Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:52:22 +0100 From: "Nils Holland" <nh@tisys.org> To: <gljennjohn@googlemail.com>, "Matthew Seaman" <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> Cc: x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hybrid Graphics Message-ID: <772538D35B334BD9B5DD3B8E0B9359FE@Nemesis> In-Reply-To: <20110112114005.744be974@ernst.jennejohn.org> References: <DF0B24345C3641848BD324CB1B448A4D@Nemesis><4D2D74FA.2070900@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20110112114005.744be974@ernst.jennejohn.org>
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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- From: Gary Jennejohn Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 11:40 AM To: Matthew Seaman Cc: Nils Holland ; x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hybrid Graphics On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:31:38 +0000 Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote: > On 12/01/2011 08:48, Nils Holland wrote: > > The result is, basically, disappointing: X starts, the Xor logfile > > actually contains stuff that looks "good", but unfortunately, I only end > > up with a completely blank laptop screen (in the sense that the > > backlight of the screen is on, but otherwise the screen is totally > > black). > > Recent versions of X11 behave in this way to indicate that the display > is working correctly. Yes, it's pretty daft and hard to distinguish > from various failure modes. There's a switch you can apply to make it > revert to the legacy gray patterned screen. > Xorg -retro Yep, I've actually read that section of the handbook and am aware of the "-retro" option to Xorg (which I tried, but the same "blank screen" thing happened). Unfortunately, I believe that what I'm seeing are actual technical difficulties due to the "strange" way in which this hybrid graphics stuff works. This theory is strengthened by the following observations: 1) Upon "Xorg -config <my_config> -retro" I get the blank screen phenomen, virtual console switching doesn't work any longer, nor does Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to kill X. Also, "blindly" switching to a different console and "blindly" trying to reboot doesn't work either. 2) I've read reports on the web of Linux folks for whom at least one of the two GPUs would work out of the box, but trying to manually use the other one via an appropriate xorg.config resulted in exactly the same "blank screen and no way out" behavior. It seems that something has to be "switched" somehow hardware-wise to make stuff work correctly, but again: I just had a few hours late last night and can only say that stuff wouldn't work the "canonical" way I've used numerous times to set up X. ;-) I'm going to look into it some more tonight and will keep the list posted, as it really seems to be a problems that everyone having a machine with hybrid graphics / nVidia Optimus Technology would face. On the other hand, if someone has such a machine and can confirm that it works properly, I'm totally willing to admit that I'm obviously just too stupid. ;-) Greetings, Nils
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