VIA Unichrome for Puppy 3?

[nosignal]

Hi tempestuous, thanks for your help.

I am not hell bent on puppy 3.01, but I do want to try one more thing before giving up on it.

When I do 'lsmod | grep via', I get

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i2c_viapro              9236  0 
i2c_core               22032  1 i2c_viapro 
via_agp                10240  0 
agpgart                34128  1 via_agp 

NOTE: it does not have plain 'via' loaded, just 'via_agp'.

So I tried 'modprobe via', which seemed to work. Then 'lsmod | grep via' showed plain 'via' loaded, and also showed 'drm' loaded, using the 'via' module. I take this as a good sign, as I beleive DRM is related to hardware acceleration.

However, this didn't seem to change my test results. I can only assume that is because 1) I am barking up the wrong tree, or 2) I am not loading the via module early enough. I prefer to think it is 2) . So I added 'modprobe via' to to rc.local, which has made 'via' appear in lsmod, but has not helped any accelleration.

Should I have the via module loaded somewhere earlier, or is it more likely that the via module just doesn't have what it takes to accelerate my cx700 chipset?

[nosignal]

Hi again.

I have had a good look for anything to do with Puppy4 and xorg. I can't find a user called kirk. I can't find any useful forum regarding Xorg7.3. I can't find Puppy4 (aka 'puppy-4.00-seamonkey.iso') either, even though it is referenced in a couple of places. The best I can find is Puppy4 beta 1 (aka 'puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso') at http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... -4.00beta/
I did find 'xorg_xvesa-7.3.pet' at ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributio ... ackages-4/

So is 'puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso' and 'xorg_xvesa-7.3.pet' what you had in mind? It sounds like it involves a little more than just installing the pet. Is the process described under 'Puppy4, Alpha3' below, what you recalled?

I thought I'd post my research results below. Quite a few interesting tidbits there.

Everything I could find regarding the latest puppy 4 (up to 10-April-2008):

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Puppy 4.00beta1 - April 5, 2008
beta1 now available. Called  'puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso'. Available from http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00beta/
The release notes are here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00beta/release-4.00b.htm
The release notes say: "Version 4.00 is happening ... here it is: the live-CD file is 'puppy-4.00-seamonkey.iso' and is just 83.3MB. Download from http://puppylinux.com/download/."
- BUT I can't find 'puppy-4.00-seamonkey.iso' there ?! But the 'test' folder has the 'puppy-4.00beta' folder, leading to puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso

Everything I could find regarding Xorg in Puppy 4 in the Development Log (up to 10-April-2008):

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(Development Log by version: http://puppylinux.com/news/index.html)

Puppy 4.00beta1 - April 5, 2008
beta1 now available. Called  'puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso'. Available from http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00beta/
The release notes are here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00beta/release-4.00b.htm
The release notes say: "Version 4.00 is happening ... here it is: the live-CD file is 'puppy-4.00-seamonkey.iso' and is just 83.3MB. Download from http://puppylinux.com/download/."
- BUT I can't find 'puppy-4.00-seamonkey.iso' there ?! But the 'test' folder has the 'puppy-4.00beta' folder, leading to puppy-3.98-seamonkey.iso

Puppy4, Alpha5 - January 22nd, 2008 
Xorg Wizard, special case handling
Rerwin has been working with various people, fixing the Xorg Wizard to work with some difficult video hardware. He has now added the Trident video BIOS dated 1997 as a special case. See forum thread, discussion with Barrington:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=166725#166725
I have added this workaround to the Xorg Wizard.

Puppy4, Alpha4 - January 8th, 2008
Xorg Wizard rerun-at-every-boot bugfix
I found the cause of the problem. Puppy uses hardware profiling for video, so that if Puppy is booted on a different PC or a different monitor, the Xorg Wizard is rerun. A ‘xorg.conf.xxx’ file is created in /etc/X11 for each hardware profile, where ‘xxx’ is a string that represents the video chip and the monitor.
Puppy runs ‘ddcprobe’ to return information about the video chip and the monitor, but it is the latter that is the cause of the bug. One parameter fluctuates. Now fixed.

