15 Tips for Debugging Issues in the AMD Display Kernel Driver
A self-help guide for examining and debugging the AMD display driver within the Linux kernel/DRM subsystem.
It’s based on my experience as an external developer working on the driver, and are shared with the goal of helping others navigate the driver code.
Acknowledgments: These tips were gathered thanks to the countless help received from AMD developers during the driver development process. The list below was obtained by examining open source code, reviewing public documentation, playing with tools, asking in public forums and also with the help of my former GSoC mentor, Rodrigo Siqueira.
Pre-Debugging Steps:
Before diving into an issue, it’s crucial to perform two essential steps:
1) Check the latest changes: Ensure you’re working with the latest AMD driver modifications located in the amd-staging-drm-next branch maintained by Alex Deucher. You may also find bug fixes for newer kernel versions on branches that have the name pattern drm-fixes-<date>
.
2) Examine the issue tracker: Confirm that your issue isn’t already documented and addressed in the AMD display driver issue tracker. If you find a similar issue, you can team up with others and speed up the debugging process.