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I have Arch installed on an external USB drive. It works fine on two different laptops using ATI cards and using the generic ati driver. Now I'm trying it on a Dell Latitude E6410 which has an nVidia card (NVS 3100M). At first I had both the generic ati and the vesa drivers installed. With just these two, X started, but it was simply a bunch of colored pixels randomly assorted. Using the generic xf86-video-nv yielded an error and X wouldn't start. Using nouveau I got a little closer, except rather than not starting or displaying strange color assortments, the screen simply seemed to either go black or turn off. I've looked around and apparently nouveau does work with this graphics card, but I'm not sure why it isn't right now.
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Getting the right driver is one thing, but there's more
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nou … figuration
Are you using xorg-server 1.8? Do you have KMS enabled?
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I am using xorg-server 1.8.1.902 and I'm not sure how to find out if KMS is enabled.
Last edited by nickramos (2010-07-17 05:35:19)
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Try enabling KMS. Are you using xorg.conf or udev for configuration?
Any errors?
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sorry, I just edited my post because I'm actually not sure whether or not KMS is enabled.
I get errors referring to not having fbdev, but I read that I don't need that
I purposefully am trying not to have a xorg.conf, so I assume I'm using udev? I haven't really messed with any configuration because I'm trying to make this work for as many of my computers as possible.
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I think vesa drivers are meant as a fallback / universal way to do the graphics, I really have no idea how to make it wok, I don't even know if it's possible. Can the system pick the right driver if more than one is specified or do you have to alter the settings every time you switch from nvidia to ati?
I don't know, I don't know ...
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=100534 <- this is about installing on a USB / SD and I'm not sure what drivers were they using, but maybe you can email lilsirecho and ask him for assistance.
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This is the first time I've tried switching from ATI to nvidia. I have a feeling nouveau has the potential to work, because it didn't just give me an error when I had it installed, the laptop tried to use it (so I think it recognizes that its an nvidia card).
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Save you current setup (so you'll have a working system for ati-based configs) and follow the white wabbit ... I mean: follow the Arch wiki.
Good luck.
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Ok, I did get it to work on the laptop using nouveau, but only by adding configuration options to xorg.
But now, because of this, my ATI computers won't load X. Is there any way to make it so that the correct driver is loaded depending on the machine being used?
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Ok, I did get it to work on the laptop using nouveau, but only by adding configuration options to xorg.
But now, because of this, my ATI computers won't load X. Is there any way to make it so that the correct driver is loaded depending on the machine being used?
That's the hard part. That's what I was talking about.
Of course you can manually switch the configs and reboot.
You need to hack initscripts or sth like that
if $hostname = ati do
Last edited by karol (2010-07-17 08:33:29)
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I had a feeling it wouldn't be something simple haha.
Now I just need to learn how to go about scripting something like that. I'm not really familiar with that kind of thing.
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Look at the Arch boot sequence - at some point you have to branch it. Of course it has to be early enough so that the system won't complain about the drivers.
Have you tried to do it with udev? Maybe this will do the trick - the system will disregard the parts that don't fit (yeah, right ;P)
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Same computer - had this too. Installed the proprietary nvidia driver and it worked like a charm.
by the way - did you get the touchpad's scrolling to work? i can't...
Last edited by bjesus (2010-08-11 21:54:40)
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I have the same problem, except that I'm running Arch from a CD, and so I can't even install it... it gets to 'Loading Udev Events' (or something like that), and then the screen flashes and goes blank and its unusable, which means I can't install Arch, can't even get to a command-line... the screen is blank.
What do I do?
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Update:
After adding 'nomodeset' to the kernel line in the boot sequence, I got a command line working.
I had to add this into GRUB as well to get it to boot later.
However, then I have the trouble that I can't run startx (the error message said something about screens existing, but not being properly configured, and in the log mentioned the kernel switch as an error), and so I've given up. I like Arch, but if I can't install it, its not very helpful...
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SO, I made some progress, but could still use some help.
I went to this page, and followed first the KMS instructions there (adding the modules to the initram, mkinitcpio, etc., read the page), and then I added that bottom line to my kernel options in GRUB when I rebooted, and it WORKED! Except... only once. Maybe I mistyped something, and it worked, but now I can't get it to work again. Ugh.
If anyone has any ideas, let me know...
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I have fixed it. I don't really know how, I think it was just a kernel upgrade. Not sure, though, I tried many things, and nothing worked, and then a while later it was working. Hm...
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