Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 19:04:29 -0500 From: Kurt Hackenberg <kh@panix.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD-12.1 on laptop Message-ID: <5c2c0fe0-93fa-246e-a3ae-05e813e246df@panix.com> In-Reply-To: <CAKy-8=iVsLqNkwdxn_E-1R5t8mmp14JULN%2BKHRf-asWTzWcWfA@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAKy-8=hUCNiAufHHgpLJTnbS_==aHT7UyspgjLyro-yEcxJ2_w@mail.gmail.com> <18414268-96b1-6112-2c91-345aea9e7f24@gmail.com> <CAKy-8=hb0rTOSRJ5bbT=GeQoKaZDoVNVUm%2B1o_pUYR6QGSg20A@mail.gmail.com> <20191127160215.GA69810@neutralgood.org> <20191127160441.GB69810@neutralgood.org> <CAKy-8=j8z9nAnko1Dcg7m-g3NC1e2raja2mupYedhk-LdxRNdA@mail.gmail.com> <30022fe5-800e-0a9a-fff6-8edb0171e153@denninger.net> <CAKy-8=h9jacsx0ZUSucF9qN7AZ6xdtzGoacwxccoWHm9OF-Baw@mail.gmail.com> <CAC=ypSUq8gc8LsWB=Lyz01ktfcBnBaYSuyP3KBo%2BSL9StAv7rw@mail.gmail.com> <CAKy-8=iVsLqNkwdxn_E-1R5t8mmp14JULN%2BKHRf-asWTzWcWfA@mail.gmail.com>
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On 2019-11-27 13:33, vm finance wrote:
> I had to comment out this exact line to get my system to boot successfully.
> I actually have "Pro-level NVIDIA® Quadro® P500 graphics" on my P52S
> Thinkpad.
> Not sure if 12.1 has native support for this, or do I need to
> download/build this.
>
> Per the discussions on this topic, I think I should stay away from pkg
> ..drm-kmod
...
>> kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
...
>>> However startx is still failing - same framebuffer error.
All right, a few things are going on.
It's true that to use any drm-kmod on 12.1, you have to compile it, so
it matches the kernel. (Those packages are compiled for 12.0, and
something changed in the kernel.)
The framebuffer thing might be this: both versions of the AMD drm-kmod
(modules amdgpu and radeon) interfere with the EFI framebuffer. This bug
has not yet been tracked down. You can work around it by shutting off
the system console during boot, by adding this to /boot/loader.conf:
hw.syscons.disable=1
There will be a system console after the drm-kmod driver is loaded and
takes over. However, this is only a problem with UEFI boot;
old-fashioned boot doesn't use that EFI framebuffer (I think it uses a
VGA framebuffer instead). And it's never a problem with the Intel
drm-kmod (i915kms), no matter how you boot.
But neither of those drivers, Intel or AMD, applies to your Nvidia
graphics processor. Nvidia writes drivers for their GPUs, but apparently
does not give out source code, only binaries. I don't know whether
FreeBSD distributes those binaries.
But it's possible that your laptop computer has two graphics processors.
Some do, apparently. That happens when the computer uses a main
processor that has a graphics processor included in the package, and
also has a separate graphics processor. I don't know why manufacturers
do that.
But maybe you can get by without any GPU driver, which means not using
the graphics processor. Instead, graphics is done by software on the
main processor, which is slower. That may or may not be fast enough. If
your computer works, runs X and everything, without loading any graphics
driver, maybe that's OK.
Some documentation:
https://freebsddesktop.github.io/
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics
https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/kms-drm
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