nvidia module loads, xorg still won't work [SOLVED]

audiodef · Last edited by audiodef on Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:41 pm; edited 4 times in total

Trying to get my Optimus Nvidia card working. Made progress when I disabled in-kernel module signature verification (maybe I should use --no-strip with genkernel instead). So dmesg | grep nvidia gives:

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

anything useful in /proc/driver/nvidia/warnings or dmesg?

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:29 pm Post subject:

Edited post, forgot to include xorg.conf.

The first code block is dmesg | grep nvidia, edited OP to clarify.

There's a README in /proc/driver/nvidia/warnings, but it's just a description of what goes in that dir. There's nothing else there.

Autoconfigured xorg loads the nvidia driver and sets the Intel card as the default device, but there's no 3D accel and glxgears won't run.

So I think I'm close and I'm just missing one last thing. Just don't know what...
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krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

something like eselect opengl set nvidia ?

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:47 pm Post subject:

Yep, that's been done.

Also:
/etc/default/grub:

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

well, the driver report an error, so we should have the error details report in dmesg, are you sure you didn't filter it out bad, NVRM error will be report as NVRM not nvidia).

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:05 pm Post subject:

Aha...

dmesg | grep NVRM:

Tyler_Durden · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:16 pm Post subject:

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:00 pm Post subject:

What I have read so far suggests that this could be ACPI-related, regardless of kernel type. I just tried disabling ACPI in kernel, but that meant no EFI framebuffer and therefore no TTY1-6. I'm hoping a grub cmdline arg will help - just need to figure out what arg to use.

Most of the things I've read about making this work involve

hhfeuer · Apprentice Joined: 28 Jul 2005 Posts: 185

This dreaded message

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:48 pm Post subject:

Latest rt-sources. I'm going to emerge gentoo-sources and see whether this still happens. I kind of expect it to, but at least I can rule out the specific kernel as the culprit. If I'm wrong, maybe I can think about patching.

Also:

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:35 pm Post subject:

Well, shoot.

gentoo-sources works with the setup I've prepared thus far. All I have to do is place my saved xorg.conf (from above) in /etc/X11 to test, and this time it worked. glxgears runs.

So something in rt-sources, 4.9 or latest, is different. I'm not sure it's an Nvidia/rt-sources compat issue, because there is an nvidia-drivers/rt-sources version combo that normally works on desktops, but does not here on my Optimus laptop. So the question now is: what is it about gentoo-sources that allows this to work where rt-sources fails? What kernel config option(s) is/are relevant?
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hhfeuer · Apprentice Joined: 28 Jul 2005 Posts: 185

This shouldn't be depending on rt-sources, other users had problems with certain distro kernels like ubuntu, centos, arch. So it's a mistery which kernel-version/options are involved.
To be sure, did you emerge nvidia-drivers for the current kernel and see in dmesg that the kernel modules get loaded? Not that you're currently running nouveau.

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:50 pm Post subject:

I make sure to emerge nvidia-drivers whenever I compile a kernel.

You're right, it should not depend on kernel version, but it could depend on kernel config. I'm now compiling rt-sources-4.9 with the config from gentoo-sources-4.9. If that works, then I'll have the option of picking it apart to figure out what kernel option breaks Optimus support.

EDIT: Success - I think. Booted into rt-sources. less /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep nvidia shows the nvidia driver loaded. Looking at the log without grep, everything looks ok. Grepping the log for nouveau shows no nouveau in use even though genkernel compiled the module and the module is present. I could blacklist nouveau to test this for sure.

So, something in the kernel config I had previously prevented Optimus from working. I just don't know what. Will try to remember to post if I figure it out.

I kind of recall glxgears not working for me when I intentionally used nouveau, so that tells me that particular driver is not in use.
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hhfeuer · Apprentice Joined: 28 Jul 2005 Posts: 185

Great!

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:41 pm Post subject:

Aha.

Since I used the working default genkernel config from gentoo-sources, I realized I did not change the rt settings. So I changed it to fully-preemptible, recompiled nvidia-drivers, reboot - and could not load vbios.

I changed the kernel rt to the next highest setting - normal rt, recompiled nvidia-drivers, and that works.

So the fully-preemptible kernel actually does something to prevent nvidia-drivers from accessing vbios.

Going to mark this thread [SOLVED] and start a new post about this in Unsupported, as anything further is now actually about rt-sources.

Thanks for all the replies - it's been very helpful.

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