Screen rotation with a Trident video card

[gorcq]

I have a Toshiba tablet PC running both Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows, and I would like to rotate the screen when I fold it down to use the stylus. But xrandr doesn't work.

$ xrandr -o 1
X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:  154 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  2 (RRSetScreenConfig)
  Serial number of failed request:  12
  Current serial number in output stream:  12

My best guess is that this means that "1" is an unsupported orientation. But I don't know why this should be. When I boot with Windows I am able to rotate the screen any way I want, so I know that my Trident Cyberblade video card is capable of doing this, as is the monitor; therefore, it can't be a hardware issue. In Ubuntu, I use a Linux video card driver released by Trident; I have tried several other video card drivers, and they all cause XOrg to fail. In any case, it should be compatible with the video card.

I am left with the conclusion that there is something wrong with either RandR or some setting in Ubuntu, or both; but this is all I can tell. Any help would be appreciated.

[gorcq]

Anyone?

[Favux]

Hi gorcq,

The problem is that even if the videocard supports rotation, the video driver may not. For instance with the ATI video chipsets the proprietary "fglrx" driver doesn't support rotation (that may have changed with the new version released the last couple days) while the Xorg driver "radeon" supports rotation.

Then if the chipset and driver supports rotation you still may have to modify the xorg.conf to get it. For instance nVidia (and maybe Intel) require the line:

	Option		"RandRRotation"  "on"

to get rotation. It's placed in the:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"

xorg.conf section. I think other cards may require a different but similar RandR option.

So what you're asking turns out to require some in depth knowledge. Which Toshiba tablet pc do you have? Maybe knowing that could give us a handle to figure things out.

[gorcq]

Sorry, it's a Toshiba Portege 3500. The video card is a Trident CyberBlade XPAi1.

Hmm... I don't seem to have the xorg.conf section you mention. In the section for my video card, it said Option "RandRRotation" "true", so I changed it to what you said with no effect. I've attached a copy of my xorg.conf in case it proves elucidating.

[Favux]

Hi gorcq,

You had it in the right section, and as far as I can tell "true" and "on" are equivalent, so leave it "true".

The video part of your xorg.conf, based on what little I know, looks OK. You do have a "cursor" section, which is only for external graphics tablets so I commented it out, also in "ServerLayout". In addition I commented out the "DeviceName" Options, because I don't think you need them (not quite sure about that in Gutsy), besides which the one in the "eraser" section says "cursor". The changes are in the attached xorg.conf.

Now I think we know rotation is possible because didn't Lycoris preinstall their version of linux in the Toshiba Protege 3500 back when it first came out? Surely rotation would have been a feature? But did they do it with some sort of proprietary patch? There is at least one other 3500 user, littlematt, trying to get rotation. I don't know if he has succeeded or not.

I doubt any of the xorg.conf changes I made will give rotation. It looks like a little more research is needed. Is your current video driver the Xorg version? Is there another? I don't think Trident is still releasing video cards or drivers. Are they still in business? Did Lycoris ever release how they were getting rotation with their Lycoris Desktop/LX Tablet edition?

I hope this is of some use.

Oh right. You have Compiz turned on, correct? Try turning it off and then seeing if you get rotation.

[Favux]

Hi gorcq,

I looked into it a little more. Please see the following bug reports:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...nt/+bug/162312
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=379221

It's unclear to me if this is a result of the change in Xserver conflicting with the driver or the driver not being updated. Or an update to the driver that broke rotation. It may be that you're just running into the limitations of the video chipset, which was panned at introduction. Please see the following review:

But game players beware: The machine is hobbled by a Trident CyberBlade XP video chipset that is literally barely able to redraw the screen when rotated in tablet mode, much less play anything that requires 3D rendering. Also, Direct-X only functions correctly in laptop mode. Any screen rotation will slow game play so badly as to be unusable. This laptop would be vastly improved by a more capable display processor.

http://www.gadgetspage.com/laptops/t...pc-review.html

I'm not saying it's impossible. But I feel sure you want to decrease any possible video overhead, like turning off Compiz, etc. As I recall littlematt had a second monitor set up in his xorg.conf. I don't think many video cards can support rotation and a second monitor. So that may have been a problem.

Maybe even considering going to Xubuntu???

[gorcq]

Favux,

I put in your edited xorg.conf and restarted Xorg to no effect.

As for Compiz, I've never heard of it before and as far as I can tell, it is not running. It does not show up in the System Monitor's processes list, and when I type "compiz --version" at a terminal, I get the message "No whitelisted driver found," followed by information about Metacity.

I'm aware that my video card isn't top of the line, but as I only use it for my school-work, this has never bothered me too much. As far as I know, the most video-intensive thing I have running is Xorg, and I have turned off visual effects in the appearance preferences dialog and generally done my best to lower the strain on the card. I think Windows is somewhat more graphics-intensive, because there are certain things that I can't turn off under that operating system -- one of the reasons I'm starting to like Ubuntu better.

