Solved Unable to start Wayland compositor

NapoleonWils0n · Oct 9, 2024

the command from the handbook is correct

Code:

# sysrc kld_list+=i915kms

my rc.conf

Code:

/etc/rc.conf

Code:

kld_list="nvidia-modeset nvidia-drm linux linux64 i915kms ext2fs mac_priority fusefs"

Charlie_ · Oct 9, 2024

/etc/rc.d/kld

Code:

        echo 'Loading kernel modules:'
        for _kld in $kld_list ; do
                load_kld -e ${_kld}.ko $_kld
        done

.ko is not required.

ucsdboy · Oct 10, 2024

That does seem strange - Wayland + sway just works out of the box on my desktop with amdgpu. Since it's an old laptop, perhaps the gpu doesn't support a function that Wayland needs to run?

Meinold · Oct 11, 2024

ucsdboy said:
That does seem strange - Wayland + sway just works out of the box on my desktop with amdgpu. Since it's an old laptop, perhaps the gpu doesn't support a function that Wayland needs to run?

No, Wayland runs fine under linux on that laptop. I have a feeling that I missed to configure something on FreeBSD besides what I had extracted from the handbook and what NapoleonWils0n had suggested but I could not tell what.

T-Daemon · Oct 11, 2024

Meinold said:
device = 'Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display'

Meinold said:
Wayland runs fine under linux on that laptop.

Perhaps the issue with wayland in this case is the video driver version.

In another thread a user reported problems starting Xorg on a "Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display" with drm-515-kmod. drm-510-kmod resolved the issue.

Check which version of drm-kmod is installed on the affected system ( pkg info -g 'drm-*-kmod'). If other than drm-510-kmod, try this version (reboot system after install).

Erichans · Oct 11, 2024

T-Daemon said:
Perhaps the issue with wayland in this case is the video driver version.

In another thread a user reported problems starting Xorg on a "Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display" with drm-515-kmod. drm-510-kmod resolved the issue.

My hunch is that the more "modern" drm-kmods, like drm-515-kmod and drm-61-kmod, really need the (interfaces of the) most recent Linux KPI shimlayer of the 14.1-RELEASE kernel. I don't know whether those instances of drm-515-kmod were build from ports against 14.1-RELEASE. The "old" drm-510-kmod probably "bypasses" the new interface features; and *if* the GPU/graphics card can get by without those new features then they will work with drm-510-kmod.

That said, it is ofcourse always a possibility that this particular GPU may have problems. It would be interesting to know what Xorg does on this GPU, with the correctly build kmod.

NapoleonWils0n · Oct 11, 2024

have you added yourself to the wheel and video groups
replace user in the command below with your username

Code:

sudo pw groupmod wheel video -m user

check which groups you are in

Code:

groups

Code:

djwilcox wheel video

the fact that both labwc and hikari arent working
suggests a issue with the set up or the gpu

there are only a couple of things to set up for wayland

1 - install the graphics driver

2 - add your user to the video group

3 - install seatd

4 - enable the seatd service

freebsd 14.1 creates and exports the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
so you dont have to set that up any more

seatd is installed and enabled
the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set up

so by a process of elimination its seems like the issue
is probably related to the gpu

Meinold · Oct 11, 2024

T-Daemon said:
Perhaps the issue with wayland in this case is the video driver version.

In another thread a user reported problems starting Xorg on a "Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display" with drm-515-kmod. drm-510-kmod resolved the issue.

Check which version of drm-kmod is installed on the affected system ( pkg info -g 'drm-*-kmod'). If other than drm-510-kmod, try this version (reboot system after install).

I am fairly sure that that was my problem. I had the drm-kmod meta package installed as per the handbook.
I will give it another try probably after the weekend.

Thank you to all of you!

Erichans · Oct 11, 2024

Meinold said:
I had the drm-kmod meta package installed as per the handbook.

Did you do pkg install drm-kmod or did you build it from source (i.e. ports)?

Meinold · Oct 12, 2024

Erichans said:
Did you do pkg install drm-kmod or did you build it from source (i.e. ports)?

I had the binary package installed. I did not build anything from source.

Erichans · Oct 12, 2024

Meinold said:
I had the binary package installed.

T-Daemon said:
Check which version of drm-kmod is installed on the affected system ( pkg info -g 'drm-*-kmod'). If other than drm-510-kmod, try this version (reboot system after install).

