Arch Linux

jacopo-canton

Member

Registered: 2013-10-11

Posts: 2

[Solved ?] Arch on Alienware 14, can't boot without nomodeset

Hello everybody,

I just got a new Alienware 14, installed Lubuntu and Ubuntu with which I had various problems, including not being able to boot without the "nomodeset" option.

So I decided to migrate to Arch, followed the beginners guide word for word and everything worked fine, including uefi boot with gummiboot but
even here (obviously maybe) I can't boot without the nomodeset option.

What happens is that the screen goes black just after gummiboot has finished its work, and (obviously) if I use "nomodeset" I can't start X.

The computer in question has an intel i7 4700M and nvidia gt 750M.

   ~ lspci | grep VGA
   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
   01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [Geforce GT 750M] (rev a1)

I followed the Intel graphics installation guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel and tried the suggestions on "Troubleshooting blank screen during boot, when "loading modules" but nothing.
So I tried installing bumblebee and the proprietary nvidia drivers https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee but again, same problem...

Im I doing something stupid?
Any log/command output you may need to help me?

Thanks in advance
jack

Last edited by jacopo-canton (2013-10-12 12:45:24)

jacopo-canton

Member

Registered: 2013-10-11

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved ?] Arch on Alienware 14, can't boot without nomodeset

so, it appears that, as @Dheart told me, this is a bug in 3.11 kernel which prevents
the brightness settings to be correctly handled when KMS kicks in.

for me simply adding       acpi_backlight=vendor
to the kernel command line solved the problem.