Arch Linux

Kebertx

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 69

[SOLVED] NVIDIA - Display is failing weirdly and without any errors

I am god damn stumped getting nvidia to work on my Asus laptop.

Here is what happens: I go to my console and type startx. It initializes all the extensions, loads GLX, then displays nothing! xinit's scrolling text just freezes there. I go to read Xorg.0.log, and it has no errors. the nvidia driver loaded perfectly, and nothing is wrong whatsoever. I go back to tty1, but nothing appears to switch, it's still the less screen. I try to quit out of less, but it's frozen too...

Look around you. Have you guessed what we're looking for? That's right! The answer is: X is working, just not outputting anything to the screen!

In this case, X is running my window manager, and loading programs just fine. It just doesn't even have the common decency to show me a black screen. It literally leaves every pixel on the screen exactly the way it found it. So I can go back to less on tty2, start tmux, go to the frozen tty1, press the keybinding to show my terminal emulator, and echo to that pane.

I am here because this is weird. There is no error anywhere in the log. X thinks it's working just fine, and this is sort of hard to explain to a search engine. I can input to the X server, and programs can connect to it and do things like play music and print text. But it won't touch my laptop screen. It leaves an image of the previous console text up instead.

This is my Xorg log.

This is my hardware situation:

$ lspci | grep -i vga

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 12)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218M [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)

This section at the bottom of the Arch Wiki's nvidia page describes an earlier problem I was having, which stopped when I added this file:

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

The problem I'm describing now also led me to blacklist the modules for the Intel iGPU, as described a few sections above back on the NVIDIA page.

# /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

install i915 /usr/bin/false
install intel_agp /usr/bin/false

But it's been no help.

This is about the jist of what I know. Has anyone seen this sort of problem before? It's pretty wacky, I think. Let me know what you think Arch community. I'm stumped, but would like to have graphics up and running before too long.

Last edited by Kebertx (2014-02-03 06:59:28)

Max-P

Member

Registered: 2011-06-11

Posts: 164

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA - Display is failing weirdly and without any errors

Is it a laptop that uses Optimus? How old is it? From what you posted, it sounds like  you have an NVIDIA Optimus card with the screen wired to the Intel card and the nvidia wired to nothing. So X is starting fine on that nvidia card and runs fine, but it's displayed in its virtual screen. I don't own one myself and I can't tell just with the card model (GT218M) if it's optimus or not, but having two cards listed there makes it very likely.

Can you start X fine using the Intel drivers? If yes, you probably have Optimus and will probably need Bumblebee. Check your BIOS too, some laptops have the option to make NVIDIA the primary card and hides the Intel one so it works.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I have seen exactly what you described on my desktop with two graphic cards. I started X on the second card, and the screen on the primary card stayed like that, with the keyboard and mouse grabbed by X and the fully functional terminal but no input. I'm pretty sure you are doing the same, with your Intel as the primary and the NVIDIA one displaying to a non-attached screen.

Last edited by Max-P (2014-02-03 06:26:36)

Kebertx

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 69

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA - Display is failing weirdly and without any errors

You know, I think that sounds a lot like what I'm dealing with. I think I'll get back in here after going after an Optimus configuration, and seeing how it goes...

Kebertx

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 69

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA - Display is failing weirdly and without any errors

I am blown away. Installed bumblebee, unblacklisted intel drivers, and it suddenly everything works. I had no idea that Optimus was even a thing. Live and you learn I guess...