Puppy4, Alpha3 - December 14th, 2007
has the Xorg drivers as well as Xvesa, however there is only a cutdown selection of Xorg X servers — look in /usr/X11R7/lib/xorg/modules/drivers. Your video hardware will most likely work with the ‘vesa’ server if there is no match, but most likely you will want a server for your specific hardware. In that case, grab the full Xorg 7.3 binary package that I have uploaded to ibiblio (in the Dingo alpha2 folder) and get your required driver out of it. If you have already had the ‘vesa’ server running, you might want to delete the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and xorg.conf.xxxx files before rerunning the ‘xorgwizard’. I would like to know if your specific server works okay and in particular does it need any other files. I will include more servers in the next release of Dingo.

Puppy4, Alpha3 - December 15th, 2007
Well done barry and the puppy team, burned to cd on main pc (athlon 3000, ati9250 graphics,1GB ram), booted up puppy (pfix=ram), extracted the neomagic driver from the full Xorg 7.3 binary package and saved in /usr/X11R7/lib/xorg/modules/drivers. shut down pc saving session to cd.
now the good bit….put cd in toshiba portege 7010 laptop and booted up using wake2pup, Xorg wizard asked to confirm lcd resolution, tested ok,ctrl+alt+backspace, done, puppy running fine. First time without having to mess around altering xwin and manually configuring Xorg.conf. this will be great for all puppy users with older toshiba laptops.

Everything I could find regarding Xorg in Puppy 4 in Forum Discussions

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(up to 10-April-2008):
10 April 2008 - improve Puppy's hardware detection
> xorgwizard doesn't recognize my hardware (onboard graphic and Eizo monitor, connected via DVI) properly. I tested XFdrake (from PCLinuxOS) and my hardware is recognized very well. Perhaps you can have a look at XFdrake and find out why this tool has a better hardware detection than Puppy's xorgwizard.
Any hardware guru reading this (sorry, but it's not me) will want to know some specific details about the graphics "card". Like whether it's Intel, or nVidia, or ATi, what the model and chipset is and so on. 
You could also boot up XFDrake/PCLinuxOS and (in a terminal) type Code:
modprobe -l > filename_of_your_choosing
and compare the result with the same command in Puppy using a diff utility or your very own eyeballs. My guess is that Puppy's will be a shorter list which is why you will need to be specific about your hardware so that the correct module(s) can be identified and added - if suitable.

Apr 07 - "Problem video" fix has confusing user interface - SOLVED
The attachment contains a re-worked implementation of the fix that is triggered by the user's recovery from the hang -- the cancel and invocation of xorgwizard is remembered for later uses of the wizard and xwin. The problem "oem" signatures are kept in a separate file, /etc/xorgoverrides; the file is optional and is created when a hang is detected, but seeding it with the known signatures would avoid most hangs and the need for the recovery.

Puppy4 beta - Sat Apr 05, 2008
Stable enough for daily usage

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy4
Barry's thoughts about Puppy 3 & Puppy 4:
I have tried to clarify the point on my blog that the puppy3 series will continue. I will differentiate them with different names and on my main page where I state the latest version, I'll put both, so there'll be Slappy (or whatever it gets called) v3.02 and Dingo (or whatever) v4.00.
...
From the point of view of hardware detection, startup/shutdown scripts, all the underlying stuff, they will be equivalent.
- But 3.02 is not available yet. probably not far away.

[tempestuous]

Yes, Puppy4 (Dingo) is currently at beta1 release.

Here is kirk's (large) Xorg7.3 DRI package -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 505#164505

and here is the announcement about Barry's revised Xorg7.3
http://puppylinux.com/news/news400a5-400a7.htm
scroll down to "DRI enabled in Dingo"

So in theory DRI should work OK in recent Puppy4 versions, with the addition of xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3.pet

[Béèm]

tempestuous
If you reference links can you make them clicable?

To do so in the composer window, select the link and push the URL tag.

[dinky]

For what it's worth, I think you should compile. I've hunted around abit, and found in the xubuntu forums evidence that this works... on xubuntu at least. Be surprised if you couldn't get it going in Puppy. I'm looking at getting an ebox 4300 in a few months, if it's not solved by then I'll have a go... sorry that won't help you much now. Good luck with it, just remember that you can get it working. This link might help: http://microclient.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... eo-driver/

[tempestuous]

For what it's worth, I think you should compile. I've hunted around abit, and found in the xubuntu forums evidence that this works

If you compile the latest OpenChrome Xorg driver, yes, of course it's likely that this driver will work better than the standard via Xorg driver.
This has already been tried and tested successfully with a VIA Unichrome CLE266 chipset in earlier versions of Puppy
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=5701

The issue is not whether it will work, the issue is how much work is involved in the compilation process.
There is a kernel module involved, so full kernel sources must be installed.
And the Xorg and OpenGL components require full Xorg source code to be installed and compiled. When I last checked, this was at least 500MB worth of files.

