MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

Mad Fish · 2013-08-15 13:32:04

Recent update broke graphics for me as well (15" mid-2012 model, using EFI boot):

(EE) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Failed to tear down EVO channel

That's the same error as it was before adding

Option "UseDPLib" "off"

However this time it's happening regardless of that option (what does it even mean? I failed to find any documentation on that).
Now I'm kind of stuck (nouveau seems broken as well - screen corruption if module is loaded). Extensive searching on the web didn't help.

Last edited by Mad Fish (2013-08-15 13:42:33)

Mad Fish · 2013-08-18 15:52:18

After more experimenting:
1. NVIDIA graphics issue was solved by using BIOS boot instead (UseDPLib option is also unnecessary in this case). Just install GRUB to your root partition as per wiki, and refind will detect it.
2. I've also had screen flickering issues when wifi was active. This was solved by using broadcom-wl-dkms drivers from AUR instead of stock b43.

frigaut · 2013-08-19 10:07:24

Not using nvidia but recent updates seems to be shaky as well down here.
I can also clearly confirm mad fish findings about the b43 inducing the screen flickering, even when using the integrated graphic chip.

abruptadieu · 2013-08-23 01:08:08

abruptadieu wrote:

Anybody having issues with screen flickering? I'm using the nouveau driver (I've never been able to get the nvidia driver to work. I think it might be because I'm booting UEFI using rEFInd.) Over the past month or so, about 1/4 of the time, when I boot, my screen will occasonally flicker, like it can't find the correct resolution or refresh rate.

New, disturbing discovery: my video problem is not related to X. I was trying to debug at the command line (booted to multi-user, no X graphics), and noticed that I had the video problem at the command line, too. What does that even mean?

abruptadieu · 2013-08-23 18:04:44

Hmmm... Looks like my screen flickering problem might be related to the broadcom b43 wireless driver as well. When I disable wireless, I don't have the problem, and when I turn it back on, the problem resumes. I'll try using the AUR package and report back.

I've never gotten the nvidia package to work, but I think it's because I boot UEFI. Sounds like BIOS booting would fix that problem. But is it worth the trouble? Is the nvidia driver much better?

abruptadieu · 2013-08-24 04:00:57

Switching to the AUR broadcom-wl-dkms package did fix my screen flickering problems. Thanks!

While I was at it, I was looking at my boot parameters. Are noapic and nointremap still required as kernel parameters? Other than a minor complaint on boot, my system seems to function fine when I omit them.

lennyt · 2013-08-31 18:07:07

As of new kernel the wl driver no longer works, but the b43 driver seems to be working perfectly now

Edit: Just had to rebuild, thanks guys.

Last edited by lennyt (2013-08-31 23:57:12)

es92 · 2013-08-31 20:01:15

my wl driver still works on 3.10.10, are you sure you have wl installed for your new kernel?

You should try running

sudo dkms install broadcom-wl/6.30.223.30

to make sure

Dr.Wurzel · 2013-08-31 21:08:03

If your wl module doesn't load anymore after an update or something, just uninstall broadcom-wl-dkms with pacman and then reinstall it. For me that fixes it.

By the way, the power consumption on my machine is 20-30 W using the intel chip. What is yours? And what can be done to lower it?

WonderWoofy · 2013-08-31 21:26:08

Dr.Wurzel wrote:

If your wl module doesn't load anymore after an update or something, just uninstall broadcom-wl-dkms with pacman and then reinstall it. For me that fixes it.

You aren't actually "fixing" the module. Rather, you are uninstalling the wl.ko module from the extramodules directory (which applies to all 3.10.*-ARCH kernels) and then you are rebuilding a new wl.ko module against the new linux-headers package. So you are not "fixing" but "replacing" with the correct module.

The broadcom wl module is interesting because it consists mostly of a binary blob, which is not modifiable. So you are really building a very minimal portion of a module in order to make it compatible with whatever kernel you are running. So I suspect that because most of what makes the WiFi card function is found within that binary blob, there is not significant enough change between most kernels of the same minor version for it to break the binary compatibility. But this is just a hunch. There are other modules that act in a similar way, but if you install a module to the area where the rest of the in-tree modules are, then they can only be applied to that specific kernel version.

lennyt · 2013-09-01 02:52:50

Dr.Wurzel wrote:

If your wl module doesn't load anymore after an update or something, just uninstall broadcom-wl-dkms with pacman and then reinstall it. For me that fixes it.
By the way, the power consumption on my machine is 20-30 W using the intel chip. What is yours? And what can be done to lower it?

