[oi-dev] Error from the vesa driver (Was: libdrm-2.4.75 is too old)

[Gary Mills]

On Mon, Jun 01, 2020 at 09:20:30AM -0500, Gary Mills wrote:
> I just put together a desktop system using this CPU:
> 
>     Intel Core i3-9100 Coffee Lake 4-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo)
>     LGA 1151 (300 Series) 65W BX80684I39100 Desktop Processor
>     Intel UHD Graphics 630
[...]
> The Xorg log (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) shows that the vesa driver has
> failed.  Errors are prefixed with EE:
[...]
>     [   522.285] (II) Loading sub module "int10"
>     [   522.285] (II) LoadModule: "int10"
>     [   522.285] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/amd64/libint10.so
>     [   522.285] (II) Module int10: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
>     [   522.285]    compiled for 1.19.7, module version = 1.0.0
>     [   522.285]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 23.0
>     [   522.285] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10
>     [   522.285] (EE) VESA(0): V_BIOS address 0x90000 out of range
[...]
>     [   522.923] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
> 
> The Intel video device looks like this in `scanpci -v':
> 
>     pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x02 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x3e91
>      Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
>      CardVendor 0x1043 card 0x8694 (ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Card unknown)
>       STATUS    0x0010  COMMAND 0x0007
>       CLASS     0x03 0x00 0x00  REVISION 0x00
>       BIST      0x00  HEADER 0x00  LATENCY 0x00  CACHE 0x10
>       BASE0     0x00000000a0000000 SIZE 16777216  MEM64
>       BASE2     0x0000000090000000 SIZE 268435456  MEM64 PREFETCHABLE
>       BASE4     0x00004000 SIZE 64  I/O
>       MAX_LAT   0x00  MIN_GNT 0x00  INT_PIN 0x01  INT_LINE 0xff

It's actually the int10 sub-module of the vesa driver that failed.
Xorg always tries two video drivers.  The first is a vendor-specific
driver.  If that driver rejects the video device, Xorg falls back to
the vesa driver.  This driver should always work because it uses a
standard BIOS built-in to the video device.  In this case, the vesa
driver fails, leaving no working driver, and of course no graphics.

As a test, I installed an old Nvidia card (GT-730) in the system.
Everything worked.  I got the graphic desktop including the GUI
installer.  In this case, the nvidia driver was able to support the
card.  The vesa driver was not needed at all.

I'm guessing that the vesa driver does not handle 64-bit PCI-E
addresses correctly.  Certainly 31-bit variables are too short.  Does
anyone know if this problem has been fixed in a later version of the
int10 sub-module?  Fixing this problem should make the vesa driver
work with the Intel built-in graphics device, or with other devices
that use long addresses.


-- 
-Gary Mills-		-refurb-		-Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-