Arch Linux

Azathoth

Member

Registered: 2011-05-20

Posts: 6

Nouveau Frustration

I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct section, so if it's not, I apologize.

I had just finished building this new computer, and I put a GTX 460 in it. Of course, I installed nouveau as well. It loaded correctly via "late start" as described on the wiki. However, I didn't know that nouveau doesn't support 3D acceleration on Fermis unless you extract the firmware yourself.

I had other things to do, and I didn't feel like messing with that at the time, so I just installed the nvidia driver, and I decided to mess with nouveau later.

Finally, I decided to try it out. I extracted the firmware properly (I think), and I removed nvidia and reinstalled nouveau.

Turns out, nouveau wasn't loading correctly. No KMS as far as I can tell. There was no more "late start", as the Arch Wiki calls it. Even after removing every trace of nvidia I could find, nouveau refuses to start properly unless I build it into the initramfs with mkinitpcio. The problem is that the nouveau wiki tells me that if you have nouveau loading in your initramfs, you need to ensure the firmware files are available at that time, as well. I checked the Arch Wiki page for mkinitcpio. I tried to add the "firmware" hook, but mkinitcpio complains that the hook doesn't exist, and I haven't been able to find a way to install it.

So, I suppose I have two questions. How can I get nouveau to load normally again? The wiki isn't exactly descriptive about the "late start" method, and the nouveau wiki didn't help me much. Yes, I've made sure there are no "vga" options in GRUB's menu.lst when trying to load nouveau. Alternatively, how can I get the firmware files loaded into initramfs with nouveau?

Last edited by Azathoth (2011-05-20 18:22:06)

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: Nouveau Frustration

Make sure you're not still blacklisting nouveau, either in rc.conf or in /etc/modprobe.d/ .

Azathoth

Member

Registered: 2011-05-20

Posts: 6

Re: Nouveau Frustration

I have.

Like I said, I made my best attempt to remove every trace of nvidia possible. I removed nouveau-blacklist.conf from /etc/modprobe.d/ and I know it's not blacklisted in my rc.conf. I've even check all the other files in /etc/modprobe.d/ just to make sure.

As far as I can tell, nouveau is not blacklisted.

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: Nouveau Frustration

Does nouveau load, but just not use KMS? Can you modprobe it manually? Does it say anything in dmesg?

Azathoth

Member

Registered: 2011-05-20

Posts: 6

Re: Nouveau Frustration

Yes, I can modprobe it manually.

When I do that, dmesg usually complains about drm and KMS. I don't have exact logs at the moment, unfortunately. If they're really needed, I could get them, though.

I guess the problem, isn't so much that nouveau itself doesn't load, but that it doesn't use KMS. I've tried adding "options nouveau modeset=1" to modprobe.conf, as well, but that didn't really do anything for me.