[dinky]

And the Xorg and OpenGL components require full Xorg source code to be installed and compiled. When I last checked, this was at least 500MB worth of files.

Good to know. I agree it's alot of work. My idea of buying one of these boxes involves doing this, and if I'm successful I'll see if there's some easier way to package this for people. That's alot of space needed! Lol. Is it possible to compile this, then remove these files? Also, what would be involved with compiling this, and creating a package for easy puppy installation? This won't help anyone right now, but perhaps in the future. Ta.

[dinky]

Just read your thread tempestorous, and am really impressed. Thank you for all the phenomenal work you've done on this. I am aware that there will likley be alot of work compiling the unichrome drivers, and that I may not be able to do it, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to try. If I am successful, is it likely that Compiz-Fusion will be able to run? I am looking at purchasing either the ebox 4300, with a 500 Mhz processor and either 512 Mb or 1 Gb of Ram, or one of the later ebox 4800 models with a 1.2Ghz processor and either 512Mb or 1Gb of ram. (been in touch with DMP sales rep, and the 1Gb Ram versions are on the way, he thought by June).

Currently I spend alot of time multitaskting with office documents, video and sound playback on my 3Ghz (with hyperthreading) 512 Mb beast, which up till now has run Mandriva Linux. I've been slowly switching to puppy as it's faster and more stable than kde (am using xfce), and amongst other things I love it's small size. I like the idea of the smaller ebox 4300 system which can vesa mount onto my monitor, but am unsure if it will be powerful enough with puppy to meet my needs. Are you able to provide any thoughts on this for me? Thanks.

[nosignal]

I'll summarise two links posted by tempestuous about 6 posts up:

Here is kirk's (large) Xorg7.3 DRI package -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 505#164505

Dated: Jan 02, 2008.
"I made a pet package of the Xorg stuff missing from dingo alpha3 using the Xorg I compiled and it works."
You have to manually copy some driver files around manually and run some bash commands.
There were issues with DRI being disabled by default in alpha 3, so kirk suggests this has been fixed (not sure how).
Also some help if you want to compile Xorg related stuff.

and here is the announcement about Barry's revised Xorg7.3
http://puppylinux.com/news/news400a5-400a7.htm
scroll down to "DRI enabled in Dingo"

Dated: February 20th, 2008.
In dingo Alpha 7, Barry compiled Xorg with DRI enabled.
He then "updated the ‘xorg_base-7.3′ PET package with the recompiled files and renamed it to ‘xorg_base-7.3-1′" BUT I can't find that new file anywhere.
He then "created a new package, ‘xorg_xorg_dri-7.3′ which (hopefully) has just enough extra files to add DRI and GL support." But it is untested.
"Kirk has previously created a package, ‘xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3′ which adds DRI and GL but it also adds everything else."
Also some help if you want to compile Xorg related stuff.

So it seems that after kirk made the pet mentioned on Jan 02, 2008, he made "xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3.pet" which was uploaded on 30/01/2008.
Therefore I assume it is better to use the later one. Hopefully this also removes the need to manually copy some driver files around manually and run some bash commands (but who know?).

It also suggests that OpenGL does not need to be installed separately - that there are enough files in "xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3.pet". OR maybe it just means it lays the foundation, but you still need to install OpenGL. Again unsure.

[nosignal]

In the official repository for Puppy 4 pets at ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributio ... ackages-4/ there is a bewildering array of xorg pets. I have listed them all and summarised their relevance as best I can:

