Using "nouveau" driver for a nVidia GPU.

Didier Spaier · 01-26-2010, 09:59 AM

Hi forum,

I use the "nouveau" driver for my nVidia GPU for several reasons:
- this allows me to use KMS (faster switching between console / GUI modes)
- it's easy to use for dual head
- it eases resizing with xrandr

But I blacklisted it in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and load it in /etc/rc.d/rc.local as otherwise I get nothing but a black screen. I guess the reason is that if I let the kernel load it, at time it tries to the firmware (which resides in /lib/firmware/nouveau) is not yet available.

Any help appreciated to have "nouveau" properly loaded by the kernel during boot.

As a side note, I noticed this in git log for xf86-video-nouveau:

Code:

commit 6267b85460ef364aa51a7d33006940bb00a049d9
Author: Ben Skeggs <bskeggs@redhat.com>
Date:   Wed Jan 13 12:03:14 2010 +1000

    bump xorg-server requirement to 1.7
    
    Signed-off-by: Ben Skeggs <bskeggs@redhat.com>

So I won't upgrade any more as long as we have xorg-server 1.6.3 in Slackware.

Meanwhile, if RW happens to pass by here, may be he could tell us when we can hope for a bump in xorg-server version in -current

adamk75 · 01-26-2010, 10:15 AM

You can compile extra firmware directly into the kernel using the CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE and CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR kernel config options.

For my radeon, I use:

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="radeon/R700_rlc.bin""
CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware/"

You'd obviously specify "nouveau/blah.bin" for the EXTRA_FIRMWARE. You can compile more than one in, simply separate them by spaces.

Adam

Didier Spaier · 01-26-2010, 12:56 PM

Thanks Adamk75.

I tried, but to no avail. That works on console mode but when I start X to get into Fluxbox I get a black screen. I see the mouse cursor and can move it, but nor mouse buttons neither keyboard work. All I can do is use the power button of my laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad T61) to trigger an ACPI halt

I have all the (many) nouveau firmwares built in the kernel though.

I do not know how to solve that, as I don't see anything interesting in the logs, including of course Xorg.0.log.