#9318 NORM 1.5-ATe: Via framebuffer failure on 1.5

[Harald Welte]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 03:01:02AM -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
> It can't, but I don't mind communicating by e-mail and updating the
> tracker afterwards if you'd prefer.

I'll respond by mail now, but will check out the tracker later.  Just arrived
back from 4 days offline and have tons of backlog

>    > mh, the problem must be related to that particular board, as I've
>    > tested the code on both VX800 and VX855 (including a VX800 based
>    > laptop with panel).  But thanks for letting me know.  viafb was
>    > working on the device before?  What about the external VGA?
> 
> I've tried with a VX800 laptop with CRT+panel, and the 1.5 board with
> CRT, and neither worked.  The fb init does not complete:
> 
> [   24.128168] vmap allocation for size 268439552 failed: use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.
> [   24.136654] ioremap of fbmem failed

this means you need to boot with vmalloc=<something-bigger>.  The framebuffer
needs to be vmalloc'ed.  So if you have a relatively small amount of RAM, and
the BIOS is configured for 256MB framebuffer size, the kernel-selected vmalloc
area is smaller than what we need for the framebuffer.  So you have three options:

1) tell the BIOS to configure the north bridge to only use 64MB or 128MB
   for the framebuffer
2) put more memory in the system (the kernel will grow the vmalloc area based
   on total amount of ram available)
3) use 'vmalloc=XXX' to tell the kernel to have a bigger vmalloc area.

-- 
- Harald Welte <hwelte at hmw-consulting.de>       http://www.hmw-consulting.de/
=============================================================================
Consultant for Linux networking, network security, Linux driver development