Installing Slackware 14.1 via UEFI on a Thinkpad W530 ... observations and questions

bimboleum · 11-30-2013, 11:56 PM

Hi,
Previously I have successfully installed Slackware 14.0 on my Thinkpad W530.

I am not a naive user .. I have been using Slackware since 1995.

A note here .. the W530 has an integrated Intel video chip and an Nvidia K1000
GPU.

So .... having a spare harddrive, I did a trial install of Slackware 14.1
using UEFI (set the bios option to UEFI boot).

1. The install DVD (64bit) did not give any display output until
I set the display to use only the Intel video AND run with the KMS kernel.

2. Using cgdisk to partition a raw 320GB disk, it reported a capacity of
298GB (as opposed to fdisk reporting .. correctly .. 320GB).

I partioned the harddrive thus using cgdisk:-
1. EFI partition (100MB)
2. /boot .. ext3 ... (100MB)
3. swap ... 64GB (2*ram)
4. / ...... ext3 ... (30GB)
5. lvm .... the remaining space

I installed everything except KDE.

The installed system (huge kernel) booted fine. Xwindows worked as expected.
I added an additional entry to elilo.conf to use the generic kernel
with an initrd that contained the ext3 drivers and whatever else
was added by default. This booted with no problems.

Note that in all cases I get an immediate boot message about not being able to load the kernel at 10000 because the address is not available but that the kernel will be moved there (although this may not work!)

Now I changed the display in the BIOS to be "discrete graphics" i.e the nvidia GPU.

Booting either of the kernels resulted in a blank screen after the kernel was loaded. Using the "prompt" option of elilo, I ascertained that I could
boot the "huge" (install default) kernel if I used the command line:-
"vmlinuz root=/dev/sda4 ro" ... i.e. removing the "vga=normal" option.
This did not work with the generic kernel. I (naively I suppose) assumed that if I created an initrd with the nouveau module added ( I blacklisted the nvidia driver ... don't ask) then all would work .. so I did that, copied the initrd file to the EFI/Slackware directory, added stanza for it to the elil.conf ... and now NOTHING WORKS ... arrrggghhh.

SO ... I obviously screwed up something when I added the new initrd ... the original initrd is named initrd.gz and the later one containing the nouveau module is called initrd_nouveau.gz ... AND ... the correct initrd modules are getting loaded when needed.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to make the UEFI boot work RELIABLY for the W530 using the discrete graphics (needed for using the mini displayport video output .. the integrated video only drives the VGA output).

And what is going on with the harddrive capacity differences between cgdisk an fdisk .. I cannot believe that the extra GPT partitioning takes us 20GB+
space.

Any thoughts would be welcome ... I know that I can use the legacy BIOS
settings pro tem but soon this option will surely disappear from the BIOS
in the future so I would like to be able reliably to install a UEFI setup.

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

bimboleum · 12-01-2013, 06:09 PM

Hi,
Looking at the debug and dmesg logs I see thefollowing:-

Code:

[    0.316086] efifb: invalid framebuffer address
[    0.316096] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[    0.316101] WARNING: at drivers/base/core.c:228 device_release+0x92/0xa0()
[    0.316103] Device 'efifb.0' does not have a release() function, it is broken
 and must be fixed.
[    0.316105] Modules linked in:
[    0.316108] CPU: 2 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 3.10.17 #2
[    0.316110] Hardware name: LENOVO 24382HU/24382HU, BIOS G5ET29WW (1.07 ) 05/2
5/2012
[    0.316112]  0000000000000009 ffff8807fa8b1d78 ffffffff81b66dc6 ffff8807fa8b1
db0
[    0.316116]  ffffffff81056f51 ffffffff82071320 ffffffff82071310 ffff8807f8cb1
240
[    0.316119]  ffffffff82071320 0000000000000000 ffff8807fa8b1e10 ffffffff81056
fbc
[    0.316122] Call Trace:
[    0.316128]  [<ffffffff81b66dc6>] dump_stack+0x19/0x1b
[    0.316132]  [<ffffffff81056f51>] warn_slowpath_common+0x61/0x80
[    0.316135]  [<ffffffff81056fbc>] warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4c/0x50
[    0.316138]  [<ffffffff81657b42>] device_release+0x92/0xa0
[    0.316142]  [<ffffffff8158dc4f>] kobject_release+0x3f/0x80
[    0.316144]  [<ffffffff8158db48>] kobject_put+0x28/0x60
[    0.316146]  [<ffffffff81657d27>] put_device+0x17/0x20
[    0.316151]  [<ffffffff8165dd30>] platform_device_unregister+0x20/0x30
[    0.316154]  [<ffffffff8215d718>] efifb_init+0x281/0x28a
[    0.316157]  [<ffffffff8215d497>] ? vesafb_probe+0x751/0x751
[    0.316160]  [<ffffffff810002d2>] do_one_initcall+0x102/0x160
[    0.316164]  [<ffffffff8211df8d>] kernel_init_freeable+0x159/0x1df
[    0.316167]  [<ffffffff8211d80e>] ? do_early_param+0x88/0x88
[    0.316170]  [<ffffffff81b4d9f0>] ? rest_init+0x80/0x80
[    0.316173]  [<ffffffff81b4d9fe>] kernel_init+0xe/0x180
[    0.316175]  [<ffffffff81b6f6dc>] ret_from_fork+0x7c/0xb0
[    0.316178]  [<ffffffff81b4d9f0>] ? rest_init+0x80/0x80
[    0.316182] ---[ end trace 0fa4fb3d02084822 ]---

I dont yet know whether this is what is giving me a blank display but it is suggestive

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

angryfirelord · 12-01-2013, 09:54 PM

Quote:

the W530 has an integrated Intel video chip and an Nvidia K1000 GPU.

That's pretty much the issue right there, unfortunately. More than likely what's happening is when you switched to using the nvidia driver, nouveau ended up conflicting with the intel driver. Only one can be loaded at a time.

Therefore, you have a few options:

Blacklist either the intel or nouveau driver, depending on which card you want to use. I don't know if that will work.
Install Bumblebee
Install the proprietary nVidia driver.