iMac on FreeBSD: weird graphical behaviour

M

meowcat

Hi all,

I wanted to try out FreeBSD on my 21.5" late 2009 iMac, but unfortunately the radeonkms driver seems to exhibit some weird graphical behaviour. I have attached a picture of what it looks like, which I have gathered from Reddit.

5a6lxjveb3a31.jpg


Other off-site threads suggest passing the nomodeset parameter to the kernel when running Linux, but I could not find an explanation for this, though it does seem to work.

The iMac I have here features an AMD Radeon HD 4670 and an Intel Core 2 Duo E7600. I am running the latest version of FreeBSD as of writing this (14.2-RELEASE).

I have uploaded the kernel logs (dmesg) here. Of note are these lines:

Code: 
RV730_pfp.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/RV730_pfp.bin either
radeon/RV730_pfp.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon/RV730_pfp.bin either
radeon_RV730_pfp.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_pfp.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_pfp.bin'
RV730_me.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/RV730_me.bin either
radeon/RV730_me.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon/RV730_me.bin either
radeon_RV730_me.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_me.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_me.bin'
R700_rlc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/R700_rlc.bin either
radeon/R700_rlc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon/R700_rlc.bin either
radeon_R700_rlc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_R700_rlc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/R700_rlc.bin'
RV730_smc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/RV730_smc.bin either
radeon/RV730_smc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon/RV730_smc.bin either
radeon_RV730_smc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_smc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_smc.bin'
[drm] External GPIO thermal controller with fan control
[drm] radeon: dpm initialized
RV710_uvd.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/RV710_uvd.bin either
radeon/RV710_uvd.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon/RV710_uvd.bin either
radeon_RV710_uvd.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV710_uvd.bin either

Could it be that FreeBSD isn't loading the drivers properly?

Thank you!
 
meowcat said:
Could it be that FreeBSD isn't loading the drivers properly?
Click to expand...

That doesn't look as the problem:
Rich (BB code): 
[...]
radeon_RV730_pfp.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_pfp.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_pfp.bin'
...
radeon_R700_rlc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_R700_rlc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/R700_rlc.bin'
...
radeon_RV730_smc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_smc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_smc.bin'

You have probably installed a kernel graphics driver incompatible with the 14.2 running kernel, by means of pkg install ... perhaps?

If so, please install graphics/drm-kmod from ports, or from FreeBSD-kmod package repository.

See 14.2 release Errate "Open Issues", "* drm-kmod packages compiled on FreeBSD 14.1", and Thread 96058 for details.
 
T-Daemon said:
That doesn't look as the problem:
Rich (BB code): 
[...]
radeon_RV730_pfp.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_pfp.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_pfp.bin'
...
radeon_R700_rlc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_R700_rlc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/R700_rlc.bin'
...
radeon_RV730_smc.bin: could not load binary firmware /boot/firmware/radeon_RV730_smc.bin either
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'radeon/RV730_smc.bin'

You have probably installed a kernel graphics driver incompatible with the 14.2 running kernel, by means of pkg install ... perhaps?

If so, please install graphics/drm-kmod from ports, or from FreeBSD-kmod package repository.

See 14.2 release Errate "Open Issues", "* drm-kmod packages compiled on FreeBSD 14.1", and Thread 96058 for details.
Click to expand...

I have just tried both installing from ports and from the FreeBSD-kmod repository, unfortunately neither of these work. I'm not sure if the issue had anything to do with the mentioned errata.

covacat said:
see https://forum.manjaro.org/t/late-2009-imac-hd4670-black-screen-on-lvds/122506 and the github link on that page
Click to expand...

That patch already seems to be in the FreeBSD port here, so I'm not sure if it has anything to do with this specific issue
 
the problem is mentioned in various linux forums but there is no solution provided. they mostly just used the amd closed source driver to solve it (or used gfx without accel)
in several cases they say the picture is correct on an external monitor just the built in is broken.
 
Try with scfb driver
in /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-scfb.conf:

Code: 
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
 Driver "scfb"
EndSection
 
Last edited:
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