nvidia/nouveau problems

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 01:12 -0700, Per Bothner wrote:
> I got a new Sandy Bridge i7 laptop with nvidia/optimus graphics.
> I managed to install the new KDE beta, after a few problems.
> However, there seems to be some issues with nouvaeu trying to
> start up: One issue is errors messages and slowness starting up:
> 
> First I get this console message:
> mkdir: cannot create directory `/run': File exists

This is known, and harmless (currently systemd tries to create /run when
it starts in case it doesn't exist in the filesystem, but F15's
filesystem package does include /run, hence the error.)

> Then I get these errors from nouveau:
> 
> Pointer to BIT loadval table invalid
> i2c wr fail: -6
> PGRAPH: unsupported chipset, please reported

Do what it says on the tin :)

> Then it hangs for a long time (many minutes), before I
> finally bet a KDE login screen.
> 
> After KDE starts up, things mostly work, but some fan is
> going continuously, even when the system is idle.  Perhaps the GPU fan?

If CPU usage shows as low, then that sounds likely.

> My preference would be to just use integrated graphics, and
> completely disable the nvidia graphics.  Unfortunately, there
> doesn't seem to be a way to do that from the BIOS, at least
> not the visible BIOS control settings.

Google around using your laptop's model number. There are hacks for the
BIOSes for some systems to expose the option to isolate the Intel
chipset (this is the case for my laptop).

> Googling hasn't found any good suggests so far.
> I've tried "blacklist nouveau" in both blacklist.conf
> and in blacklist-nouvaeu.conf.  I also added rdblacklist=nouveau
> to the kernel line in grub.conf.
> 
> One suggestion I've seen is to prm -e the nouveau driver.

Nothing you can do at the OS level is going to force the BIOS to present
the Intel adapter rather than the NVIDIA one, I don't think. What does
lspci show - both the NVIDIA and the Intel adapter, or just the Intel
one?
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net