My trident driver is called "xserver-xorg-video-trident" in the repository, so I assume that it is designed for xorg, and it is the most recent version. The man file attributes the authorship to "Alan Hourihane, EXA for Blade chips by Jesse Barnes," which may mean that it is not, in fact, connected with Trident, contrary to what I had thought. A quick google search reveals a large number of trident drivers, or probably different versions of the same one, connected with these two names; and no others. It seems like a waste of time, not to mention potentially dangerous, to switch out my existing driver for what is likely an older version, so I didn't test any of them.

As for switching to Xubuntu: First, why might that be better? And second, only as a last resort. I almost destryed all my files installing Ubuntu; of course, I'm quite sure I won't make the same idiotic mistake if I add another operating system, but at the moment, it seems like rather a big job.

[Favux]

Hi gorcq,

Good, the edited xorg.conf worked. So some unnecessary entries have been removed. So if you want you can now delete the commented out "cursor" stuff and the "devicename" entries.

Compiz is the video add-on that allows special 3-d visual effects and eye candy. The base compositing window manager for gnome/Ubuntu is Metacity. Compiz is kind of a super Metacity. The quick way to tell is if you go to System>Preferences>Appearance>the Visual Effects tab you'll see three choices. If not one of the three are checked then you're on Compiz, if one is checked, then it's Metacity. What I was saying, in a round-a-bout way, is you want to have "normal" or even better "none" checked. That way you're using Metacity, and with "none" checked, you're using the least video resources you can in Ubuntu.

In the xorg.conf you have "glx". See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLX

Xubuntu uses XFCE desktop, it's for lowspec. computers. The windowing system is less resource heavy, it's a lower video resource requiring X windowing system. See:
http://www.xubuntu.org/

I'm just tossing out ideas. All I'm saying is that it would be good to reduce video demands until you get rotation. It removes other destracting complications. Once you have rotation you can start adding back eye candy. I'm not saying you have to switch to Xubuntu, I'm just trying to point out that with linux you have choices.

Knowing that your current driver is "xserver-xorg-video-trident" is a great start. Especially if you know the version number. Why? Because we know rotation was supported at some point. If the problem is that an updated X server broke rotation for your driver then you won't get rotation in Ubuntu. But you might in Xubuntu since it isn't as heavy on X. Or maybe there is a driver that was updated to work with the new X server. Follow?

My speculation is your problem with rotation is a video resources/video driver problem. So each time you reduce the demand on video resources try rotating. After all the poster towards the bottom on the first bug report said he got something to happen. I'm just not sure he meant rotation.

[gorcq]

Hmm. I see why Xubuntu might be better for my purposes. Suppose I installed it as a third operating system and found that I liked it. Is there a simple way, at that point, to un-install Ubuntu without destroying my files? I ask, because my hard drive isn't so big that I'd want to permanently partition it into three pieces.

[Favux]

Hi gorcq,

Let's summarize.

Your stylus, eraser, and two stylus buttons work fine. We've found and cleaned up some unnecessary entries in your xorg.conf. Using Metacity with Visual Effects checked to "none" entering in a terminal:

xrandr -o left

or

xrandr -o right

does not give you rotation. Even with:

	Option		"RandRRotation" "true"

in your xorg.conf. Why don't you try commenting "RandRRotation" out "#" in your xorg.conf and try rotating again. Just for completeness sake.

We have a bug report from 11/07 reporting rotation broken. The original poster seems to feel it's Xorg's version of X that is responsible. This seems possible, ie an update of Xserver broke the driver. Or to put it another way, the driver wasn't updated to work with the new version of X.

Reading it several times Timo Aaltonen who was assigned the bug is telling us it is the driver. It was not updated. He says it is not a Xorg bug.

I speculated that a lower resource demanding windows manager might allow the driver to function on the current version of X. This may be possible, but perhaps unlikely.

It seems the best way to proceed is to find out if Xorg has updated, or plans to update the driver for your video chipset. You could make an entry into the bug report. You could contact the Xorg driver folks directly, or through their message board/forum.

This way you may save a lot of research. The Xorg developer responsible for the Trident drives may not know rotation is broken. Of course there's always the possibility that someone has "patched" the driver and has rotation working.

And in the meanwhile, let's hope someone who knows the answer posts on your thread.

PS: There's a great backup thread in the Tutorials & Tips forum. Lot's of people prefer /home on a separate partition so that they can have multiple different linux OS's installed. There are HOW TO's on that too, plus on how to migrate your /home to a separate partition. Of course there are many opinions on what's the best way to do each one of these!
PPS: If you do get rotation working, some rotation scripts are available at:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...92#post6274392