Arch Linux

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

[Solved] USB install with support for different graphic drivers?

Hello!

After I installed arch on an encrypted USB stick I can boot fine into it.
The USB is intended to be used as a portable fallback system. That is why it should from a wide variety of hardware (nothing too exotic but at least most common graphic cards).

Now when confronted with an Nvidia Maxwell card the standard nouveau driver won't work (and as it turn out many PCs use Maxwells)...

Now I am not sure how other distributions manage to make it work to boot from CD or USB with graphics on basically anything (sometimes an APPEND=nomodeset seems to do the trick) -
but I cannot make it work.

I have no "nomodeset" activated on the stick, also tried to load "nouveau" as early module in mkinitcpio.conf but no success.

Any idea how I could get a more compatible solution that works with the most common Intel, ATI and nvidia graphics out of the box?

This is the first time I am setting up a live boot USB so please excuse if I am missing the obvious.

thx, piedro

Last edited by piedro (2015-09-09 15:05:50)

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: [Solved] USB install with support for different graphic drivers?

The modesetting driver that is now built in to xorg-server may work for this purpose.

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] USB install with support for different graphic drivers?

Hi!

Actually thx a lot for your hint: I removed all suggested customization and reinstalled syslinux and suddenly automagically it works!

The hardware detection has come a really long way, I am very happy about that, though documentation hasn't ... so much outdated info out there ... well, who would ever revisit old posts ...

Still this seems to be solved for me, due to resetting everything and ignoring most of the recommendations I found beforehand...  it works!

Cheers,
piedro

Last edited by piedro (2015-04-02 23:19:33)

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: [Solved] USB install with support for different graphic drivers?

I'm glad that you posted this as I'm about to send an Arch based kiosk-like OS into the world and I have no nVidia equipment to test on. I think that I should probably just remove nouveau and possibly radeon. I did read somewhere that Intel devices aren't in good shape with the modesetting driver, so you may want to consider leaving it. I wish I could site my source for you, but it was somewhere on Phoronix and I'm not willing to trudge through their forums and articles to find it.

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] USB install with support for different graphic drivers?

Well, I am not sure about the kiosk mode...

I followed the usb stick wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … _a_USB_key

I installed all the video drivers mentioned here but omitted the usb 3.0 hint and haven't messed with the KMS stuff...

So basically I followed the guide up to persistent block device naming.

And left the fallback image (as it is by default) included in the bootloader (syslinux for my purposes).

My comments on outdated documentation is directed mostly at troubleshooting, in cases of trouble I'd rather create a forum thread than testing all the hints I can find by searching...

Good luck with the kiosk!

Thx for reading,
piedro