With just firefox/powertop right now i'm getting 12.8-13.6W. Have you set all the tunables that powertop recommends? I think when I'm using multiple tabs/terminals my rate usually hits about 20-25W so that seems about normal

Last edited by lennyt (2013-09-01 03:00:10)

WonderWoofy · 2013-09-01 03:20:50

I have a Thinkpad E430 with an Intel Core 15-3210M, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the same processor as what is in your machines. Though I use only the Intel graphics, my power consumption sits around 8-9W while not under strain (normal mail checking, light web browsing, etc). So 20-25W seems rather high… like the Sandy Bridge power regression high…

Dr.Wurzel · 2013-09-02 19:19:45

lennyt wrote:

With just firefox/powertop right now i'm getting 12.8-13.6W. Have you set all the tunables that powertop recommends? I think when I'm using multiple tabs/terminals my rate usually hits about 20-25W so that seems about normal
http://i.imgur.com/KKP2DeWs.png

Setting all the tunables doesn't really change anything (most were set already anyway). Even when I close the browser and disable desktop effects the power consumption is still at about 20 W, the wakeups/second go down from a couple of hundred to about 50 though, so those don't really seem to be the problem.

Last edited by Dr.Wurzel (2013-09-02 20:28:48)

Dr.Wurzel · 2013-09-04 17:31:41

Update:
I found the Problem. The nvidia chip was unused but not turned off. When I turn it off with vgaswitcheroo the power consumption goes down to ~16 W which doesn't seem perfect but it's certainly better than 25 W. Turning off the chip has some side effects though: brightness control via the F keys doesn't work anymore and the system hangs sometimes, especially when trying to turn the system off. Has anybody else had similar problems?

lennyt · 2013-09-08 03:00:46

Yea I definitely have been seeing some issues when trying to turn the system off or suspend, I suspect the solution may be to power the discrete card on before sleep or shutdown using a hook, which is what I had to do on an old HP laptop with amd/intel graphics, I'll report back with how that works for me.

frigaut · 2013-09-08 06:34:47

I haven't had much luck turning the card back on. It froze my system the few times I tried. Let me know how it goes.
With the card off, and brightness low, I hover at about 10-11W. Sometimes it goes below 10W. The battery last ages in these conditions.
The only drawback I saw as a consequence of turning the nvidia off is indeed a slightly longer resume (about 15 sec vs 5 sec when the card has not been switched off) and a problem of stall of the shutdown process due to alsa trying to store the nvidia card state (audio part/HDMI) during shutdown. Had to uninstall alsa-utils to get rid of problem. Now ok.

tomgg · 2013-09-10 00:59:06

Mad Fish, could you please elaborate on how you are now booting (i.e. what do you get from ls / and ls /boot/). I appear to have run into the same issue you endured.

lennyt · 2013-09-10 17:12:22

frigaut wrote:

I haven't had much luck turning the card back on. It froze my system the few times I tried. Let me know how it goes.
With the card off, and brightness low, I hover at about 10-11W. Sometimes it goes below 10W. The battery last ages in these conditions.
The only drawback I saw as a consequence of turning the nvidia off is indeed a slightly longer resume (about 15 sec vs 5 sec when the card has not been switched off) and a problem of stall of the shutdown process due to alsa trying to store the nvidia card state (audio part/HDMI) during shutdown. Had to uninstall alsa-utils to get rid of problem. Now ok.

Yea doesn't seem to be working as of now. Thanks for the pointer on alsa-utils. Are you using anything as a replacement? or do you not need sound.

lennyt · 2013-09-11 22:14:38

frigaut wrote:

I haven't had much luck turning the card back on. It froze my system the few times I tried. Let me know how it goes.
With the card off, and brightness low, I hover at about 10-11W. Sometimes it goes below 10W. The battery last ages in these conditions.
The only drawback I saw as a consequence of turning the nvidia off is indeed a slightly longer resume (about 15 sec vs 5 sec when the card has not been switched off) and a problem of stall of the shutdown process due to alsa trying to store the nvidia card state (audio part/HDMI) during shutdown. Had to uninstall alsa-utils to get rid of problem. Now ok.

