amdgpu “@stoney not supported” error solved by switching kernels

[Member calciumsodium]

Hi, one of my computer systems has an amd processor that uses the amdgpu graphics driver. One strange thing about this system is that if I plug in the charger when it is running or unplug it, the backlight brightness goes way down. I can temporarily solve this problem, by typing in terminal:

backlight-brightness -s 90

And this resets the backlight brightness. This memorizes the backlight brightness for the remainder of the time that the computer is on. However, after reboot, the problem continues. I searched the forum and the web, and this problem is common. I tried their suggestions but could not solve the problem. I traced it down to the error message “@stoney not supported” that I always see at boot.

So I started trouble shooting. Initially, the kernel that I was using was 5.10.104.
When I switched to the 4.9.0-294 kernel, the computer would crash during boot after the …waiting for /dev to be populated message.

I had been learning about the libre kernels, so I tried them out.
I tried the 4.9 gnu libre kernel. The computer crashes during boot.
I tried the 5.10 gnu libre kernel. Similarly, the computer crashes during boot.
I tried the 5.13 trisquel libre kernel. This time, it boots and also gives me the “@stoney not supported” error message. The backlight brightness still persists.
When I tried the 5.4 trisquel libre kernel. Success! It boots up fine and produces no error “@stoney not supported” error message. The backlight brightness problem was gone.

So, it was just a matter of finding the kernel that matches this system. I wanted to share this experience to suggest that one can try other kernels to optimize their computer systems.

[Author]

Posts