xorg_base-7.3.pet PET File 1,679 KB 25/12/2007 03:35:00 p.m.
- was compiled with DRI disabled, which causes a problem when we want to add a DRI PET package later.
- updated the ‘xorg_base-7.3' PET package with the recompiled files and renamed it to ‘xorg_base-7.3-1'.
- xorg_base-7.3-1.pet - NOT here!
- I then created a new package, ‘xorg_xorg_dri-7.3' which (hopefully) has just enough extra files to add DRI and GL support.
- xorg_xorg_dri-7.3 - NOT here!
xorg_xfbdev-7.3.pet PET File 540 KB 25/12/2007 03:35:00 p.m.
- What is this???
xorg_xorg_base-7.3.pet PET File 1,405 KB 25/12/2007 03:35:00 p.m.
- Unclear if this is the version compiled with DRI enabled or disabled.
- Is this necessary if you install "xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3.pet"?
xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3.pet PET File 19,901 KB 30/01/2008 02:26:00 a.m.
- Kirk created this, which adds DRI and GL but it also adds everything else, the full Xorg package, and is about 54MB uncompressed.
xorg_xorg_full_dri_DEV-7.3.pet PET File 1,891 KB 30/01/2008 02:27:00 a.m.
- Kirk created this, provide all the extra include/pkgconfig/la/a files needed to compile against the extra libraries provided in xorg_xorg_full_dri-7.3 (and xorg_xorg_dri-7.3). The ‘devx’ file just has the basic files for compiling against the xorg_xorg_base-7.3 package (which suits most applications).
xorg_xorg_servers-7.3.pet PET File 1,111 KB 12/01/2008 10:30:00 a.m.
- What is this???
xorg_xvesa-7.3.pet PET File 548 KB 25/12/2007 03:36:00 p.m.
- Presumably old vesa drivers for X11 - slow and no hardware acceleration.

Also, I don't see any pets for OpenGL, so I am unsure of this means the OpenGL files are included in the larger xorg pets, or if you are supposed to use the OpenGL pet for Puppy3. Can you use Puppy3 pets in Puppy 4?

[efge]

Hi !

I am trying to have dri enabled on puppy 3.01/ Microclient SR.
Previous posts convinced me that the proper way was to compile openchrome and the full list of required modules/libs and so on.

Here is the story:

Compilation of via driver was ok.
I set xorg.conf device driver to openchrome and, yes, after reboot openchrome driver was loaded (grep rendering /var/log/Xorg.0.log)

Following the logical way tempestuous told in this post i then compiled drm modules.
That was fine and i got via.ko and drm.ko that i put in /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/drivers/char/drm/

Then i tried to compile libdrm. No particular problem there.

And then i attacked mesa...and everything got in a hell of a mess
Missing xorg modules [fixed], libs in wrong directories /usr/lib/ instead of /usr/X11R7/lib [fixed]...and finally DamageProto [required by Xdamage] was too old.

Uuuh.
Needed to take for a breath.

Before diving again in this big manure heap i decided to try a very silly solution and installed the dri and opengl 7.2 pet packages.
Reboot:
#dmesg|grep drm
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[drm] Initialized via 2.11.1 20070202 on minor 0
[drm:via_initialize] *ERROR* called with no agp memory available

Tried to specify VideoRam 65536 in xorg.conf but it did not solve the issue.

Of course i guess mesa and dri modules should fit the openchrome stuff, but i am a bit disapointed and would like to have some guidings from the puppet masters

Help please ? Did i follow the good way ?

EDIT:
Finally i manage to compile via drivers & drm modules.
I use standard pet packages for DRI & OpenGL.
Amazingly it seems to work...

[efge]

Finally, after much tedious work, i manage to compile the latest openchrome via drivers on my Microclient - eBox 4300.

It works perfectly on Puppy 3.01 with the standard packages:
xorg_DRI_MODULES-7.2.pet
xorg_OPENGL-7.2.pet

You juste have to set "openchrome" in the "device" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Enjoy !


[thanks tempestuous for marking the way out]

[dinky]

Wow, thanks for all that work, hopefully others will be able to have an easier time now. Did you ever get Compiz-Fusion working? Would love to hear if it's possible.
~dinky

[efge]

Glad to see it is useful, Dinky.

To answer your question: no, i did not even imagine i could make Compiz-fusion work on my poor Microclient.
It seems Compiz requires more graphical hardware power *but* i did not try.

Maybe i'll give wNop a try.

[dinky]

Glad to see it is useful, Dinky.

To answer your question: no, i did not even imagine i could make Compiz-fusion work on my poor Microclient.
It seems Compiz requires more graphical hardware power *but* i did not try.

Maybe i'll give wNop a try.

Give it a try! I'd love to see if it works or not. You could also try TigerPup, which is the Compiz-Fusion pupplet I've been creating. Based on wNOP, has a few other goodies. http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... s/tigerpup

[efge]

TigerPup looks great !
I'd really love that it runs on a MC, but i seriously doubt it could.

I will try TigerPup when i come back from my vacation, in a few weeks.
You can follow this thread, i will post my feedback here.

[dinky]

Look forward to it. It will probably run, but you might not get Compiz-Fusion working. TigerPup has a pretty cool interface without CF, was using it on my laptop today. Cheers.
~dinky

[steve0]

Yeah,MU's 3D demo is very complex....