If you want to investigate further, this would be my thing to try first. My try-run would be to first use this for Xorg and see if that runs as intended. Then switch to Wayland, where others (like NapoleonWils0n) could probably help you further.

I'm not quite certain if you got the drm-515-kmod that was build against 14.1-RELEASE, considering the time frame of your OP. At this moment, drm-510-kmod, drm-515-kmod and drm-61-kmod are available as packages that are build for 14.1-RELEASE (specifically its kernel). If you now do pkg install drm-kmod you should get drm-61-kmod. This is the most modern up-to-date version, however, it still may be the case that that does not work with your particular GPU, even though it should.

For long term usage you should try drm-61-kmod as it is the default for 14.1-RELEASE, and somewhere in the future drm-510-kmod will get deprecated.

Meinold · Oct 14, 2024

I can confirm that installing drm-510-mod fixed it. Wayland starts now on that laptop.
In addition, I also installed Xorg. In order to be able to start it I had to additionally install xf86-video-intel.

Erichans said:
For long term usage you should try drm-61-kmod as it is the default for 14.1-RELEASE, and somewhere in the future drm-510-kmod will get deprecated.

Does that mean that I have to build drm-61-kmod from source? If so, could you please show what I would need need to configure for that?

Erichans · Oct 14, 2024

Meinold said:
I can confirm that installing drm-510-mod fixed it. Wayland starts now on that laptop.

Great. I'm not in any way specialized in Wayland and its (developers support reach of its) graphics stack, but my subjective impression is that it is much more in flux and, at least on FreeBSD, tends to be a bit more of a niche thing compared to Xorg; I may be wrong on this.

If you're going to persue this problem further then, from my point of view, I'd suggest you concentrate first in getting the problem more clearly with Xorg and use a fresh thread for that (as this one is rather Wayland specific).

Comparing drm-510-kmod with drm-515-kmod, it seems that your CPU+GPU seems to expose a transition from working to not-working. It seems reasonable that when drm-510-kmod is going to be deprecated (I have no time-line for that) you'll have a problem; for Wayland as well as Xorg.

Meinold said:
In addition, I also installed Xorg. In order to be able to start it I had to additionally install xf86-video-intel.

I don't understand what has gone wrong with drm-510-kmod & Xorg and that you seem to have to resort to using xf86-video-intel for that. The Xorg modesetting driver should be sufficient. To have a look at that I'll need to see your /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Based on (as referenced by T-Daemon):

l3ullseye said:
So I did some more testing and removed drm-kmod and the legacy drivers xf86-video-intel, and only install drm-510-kmod and its working.
Also tried with drm-515-kmod and again...

Code:

Fatal server error: (EE) Caught signal 6 (Abort trap). Server aborting

So I wonder, whats the difference between drm-kmod and drm-510-kmod?

I'd say drm-510-kmod and an Xorg modesetting driver should be working; i.e. without x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel, which is a legacy driver that does not make use of Kernel ModeSetting as provided by for example drm-510-kmod, drm-515-kmod and drm-61-kmod.

Exploring further, current development seems to be directed at drm-61-kmod, and as it is the default for 14.1-RELEASE that (especially comparing that with a working drm-510-kmod, if you can get that working without installing x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel) would be the more future proof way of solidifying working support for your CPU/GPU.

Meinold said:
Does that mean that I have to build drm-61-kmod from source? If so, could you please show what I would need need to configure for that?

No, you do not have to build it from source. drm-61-kmod, as a package, has come available for 14.1-RELEASE only very recently; it is now available: drm-61-kmod - packages; you can just do pkg install drm-kmod and that should give you drm-61-kmod (verify that).

unko_chin2 · Oct 27, 2024

Hi, I found this site
https://freebsddesktop.github.io/2019/03/11/xorg-quickstart.html
and it says

For amdgpu: kld_list="amdgpu"
For Intel: kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
For radeonkms: kld_list="/boot/modules/radeonkms.ko"

I used the command as the handbook instructs to do
# sysrc kld_list+=i915kms (my laptop has an intel cpu)
but it didn't get xorg displayed.
So I tried
sysrc kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
and it worked well for both xorg and wayland hikari.
I hope this will help someone who have same trouble.
Thank you.