Re: UEFI/CURRENT: vt() and nVidia BLOB: not working on nVidia GT 740M

Am Thu, 18 Sep 2014 07:19:45 -0700
Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn_at_freebsd.org> schrieb:

> 
> On 09/18/14 04:18, O. Hartmann wrote:
> > Running FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #5 r271728: Thu Sep 18 01:18:25 CEST 2014 amd64 on a
> > Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E540 laptop with built-in nVidida GT 740M GPU (NV208M) doesn't
> > bring up X11 even with most recent nVidia  BLOB 343.13.
> >
> > The system has been installed from a most recent FBSD CURRENT USB drive image and uses
> > UEFI and newcons/vt(). IN UEFI Firmware, the primary GPU selected is the nVidia GT
> > 740M in favour of the Intel iGPU HD4600 of the Haswell CPU.
> >
> > While the system works well with console only after UEFI boot, I can not start X11
> > having driver "nvidia" enabled, the portion in xorg.conf reflecting this is as
> > follows:
> >
> > Section "Device"
> >          Identifier      "Card0"
> >          VendorName      "nVidia"
> >          BoardName       "GT740M"
> >          Driver          "nvidia"
> >          BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
> > EndSection
> >
> > When starting X, the screen goes blank and black with a stuck mousepointer showing up
> > and a green (colour defined in my console) carret showing in the left hand upper
> > corner of the screen - and nothing happens anymore.
> >
> > Using driver "nv" from the regular xorg installation from the ports (having set
> > WITH_NEW_XORG=          YES
> > WITH_KMS=               YES
> > WITH_GALLIUM=           YES
> > in /etc/make.conf) fails with the error, that the driver doesn't recognises the GPU
> > type.
> >
> > The only working solution is the very slow and unusable x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb
> > unaccelerated software framebuffer.
> >
> > I'd like to use the accelerated nVidia GPU with the BLOB as I do on all other FreeBSD
> > boxes I use (systems still without UEFI and graphical vt()).
> >
> > What am I doing wrong here?
> >
> > Has someone successfully bootet FBSD CURRENT via EUFI and nVidia accelerated GPU via
> > nVidia's BLOB?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Oliver
> 
> I'm using UEFI and the blob every day without issue. However, that is 
> with an add-in card. It's possible that X11 or the nVidia driver is 
> trying to reinitialize the card through the (potentially non-existant) 
> video BIOS, which fails. Is there any option like "NoInt10" you can turn 
> on in X configuration?
> -Nathan


I tried

Option "NoInt10"
Option "PrimaryInt"

both in all combinations possible without any success. It is good to hear that at least
one successful run of the BLOB with UEFI/vt can be reported, so the problem might be of a
minor issue - hopefully.

The GPU is a dedicated PCIe GPU for the notebook, combined with the HD4600 which can be
used via nVidia's "Optimus" switching - if software supports it. In the UEFI, I selected
the nVidia dedicated GPU as the primary one.

The way the "dead" screen shows up reminds me of a dead end screen: the left-hand top
carret and the console's mousepointer (at the position it was on the console) look like
as the whole output is now delegated towards another output socket. The keyboard works
surprisingly NOT as expected, since I have to switch this Lenovo FN key for Ctrl - which
then allows me to switch back to the console and terminate the X server or xdm.

I need to figure out what name's the sockets have (on the Dell Latitude I have, they are
called DPS-0 to DPS-2 for the internal display, the HDMI and the DisplayPort socket and
VGA-0 for the VGA socket).

Will report back ...
Oliver