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* [gentoo-amd64] Re: video driver / system state question
  @ 2010-01-26  1:04 99%   ` Duncan
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 1+ results
From: Duncan @ 2010-01-26  1:04 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-amd64

Nikos Chantziaras posted on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:10:23 +0200 as excerpted:

> On 01/26/2010 01:20 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> Hi,
>>     I've been working on trying to get this new machine to run X. So
>> far no luck

=:^(

>> but I'm learning so it's interesting.

=:^)

>>     My quick question goes like this - if I boot with no drivers I get
>> a VGA console. If I modprobe a frame buffer driver at boot time then I
>> get a nice looking but slow frame buffer console. All good so far.
>> However my graphics adapter is supposed to use the i915 driver and when
>> I modprobe that - either in auto-load or at the command like after
>> logging in - my screen goes 'black'. I'm wondering what I do - other
>> than look at what's in dmesg - to figure out what state the machine is
>> in. Is the screen turned off? Is the driver running and putting out
>> 'black'?
> 
> I might be wrong, but it sounds like the driver tries to use KMS (kernel
> mode setting) which conflicts with other framebuffer drivers (KMS
> provides a fast framebuffer console on its own).

Yes.  See below...

> So two things to try here:
> 
> A. Completely disable the vesafb driver.

> B. Disable KMS in the i915 driver:
>     . When built as a module, use the "modeset=0" parameter . When built
>     in the kernel, use "i915.modeset=0" in Grub
> 
> Of course this assumes that KMS is indeed the problem.

I'm using the Intel X driver on my netbook now, so am beginning to follow 
it, but I don't know as much about it, particularly the xorg.conf settings 
as so far I've been running entirely xorg.conf-less, as I do the radeon 
freedomware driver I use on my desktop.  However...

If I'm remembering what I've been reading correctly, the newest Intel 
drivers are KMS *ONLY* -- they have *NO* non-kms mode.  Of course, the 
kernel vgacon should still work for text mode, but once X starts, you'll 
get, probably, a black screen, unless you're running KMS.  KMS being the 
only choice, you better make sure that's what the kernel is using, no 
vgacon, and no vesafb (thus choice A above).

That said, "newest" is new enough it's probably not yet gentoo-stable, so 
if you're running stable, you can probably use choice B, if desired.  But 
it's probably wise to get KMS working now, since that's soon to be the 
only choice (unless you want to run the unaccelerated X vesa-framebuffer 
driver, IDR the exact name ATM, instead of the intel driver). 

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman




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2010-01-25 23:20     [gentoo-amd64] video driver / system state question Mark Knecht
2010-01-26  0:10     ` [gentoo-amd64] " Nikos Chantziaras
2010-01-26  1:04 99%   ` Duncan

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