OpenBSD Journal

KMS for Intel GPUs has landed in -current

Contributed by phessler on from the kernel-mood-settings dept.

Jonathan Gray (jsg@) just committed KMS support for inteldrm(4):
Significantly increase the wordlist for ddb hangman, and update our device independent DRM code and the Intel DRM code to be mostly in sync with Linux 3.8.3. Among other things this brings support for kernel modesetting and enables use of the rings on gen6+ Intel hardware. Based on some earlier work from matthieu@ with some hints from FreeBSD and with lots of help from kettenis@ (including a beautiful accelerated wscons framebuffer console!) Thanks to M:Tier and the OpenBSD Foundation for sponsoring this work.
There are still a few rough edges, and as this is a major change in how graphics works, there may be some minor problems. Please help us fix the remaining bugs by testing and providing helpful bug reports.

When the kernel boots it will switch from VGA text mode to a framebuffer console as soon as inteldrm(4) attaches. If your screen remains black at that point you'll have to disable inteldrm(4).
  • All virtual consoles happily draw into the same framebuffer, so you'll probably see an additional login prompt at the top of the screen. If that bothers you, disable the getty(8) processes on ttyC1 through ttyC5.
  • Framebuffer console acceleration is disabled when X is running. So scrolling will be noticably slower.
  • Suspend/resume mostly works, but:
    • Some machines don't switch back into X after resume. You can switch by hand using CRTL+ALT+F5.
    • It doen't work on the X40 in apm mode. Switching to acpi mode (by disabling apm) does work though.
  • Matthieu has updated the xf86-video-intel driver as well. Without the new driver, X will probably show some artifacts (on older hardware) or won't work at all.
Snapshots marked March 19 or later have these changes. To use external screens with DisplayPort, you will need a snapshot dated March 20 or later.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By spawnbsd (70.74.180.118) on

    Since this snapshot, my Core i7 w/ Z77 chipset no longer boots up. I get a blank screen and the box is hard locked =(. Anyone else seeing this problem ?

    Comments
    1. By Otto Moerbeek (otto) on http://www.drijf.net

      > Since this snapshot, my Core i7 w/ Z77 chipset no longer boots up. I get a blank screen and the box is hard locked =(. Anyone else seeing this problem ?


      Please report with dmesg to bugs@, thanks.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (93.220.52.91) on

    wow! now there are umlaute in the console. who would've thought ;)

    Comments
    1. By A User (80.177.208.217) on

      > wow! now there are umlaute in the console. who would've thought ;)

      ... and a British currency sign, excellent. Installed from a snapshot dated 22nd and working great on an Acer Aspire One netbook. Great work as ever. Thank you!

  3. By Yendor (yendor) on

    And now we have VCONs working too in the latest -current that I have compiled. It is running on my regular build machine which is an Intel D945GTP mobo.

    I'll be posting details and dmesg on tech when I finish some work here.
    Hopefully that will assist the devs.

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