USB speakers.

The only thing that resolves the problem for me is:

echo mid > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

But then gnome-shell and all 3d apps are really slow.

Same problem on openSUSE 12.1 with lenovo T60, Radeon Mobility X1400

Hi

Jan Kouba put me on track to this bug-page. I don't know if "official" developers use this channel as a information or judgment source of bugs. As far as I know Ubuntu works on launchpad to administrate bugs.

For this problem I created https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/879790 in order to make Ubuntu know that problem. It may be an idea to "make some noise" there in form of clicking on the button "This bug affects...". And - if you feel like - to reproduce some of your statements from this bug-report-page. Hopefully they will take notice finally.

keep fingers crossed
Quesst

Looks like this will never get solved ;(

If anyone has ideas on how to debug this issue, I have a t60 that I can use.

(In reply to comment #62)
> Looks like this will never get solved ;(
>
> If anyone has ideas on how to debug this issue, I have a t60 that I can use.

I tried enabling msi on alsa and its alot better. Still fulscreen is not good, but much sounds like 11.04

Add: options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1" to the bottom of your /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file.

I think radeon is somehow not playing nice with msi. If we could disable it it might fix the problem...I tried doing it with echo 0 > msi_bus in the radeon bridge but it wasnt working

With a new enough kernel, you can disable MSIs on radeon by setting radeon.msi=0 on the kernel command line in grub or when you load the module. You can disable MSIs globally by setting pci=nomsi on the kernel command line in grub.

You might also try this patch:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux/commit/?h=drm-fixes&id=b7f5b7dec3d539a84734f2bcb7e53fbb1532a40b

(In reply to comment #65)
> You might also try this patch:
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux/commit/?h=drm-fixes&id=b7f5b7dec3d539a84734f2bcb7e53fbb1532a40b

I tried to git the 11.10 package from ubuntu and recompile with the change you mentioned in rs600.c file and r100.c . It didnt seem to help. I noticed someone tried disabling MSI so this might not be related to MSI at all...

I was thinking of trying the latest radeon src?

Has anyone tried messing with the audio or wifi drivers? It's possible the issue is on that side. How about messing with the cpufreq governors? Is it still an issue if you force the cpu power state to performance, etc.?

The wifi I tried disabling the sound quaility is still bad when doing anything display intensive. I havent tried disabling alsa altogether to see if the wifi is still dropping..

I wanna say when I first come up with MSI fixed version it sounds fine, youtube also sounds normal, but if I make the unity taskbar show up, then it goes into some sort of bad state where sound is bad again..maybe the clock switch in the gpu clock or cpu? Not sure....

I need to do some more experiments, haven't had the time.

According to bug 38694 there can be problems when changing the number of PCIe lanes. Does disabling that as described there help for this problem?

Hi,

Apologies if this is not strictly on topic regarding fixing this bug - what I'm curious to know is what the 'best case' workaround all of you are using to avoid this problem? I'm open to absolutely any distribution, desktop environment, etc. Just wondering what the best alternative many of you have found to avoid the conflict and maintain the most functionality.

My best case options so far: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS where I don't remember noticing this problem, or even 12.04 in 2D if I could get my volume control buttons to work on my Thinkpad t60.

I'm also playing with arch to see if I can build something usable I like.

Regards,

K

Hi,

I have been able to get around this bug on IBM T60/x1400 running Kubuntu 12.04, by using kwin_gles desktop manager instead of the default one (kwin).

I had problems with sound slowing down and being very choppy when desktop effects were enabled, or when playing full-screen flash videos. I did not notice any problems with wifi. With kwin_gles I have absolutely no sound issues with desktop effects enabled.

How to change the window manager see:
http://weits.blogspot.cz/2012/02/kwin-gles-as-default-window-manager-in.html

I'm not X expert, so please take the following lines as my humble opinion. I belive, that the workaround is caused by the fact, that kwin_gles uses EGL for rendering, while kwin uses GLX. So maybe this bug can be avoided on other distros and window managers by setting them to use EGL instead of GLX.

