Graphics issues while booting

F

FrankR

First try to install FreeBSD on a MacPro late 2008.
During the installation, in this case FreeBSD 11.4 amd-64, as soon as the first drivers are loaded, I only get stripes on the monitor. The boot process continues in the background, but unfortunately I can't make any inputs without seeing something.
I have tried different graphic cards without success.
My question to you, which boot parameters (loader promt) can I change to get a text?
Thanks for your help!
Frank
 

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During the ten-second countdown, escape to the loader prompt then:

gop list

FrankR said:
MacPro late 2008.
Click to expand...

<https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/index-macpro.html> which one of the four?

With which graphics card did you begin?

FrankR said:
different graphic cards
Click to expand...

Can you let us know the makes and models?

Was the problem (stripes, or tearing) the same with all tested cards?


I'm familiar with the symptom, from hardware that I used years ago, maybe with PC-BSD. I can't recall the (then) workaround and the forum is no longer available. Sorry!
 
I get a similarly corrupted display if I boot OpenBSD (not FreeBSD) on my HP laptop. The boot menu is fine, but everything that comes next is scrambled. The solution in my case is to change the machine's UEFI settings from "Native UEFI" to "Hybrid UEFI (with CSM)", or switch to legacy BIOS mode. Unfortunately, Macs typically don't have such settings. But given that it's a "Pro", maybe yours does?
 
FreeBSD bug 259258 – Outdated direction from /where/#install to a non-existent anchor in the FreeBSD Handbook

bsduck said:
… Unfortunately, Macs typically don't have such settings. …
Click to expand...

I shouldn't expect Apple's firmware to offer anything except UEFI.

… from "Native UEFI" to "Hybrid UEFI (with CSM)", or switch to legacy BIOS mode. …
Click to expand...

Nice reminder.

UEFI, TrueOS Desktop, HP EliteBook 8540p, 2016-08-04: <https://photos.app.goo.gl/Uy4gsZ5n2jMwKv7q8>. <https://github.com/trueos/trueos-core/issues/15#issue-169800408> steps (2)–(9) remind me that this type of thing occurred with the installation routine probably before and after the X session during which the essentials of the routine were visible.

<https://bsd-hardware.info/?view=computers&type=notebook&vendor=Hewlett-Packard&model=EliteBook+8540p> no match. From <https://www.levnapc.cz/ProductsFiles/hp-elitebook-8540p-8540w-manual-en.pdf> page 1 (PDF page 8): NVIDIA N10P-NS 1GB DDR3 - NVIDIA NVS 5100.
 
FrankR welcome to FreeBSD Forums.

FreeBSD

If this is your first experience with FreeBSD: apologies for technobabble.

SirDice said:
13.0-RELEASE.
Click to expand...

∴ aim for FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso or FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso from <https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/13.0/>. disc1 should be enough for test purposes.

Ignore phrases such as disc and DVD within filenames in these areas (the images are not intended to fit on normal discs).

Re: <https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/bsdinstall/#bsdinstall-usb> the advice for an .img file can equally apply to creating a USB flash drive from an .iso file.

If the installer for 13.0-RELEASE is similarly bugged with your graphics card, then you might try FreeBSD-14.0-CURRENT-amd64-20211014-04c91ac48ad-250051-disc1.iso from <https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/14.0/>, although support for -CURRENT is not provided in FreeBSD forums (and it's not release quality).

GhostBSD

<https://www.ghostbsd.org/download>

If none of the installers for FreeBSD work, you might try the installer for GhostBSD, which is based on FreeBSD 13.0-STABLE.

Loosely speaking:
  • -STABLE is somewhere between release quality -RELEASE and development of -CURRENT
  • the GhostBSD approach to use of FreeBSD 13.0-STABLE is release quality.
 
I have made some progress in this matter. The live-test-installation of version 13 via the good old CD-Rom has brought enlightenment. Thanks for the hint with version 13.
Please have a look at the output of dmesg.
With the vga drivers instead of efifb it works, so no more stripes on the screen!
Unfortunately I can't manage the content of "loader.conf" so that it works with the version installed on the HD.

Here the output of dimesg on the live system via CD-Rom:
VT(vga): resolution 640x480
.....
vgapci0: Boot video device

Output of the installed system:
VT(efifb): resolution 1920x1080
 
I remember having a simliar problem with DragonflyBSD. We were trying to make it work, and I don't remember the techincalities unfortunately, but I had to play with stripes and framebuffer parameters to feed the correct mode to the GPU. I managed to make it look almost correctly, but never quite right. It was seemingly a problem with Apple's GPU firmware from which BSD cannot extract the necessary parameters to make the graphics mode work, so it's falling back to defaults and you see garbled screen. GPUs with non-Apple firmware won't work for console text because they won't be initialized by the EFI or vt.

Is it possible maybe to avoid switching modes entirely, for example by setting hw.vga.textmode to 1? As outlined in vt()?
 
Sorry for the confusion, I can edit the "loader.conf" file, the question was, what are the required settings to write in it?
 
Is it possible maybe to avoid switching modes entirely, for example by setting hw.vga.textmode to 1? As outlined in vt()?
Click to expand...
I tried that, as described int "vt()" unfortunately no change at boot time. I guess there must be a combination of settings.
 
Here are the loader.conf settings I use on an old iMac from around 2008 on 12.2-RELEASE.
Code: 
hw.efifb.stride=1728
hw.efifb.address=0x80010000

The address parameter can vary with the amount of RAM in the machine: previously, with 1.5GB of RAM in this machine it was:
Code: 
0x60010000

If you can boot your machine into OSX there is a script you can use to find the parameters for your machine:
Code: 
CODE]# From: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1557326
# See: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=202730

sudo ioreg -lw0 |grep manufacturer|cut -b25-80;sudo ioreg -lw0|grep "product-name"|cut -b 25-80;sudo dtrace -qn 'BEGIN{boot_args=((struct boot_args*)(`PE_state).bootArgs);printf("FrameBuff erBase: 0x%08x\nPixelsPerScanLine: %d\nHorizontalResolution: %d\nVerticalResolution: %d", boot_args->Video.v_baseAddr, boot_args->Video.v_rowBytes/4, boot_args->Video
[/CODE]
 
Yeah! It was the stride (not stripe as I said), and the address! I remember tweaking them endlessly as it was impossible to live-tweak them and rebooting before getting something semi-usable. Wonder if sprock's code works.
 
After several changes in loader.conf, I am still no further. As the machine will not run x-server, a vga display would be fine.
Is there a way to swap the efi framebuffer driver against vt-vga?
 
Do you see any changes when changing hw.efifb.stride and hw.efifb.address? Do large changes, not just +1 to each, reboot, observe the result. You should see the image changing.
 
Now I could finally get a working display :)
Thanks a lot for your support!
hw.efifb.address="0x80010000"
hw.efifb.stride="1920"
Click to expand...
That was working for me!
If I now want to make these settings on the loader probt when installing a new system, what is the procedure, or the sample code?
In addition, I have found little about the "stride" function on the net, where is there further info about it?
 
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