Bug 10681 (Anibal)

Summary: No DRM and DRI support for Trident-based chips
Product: Drivers Reporter: Anibal Del Olmo (adomail)
Component: Video(DRI - non Intel)Assignee: drivers_video-dri
Status: REJECTED WILL_NOT_FIX    
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 2.6.x Subsystem:
Regression: --- Bisected commit-id:

Description Anibal Del Olmo 2008-05-11 15:46:30 UTC 
Latest working kernel version: 2.4.x (supposedly)

Earliest failing kernel version: unknown (to me)

Distribution: all

Hardware Environment: All Video cards with Trident (or Trident-based, as VIA PLE133) chips, tested in a Trident Cyberblade i1

Software Environment: Tested in Xubuntu (8.04), Ubuntu (6.10/7.04/7.10/8.04), Mandriva (One 2008 Spring), openSUSE (10.3).

Problem Description: 

There is no DRM kernel module for Trident-based chips, so there is no specific DRM support for those chips (mostly present in old laptops from Compaq -at least Armada and Presario series-; Toshiba -at least some of the Portage and Stellite series-; Hewlett-Packard -don't know the series, sorry-; probably many others). 

If I'm not mistaken, having not DRM support implies having no DRI for those chips, even if the trident_dri driver actually exists. I'm positive that the Cyberblade series of the Trident Chips have no DRI support at all, and I've tried to track the problem, which seems to reside in the absence of specific DRM support for them.

Tried with last DRM and Mesa CVS via git, but no luck (in Madriva One 2008 Spring). Since the DRM support is a kernel module, I'm posting the issue here as an enhancement, but it's actually not a problem, and nothing it's actually failing.

In all the distros tested, the DRI module is succesfully loaded at X startup. All the proper lines (as "Load "DRI"" or "Section "DRI"" with "Mode 0666" and others) needed in Xorg.conf are present.

Steps to reproduce:

Simple get a box with a Trident card, install the distro of your choice, and run glxinfo | grep direct to see that there's no direct rendering support. Look at the drm kernel modelues, and no trident-specific module will be present.

Any extra information that I can provide, I will gladly try to.
If my post in this bugzilla is in the wrong place, please forgive me for wasting your time.
Also, I apologize for my english, which is poor at best, I hope the report isn't too confuse.
Comment 1 Alan 2008-05-11 15:49:59 UTC 
Minimal documentation is available from VIA (included in the PLE133 chipset docs if you have the right version). You will however have to write the driver ;)
Comment 2 Anibal Del Olmo 2008-05-14 13:37:10 UTC 
Oh, well. I'm screwed then... ;)

Two questions still haunt me by night, There actually was DRI support in the 2.4.x branch of the kernel? If so, Why it got broken?

Anyway, I suppose the source is avialable form freedesktop.org and kernel.org, so I could check it; and make sure I'm absolutely inable to understan a single line =P

Thanks for the response.

ps: are you Alan Hourihane, the One that go through the swamp of VIA documentation and ended up with a working driver?
Comment 3 Alan 2008-09-22 10:16:14 UTC 
No Nor did he get a working driver