Have you had any luck controlling the backlight with the intel chip?

Edit: Nevermind, got it working with xbacklight.

Last edited by lennyt (2013-09-14 18:04:35)

frigaut · 2013-09-17 05:54:54

lennyt wrote:

frigaut wrote:
I haven't had much luck turning the card back on. It froze my system the few times I tried. Let me know how it goes.
With the card off, and brightness low, I hover at about 10-11W. Sometimes it goes below 10W. The battery last ages in these conditions.
The only drawback I saw as a consequence of turning the nvidia off is indeed a slightly longer resume (about 15 sec vs 5 sec when the card has not been switched off) and a problem of stall of the shutdown process due to alsa trying to store the nvidia card state (audio part/HDMI) during shutdown. Had to uninstall alsa-utils to get rid of problem. Now ok.
Yea doesn't seem to be working as of now. Thanks for the pointer on alsa-utils. Are you using anything as a replacement? or do you not need sound.

Sorry for the delay. Oh, I need and use sound alright. You just dont need alsa-utils to get it. alsa-utils just contains the user-space utilities, not the core alsa itself. I'm using pulse on top of alsa, and I get all my control with pulse user-space applications. Well, not totally sure how it all works but my audio works very well, with or without alsa-utils.

frigaut · 2013-09-17 06:02:04

lennyt wrote:

frigaut wrote:
I haven't had much luck turning the card back on. It froze my system the few times I tried. Let me know how it goes.
With the card off, and brightness low, I hover at about 10-11W. Sometimes it goes below 10W. The battery last ages in these conditions.
The only drawback I saw as a consequence of turning the nvidia off is indeed a slightly longer resume (about 15 sec vs 5 sec when the card has not been switched off) and a problem of stall of the shutdown process due to alsa trying to store the nvidia card state (audio part/HDMI) during shutdown. Had to uninstall alsa-utils to get rid of problem. Now ok.
Have you had any luck controlling the backlight with the intel chip?
Edit: Nevermind, got it working with xbacklight.

Good for you. I control backlight with a small script that basically writes in /sys/class/backlight/gmux_backlight/brightness
Can post if needed.
Then, as I am using xfce, I have associated the monitor light keys (F1/F2) with the script above.

Speaking of which, totally off topic, but I recently discovered xdotool, which is great to control background windows. I'm controlling my browser window running qobuz (a music streaming service, they don't have a linux app, so need to run their web app) with the regular play/pause/next/previous keys, sending key press to the said qobuz browser window (again using key associations in xfce). A great little utility.

frigaut · 2013-09-17 06:49:14

Regarding the posts on the top of this page: Can anyone clarify what is the state of running with the NVIDIA these days? What about these post of nvidia use requiring BIOS boot? Still needed? Anyone has had luck to make it work, and/or actually be able to switch at boot? Just wondering. Haven't touch the nvidia for a long time, but may need more graphic power soon.

es92 · 2013-09-17 16:07:09

frigaut wrote:

Regarding the posts on the top of this page: Can anyone clarify what is the state of running with the NVIDIA these days? What about these post of nvidia use requiring BIOS boot? Still needed? Anyone has had luck to make it work, and/or actually be able to switch at boot? Just wondering. Haven't touch the nvidia for a long time, but may need more graphic power soon.

At least for me, nvidia still only works with bios boot. Sleep works, but not changing brightness.

Take a look at this thread: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … th-325-15/

Someone from nvidia said it should be fixed in 331

tomgg · 2013-09-18 14:26:00

Dear people who have succesfully disabled the NVIDIA card, do you know how to resolve this issue:

