[LambdaFox]

I have Ubuntu 14.10 amd64 minimal installed with the xubuntu-core.

I have 2 Radeon 7970 cards with one monitor connected to each.

I run BOINC, and it needs the proprietary drivers to use both gpus. So, I have installed the proprietary drivers version 2:14.501-0ubuntu1 from AMD.

kodi 2:14.2~git20150327.1058-final-0utopic is installed from the ppa.

After doing the aticonfig -initial -adapter=all , my system is mostly working fine.

There are a few quirks that I assume are some configuration I need to do, but as a newbie to linux, I am clueless about.

Here are quirks I have noticed that I am hoping can help you help me work out the kinks:

I can drag windows between monitors with no errors. I have not tried every installed application, but palemoon browser, vlc media player, gimp and inkscape all travel without glitches -- with open content inside and with none open inside. BUT, when I open kodi It works fine on the display attached to ati adapter 0. When I drag it to the display attached to ati adapter 1, the inside of the window is just empty black space. Dragging it back to the other monitor and voila it still works as expected.

In the course of creating the debug logs and screenshots, I noticed that when I click on the blank window on display 1, I can hear the sounds from the interface moving around with the keyboard even though I do not see it on the screen.

These other symptoms I have noticed may or may not be related. I mention them to give you all clues you might use to help me:

• When I try to start xfce4 display settings application, I get a gtk error window with this error: "unable to start the Xfce Display Settings - Unable to query the version of the RandR extension being used"
  
• I have x11-server-utils installed, but when I try xrandr in the terminal, I get this error "RandR extension missing"
  
• When I start catfish from the terminal, I see this error in the terminal "** (catfish.py:23037): CRITICAL **: atk_object_set_description: assertion 'ATK_IS_OBJECT (accessible)' failed", but the catfish window opens and seems to work anyway.
  

screen shots:
http://postimg.org/image/ows5mfwoj/
http://postimg.org/image/onukwijw3/

Debug & crash logs:

Your debug kodi.log: http://xbmclogs.com/p5nzg1dhc
Your XBMC crashlog: http://xbmclogs.com/pojgpwwwz

[LambdaFox]

The only idea I have is to purge kodi, and reinstall. If I don't get any other ideas, I will try that later today (Monday).

[FernetMenta]

Kodi depends on xrandr. Try to fix this first.

[LambdaFox]

Kodi depends on xrandr. Try to fix this first.

I am new to linux; so, really have no idea how to troubleshoot the xrandr problem. I discovered it, only because trouble shooting the other symptoms led me to postings that suggested using it. I did submit a bug report to unbuntu that it will not run even though the containg package is installed.

What really confuses me is that kodi is the only app that I have installed that is behaving this way.

[fritsch]

The proprietary AMD fglrx binary blob has issues with xrandr (the OSS protocol extension to control screens). Come back with the normal radeon drivers installed and it should work.

[LambdaFox]

The proprietary AMD fglrx binary blob has issues with xrandr (the OSS protocol extension to control screens). Come back with the normal radeon drivers installed and it should work.

When you say "normal" radeon drivers, I guess you mean the nouvaeu open source drivers? Unfortunately they will not run two gpus with boinc.

I will google troubleshooting xrandr and fglrx and see if I can find any insight...

[LambdaFox]

http://postimg.org/image/eghk0lkxf/

here is an even more interesting screen shot. I have the windows for vlc and kodi placed so they are more or less half on each monitor. both are playing a video, not paused. the part of the video on my second monitor in kodi is blacked out, but the video keeps playing fine on the first monitor. no errors, etc.

weird

[fritsch]

We don't support fglrx at all. This is a nightmare driver and will soon be history.

[LambdaFox]

We don't support fglrx at all. This is a nightmare driver and will soon be history.

That makes me very sad, because while I really love kodi, that means I will not be able to use it.

It might be helpfull, if you changed the dependencies in the ppa to show it is not compatable with fglrx. If the same applies to the nvidia binaries, you might flag those also.

[fritsch]

Nvidia works fine.

Background: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...xbmc&num=1

And guess what, nothing has happened since then -> and we really tried. Phonecall your vendor, where you bought this gpu and complain. We are done with fglrx.

[LambdaFox]

Nvidia works fine.

Background: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...xbmc&num=1

And guess what, nothing has happened since then -> and we really tried. Phonecall your vendor, where you bought this gpu and complain. We are done with fglrx.

That is a VEEERY interesting --if aggrevating -- read! One of my cards is from xfx and the other is from Saphire. I will send inquiries to their tech support. The proper question should be "when will h.264 5.1 decoding and what else in the linux catalyst driver?

I wonder if, in the meantime, one of the earlier special fglrx builds might solve my current problem with kodi...

[fritsch]

I hacked the driver back at this time and found the SW switch to enable H264 Level 5.1 .... they enabled it then by default.

Problem was, that we never got a xvba-sdk updated. So mpeg-2/mpeg-4 stayed work in progress. Arround end of 2k11 they released a new driver that produces 100% load on one core whenever vsync is enabled - as they did not care to fix that, we dropped support for them.

Half a year ago they reappeared with an "internal vaapi" wrapper. That wraps their xvba and provides some vaapi capabilities (no vpp) and the fun thing: it's not threadsafe :-) I sent them some emails with fixes for that, as we had implemented it two years _before_ them ... no reaction, still broken.

You can try with latest driver:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<video>
<forcevaapienabled>true</forcevaapienabled>
</video>
</advancedsettings>

It will most likely stall after the first frame :-) (Don't forget to turn VAAPI on under Video -> Acceleration).

You see, this driver is utter shit, not worth workarounding anything, as they (amd closed source department) did not want - back at that time. And we had everything read, even ffmpeg patches ... publically available. Now they killed their driver themselves. New gpus will run with a new OSS kernel drm module without that blob.

[LambdaFox]

I added this to my advancdsettings.xml and enabled VAAPI:

...

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<video>
<forcevaapienabled>true</forcevaapienabled>
</video>
</advancedsettings>

I should probably report that before coming here, I followed this guide to enable vdpau for fglrx. I also have the vdpau enabled in kodi's video acceleration.

My problem persists.

Just to restate... Kodi works fine, plays everything I throw at it. I have two gpu's and one monitor attached to each. When I keep kodi on the first monitor / gpu, it works with no problem. When I move kodi's window to the other gpu / monitor, it looks like a black overlay appears in the window. The video / audio keep playing without error, and when I move the window back over to the other monitor there has been no skipping or sync problems and the black overlay disappears.

You can see from my latest screenshot, that this is not a problem rendering video. The kodi menu shows the same behavior.

As a linux noob, it looks to me like kodi isn't seeing the extended xinerama desktop. kodi is the only application I have that is doing this. Googling and reading a lot, my gut tells me if I changed my set-up to multiseat, that would eliminate the problem.