[Openchrome-devel] [ANNOUNCE] The current status of drm-openchrome (September 13th 2017)

[Kevin Brace]

Hi everyone,

Here is the latest status of drm-openchrome, in particular, drm-next-4.13 branch.
After 40+ days of trying, I finally figured out what was causing the boot time crash.

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/openchrome/drm-openchrome/commit/?h=drm-next-4.13&id=3c08ec601bb1ccd5ff58a9101317b728aa7204bd

Basically, it was mere one line that was leading to a crash, although it was a new entry of a callback added in March 2017 that did not exist in the past (io_mem_pfn	member of ttm_bo_driver callback).
Thanks to this fix, I am now able to boot Xubuntu 16.04.3 with Linux 4.13 rc5 on HP 2133 mini-note.
Since I finally succeeded in getting this problem resolved on the road, I cannot be 100% if the fix will work with other devices, but I will assume that this fix will resolve the bug.
I will be able to test the fix with other device later today.
With this latest fix, I can finally resume developing the code further.
Again, drm-next-3.19 branch exists mainly to support CLE266 chipset (i.e., PAE support issue with C3 processor), but now that I succeeded in getting drm-next-4.13 to boot Xubuntu 16.04.3, it is a lot less important at this point.
Of course, drm-openchrome on Linux 3.19 rc6 will be maintained for a while (i.e., code backporting from drm-next-4.13 branch), but at some point, I plan to abandon it.
    If anyone is planning to play around with drm-openchrome on drm-next-4.13 branch (or a newer branch), please remember to use the latest OpenChrome DDX (as of this writing, Version 0.6.160).
This is due to several fixes made to the code where the code was not written correctly in the past for use on Linux 4.13, but also OpenChrome DDX now looks for openchrome.ko rather than via.ko for the actual DRM module name.
If things do not work well, please remember that drm-openchrome is still very experimental, and there are many issues I need to address before the code can be mainlined.

Kevin Brace
OpenChrome Project maintainer / developer