(tomgg.~) sudo bumblebeed -vv
[ 4595.775860] [DEBUG]Found card: 01:00.0 (discrete)
[ 4595.775878] [DEBUG]Found card: 00:02.0 (integrated)
[ 4595.775882] [DEBUG]Reading file: /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[ 4595.776098] [DEBUG]Detected nouveau driver
[ 4595.776248] [INFO]Loading driver bbswitch (module bbswitch)
[ 4595.776333] [DEBUG]Process modprobe started, PID 5793.
modprobe: FATAL: Module bbswitch not found.
[ 4595.777258] [DEBUG]Process with PID 5793 returned code 1
[ 4595.777394] [ERROR]Module bbswitch could not be loaded (timeout?)
[ 4595.777409] [DEBUG]bbswitch is not available, perhaps you need to insmod it?
[ 4595.777419] [INFO]Skipping switcheroo PM method because it is not explicitly selected in the configuration.
[ 4595.777436] [WARN]No switching method available. The dedicated card will always be on.
[ 4595.777450] [DEBUG]Active configuration:
[ 4595.777463] [DEBUG] bumblebeed config file: /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[ 4595.777477] [DEBUG] X display: :8
[ 4595.777491] [DEBUG] LD_LIBRARY_PATH: 
[ 4595.777501] [DEBUG] Socket path: /var/run/bumblebee.socket
[ 4595.777516] [DEBUG] xorg.conf file: /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nouveau
[ 4595.777528] [DEBUG] xorg.conf.d dir: /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d
[ 4595.777540] [DEBUG] ModulePath: 
[ 4595.777553] [DEBUG] GID name: bumblebee
[ 4595.777566] [DEBUG] Power method: auto
[ 4595.777578] [DEBUG] Stop X on exit: 1
[ 4595.777590] [DEBUG] Driver: nouveau
[ 4595.777603] [DEBUG] Driver module: nouveau
[ 4595.777616] [DEBUG] Card shutdown state: 1
[ 4595.777694] [DEBUG]Process /sbin/modprobe started, PID 5794.
[ 4595.777719] [DEBUG]Hiding stderr for execution of /sbin/modprobe
[ 4595.778710] [DEBUG]SIGCHILD received, but wait failed with No child processes
[ 4595.778742] [DEBUG]Configuration test passed.
[ 4595.778904] [INFO]bumblebeed 3.2.1 started
[ 4595.778942] [INFO]Initialization completed - now handling client requests
^C[ 4597.586853] [WARN]Received Interrupt signal.
[ 4597.586882] [DEBUG]Socket closed.
[ 4597.586928] [DEBUG]Killing all remaining processes.
(tomgg.~) pacman -Q bbswitch
bbswitch 0.7-14
(tomgg.~) uname -a
Linux anOpenArch 3.11.1-ARCH_tomgg #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Sep 18 22:42:44 EST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I found a few posts suggesting to install bbswitch with dkms, but that lead to the same issue. Additional hint: the vga_switcheroo dir is not present but the module is definitely in the kernel; fucking NVIDIA.

lennyt · 2013-09-18 15:16:53

frigaut wrote:

Regarding the posts on the top of this page: Can anyone clarify what is the state of running with the NVIDIA these days? What about these post of nvidia use requiring BIOS boot? Still needed? Anyone has had luck to make it work, and/or actually be able to switch at boot? Just wondering. Haven't touch the nvidia for a long time, but may need more graphic power soon.

Last time a tried was kernel 3.10 and I had nvidia working with efi boot using nvidia-304xx, but I've been running the integrated card since so I'm not sure if anything's changed.

Arch Linux

#151 2013-08-15 13:32:04

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#152 2013-08-18 15:52:18

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#153 2013-08-19 10:07:24

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#154 2013-08-23 01:08:08

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#155 2013-08-23 18:04:44

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#156 2013-08-24 04:00:57

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#157 2013-08-31 18:07:07

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#158 2013-08-31 20:01:15

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#159 2013-08-31 21:08:03

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#160 2013-08-31 21:26:08

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#161 2013-09-01 02:52:50

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#162 2013-09-01 03:20:50

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#163 2013-09-02 19:19:45

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#164 2013-09-04 17:31:41

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#165 2013-09-08 03:00:46

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#166 2013-09-08 06:34:47

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#167 2013-09-10 00:59:06

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#168 2013-09-10 17:12:22

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#169 2013-09-11 22:14:38

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#170 2013-09-17 05:54:54

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#171 2013-09-17 06:02:04

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#172 2013-09-17 06:49:14

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#173 2013-09-17 16:07:09

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#174 2013-09-18 14:26:00

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

#175 2013-09-18 15:16:53

Re: MacBook Pro 2012 Retina

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