startx leads to black screen on 14.3 with radeonkms driver

[whereexactlyami]

Hello there!
First off, let me start by saying I'm an absolute beginner. So please be forgiving.

Anyway, I set up a fresh copy of FreeBSD 14.3 on an old PC yesterday. The specs are as follows:
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD6450 (TerraScale 2)
RAM: 8 GB
SSD: 500GB, 80GB for FreeBSD

I installed drm-kmod and Xorg, both using pkg. I then added my user to the video group. The radeonkms driver, which is needed for my GPU, is launching at system startup as specified by

 kld_list="radeonkms"

in /etc/rc.conf. It does work and load properly. I get the message

VT: replacing driver "vga" with new "drmfb".

at every boot and the terminal font shrinks. I don't have any files in /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.

So far so good, but when I execute order 66 startx while using radeonkms, the screen turns dark and stays so forever. If I do the same without using radeonkms, it works but with the drawbacks of software rendering.

I think the important thing from the log file would be

LoadModule: "ati"
Warning, couldn't open module ati
Failed to load module "ati" (module does not exist, 0)

But I don't understand why. I have tried installing other versions like drm-515-kmod or drm-61-kmod, but none of them worked. Manually loading the driver while being in a session results in the screen turning black instantly. Specifying the driver in a .conf-file doesn't work either.

So I figured I'd ask smarter people. Do you have any idea what the problem could be or at least a workaround?

 

[SirDice]

Post your log file: cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | nc termbin.com 9999

 

[Erichans]

As SirDice mentioned: do post your Xorg log.

LoadModule: "ati" Warning, couldn't open module ati Failed to load module "ati" (module does not exist, 0)

I don't have any files in /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.

I'm suspecting that you haven't installed x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati, please do so.
It contains:

# pkg list xf86-video-ati
/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/ati_drv.so
/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so
/usr/local/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-radeon.conf
/usr/local/share/licenses/xf86-video-ati-19.1.0_7,1/LICENSE
/usr/local/share/licenses/xf86-video-ati-19.1.0_7,1/MIT
/usr/local/share/licenses/xf86-video-ati-19.1.0_7,1/catalog.mk
/usr/local/share/man/man4/ati.4x.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man4/radeon.4x.gz

You need to set up an Xorg conf file as mentioned in example 2 in 5.5.2. Graphics Configuration:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Card0"
    Driver     "radeon"
EndSection

Driver "radeon" references the file /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so. Its man page radeon(4) shows that the driver supports your graphics card:

CAICOS       Radeon HD 6430/6450/6470/6490

You've already installed the correct drm/kms driver by using graphics/drm-61-kmod and specifying correctly kld_list="radeonkms".

The settings:

• kld_list="radeonkms" in /etc/rc.conf
• Driver "radeon" in a Section "Device" in for example the file /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf

work together: you need both!

 

[whereexactlyami]

Erichans Thank you a lot! This instantly helped and now startx works as intended. It's weird xf86-video-ati is never mentioned in the the documentation, isn't it? Anyhow, now I'll have to deal with gdm bugging out on me, but thank you anyways!