Using kwin_gles doesn't make sense on my Asus A8Jr. Sound is crackling still during fullscreen flash video playing and when kwin desktop effects enabled.

Man, I love you! :)
I was fighting with this bug since - I don't know - and now, finally my laptop is usable again.

I know, using GLES is just a workarround - but at least there is one, now :)

Just for the record I've tried Kubuntu 12.04.02 and the kwin_gles workaround does _not_ work for me unfortunately(T60 w/ X1400) . There are still messages like "CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 20113 nsec", and the wireless is very slow. This issue is very frustrating and is the first time when the open source model fails to work for me. I mean this report was filed 3 years ago, affects thousands of people, there is no good workaround and yet no one from the "radeon" developers seems to care.
I wonder if we can raise money and put together a bounty or something...

(posted this on https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/879790 24 hours ago but for some reason it's not synchronized yet, so posting it here "manually" too)

This could just as easily be a chipset or sound or wifi issue tiggered by the additional bus activity of KMS.

@Alex Deucher: Yes, the modern operating systems and hardware are complex beasts and I surely understand that some bugs may be hard to track down. The point is however that there wasn't a systematic effort to resolve this particular issue except for some "there is a random problem X described in ticket Y, which may be the reason for your troubles too, so why don't you try the solution proposed there". By the way I tried the change proposed by Michel Dänzer in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38694 , but unfortunately it doesn't seem to help either.
I am clueless about the kernel internals, but the manifestations of this bug seem to be consistent with the hypothesis that there is something wrong with the "radeon" driver. It seems like something locks the system for long periods of time and the other time sensitive modules "freak out". On my laptop the problem became even more pronounced when I swapped the "1440x900" LCD panel with a "1600x1200" one.

(In reply to comment #76)
> @Alex Deucher: Yes, the modern operating systems and hardware are complex
> beasts and I surely understand that some bugs may be hard to track down. The
> point is however that there wasn't a systematic effort to resolve this
> particular issue except for some "there is a random problem X described in
> ticket Y, which may be the reason for your troubles too, so why don't you
> try the solution proposed there". By the way I tried the change proposed by
> Michel Dänzer in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38694 , but
> unfortunately it doesn't seem to help either.

There were several suggestions on this bug, but apparently none of them helped.

> I am clueless about the kernel internals, but the manifestations of this bug
> seem to be consistent with the hypothesis that there is something wrong with
> the "radeon" driver. It seems like something locks the system for long
> periods of time and the other time sensitive modules "freak out". On my
> laptop the problem became even more pronounced when I swapped the "1440x900"
> LCD panel with a "1600x1200" one.

A bigger display means more data is being moved around. It sounds to me like a chipset issue when large amounts of data are being transferred across the bus. KMS uses system memory more readily than UMS did which is likely why the issues shows up with KMS. I don't know of any other options to try in the driver. We don't have these problems with the same radeon chips is other systems. Unfortunately, I'm not a chipset expert so I'm not sure what sort of pci quirks, etc. to try.

It could also be that the there is an issue in the sound or wifi driver which didn't show up as readily when there was less traffic on the bug. As far as I know no one has investigated these avenues very much.

I had all the problems as described by Øyvind Stegard and I have the feeling that it got slightly better after installing the latest available BIOS for my Thinkpad T60 2007-CTO (ATI X1400, iwl3945, snd-hda-intel).

I'm running 32bit Arch with the 3.11.4-1-ARCH Kernel and xf86-video-ati 1:7.2.0-1

I've tried all other options mentioned here, without any sign of improvement. What can I do to further help investigating this problem? Would it be of any help to e.g. study the IRQ settings used in windows?

Many of the linked issues report the problem fixed (broadly, by the time of ubuntu 14.04).

Is this still a thing?