[mythtv-users] ATI fglrx MytTV issues [was Re: Looking for recommendations for PCI-E 1x video cards]

[Arthur Green]

Arthur Green wrote:

[ ... ]

> The machine I have (for use as a combined FE/BE) is an Asus Pundit 2.
>  It's SFF (they claim "book-sized") so a replacement motherboard
> isn't really an option. I kind of like the idea of a normal NVIDIA
> card, which is why I started exploring the 1x video card option.
> 
> There are two separate fglrx issues:
> 
> 1. Corruption in frontend and setup screens when the application is 
> running full-screen
> 
> 2. "Stacked" video during playback - I get two identical images, one
> on top of the other.
> 
> The first problem can be resolved by specifying geometry as something
>  other than full-screen, although then mythfrontend segfaults on exit
> if I viewed a program during the session.

Although the second issue has been fixed, I still need the workaround 
for the mythfrontend screens. Given that I can now watch recordings, I'm 
happy to come back to that issue in due course.

> At a guess, the second problem might be interlace-related, although
> the MythTV system is connected to my TV via VGA. Alternatively it's
> caused by a misconfigured X11 configuration - unfortunately
> definitive documentation on fglrx isn't easy to come by.

I now have "unstacked" playback. After a lot of poking around trying to 
find the supported device options for ATI cards, I have the following 
device section in xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
         Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
         Driver      "fglrx"
         Option      "VideoOverlay" "off"
         Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
         Option      "TexturedVideo" "on"
         Option      "TexturedVideoSync" "on"
         Option      "Textured2D" "on"
         Option      "BackingStore" "on"
         Option      "UseFastTLS" "1"
         Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"
         Bus         "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Things were complicated somewhat by the fact that xorg.conf is used to 
amend /etc/ati/amdpcsdb, which is what configures your X session. I 
somehow managed to get a dud entry into /etc/ati/amdpcsdb (I think 
related to TexturedXRender), which caused X to crash on startup. I have 
no idea why it's implemented this way - I recall AIX having similar 
quirks about 10 years ago. amdpcsdb is a text file in a rather terse 
format - I wouldn't have thought that it's any easier to parse than 
xorg.conf.

I don't know if any of this is useful to anyone else - would it be 
worthwhile putting into the wiki? I'd be happy to write it up in more 
detail.

Arthur