i915 KMS interferes with nVidia card

i915 KMS interferes with nVidia card

[Ben Johnson]

Greetings,

Sorry if I'm violating list etiquette in any way--the readme link to 
intellinuxgraphics.org no longer works.

My hardware:
Asrock Z77 Extreme4 with iGPU Multi-Monitor enabled. Primary graphics is 
set to PCIe but that doesn't make a difference.
i7 3770k / HD 4000
nVidia GTX 660 running nVidia's binary drivers v334.21, although 
multiple versions have the issue

My software:
Stable Gentoo with gentoo-sources-3.12.13, although multiple kernels 
have the issue

I am trying to use both the HD 4000 graphics and the nVidia card 
simultaneously in a single-seat multiple-X-server Zaphod scenario. I 
have another cheap nVidia card on order so I don't have any urgent need 
and maybe not any need at all to get this working with i915.

The Zaphod setup works fine with the exception of two problems that 
occur only when the i915 driver is loaded with modesetting enabled. 
I.e., not loading i915 or setting "nomodeset" or "i915.modeset=0" at 
boot resolves the issue, but does not allow the HD 4000 to be used. With 
i915 loaded normally:

1) The nVidia virtual terminals are messed up. They appear zoomed-in and 
don't update.
2) The nVidia card does not resume correctly from suspend-to-ram. It 
prints some errors to dmesg and either doesn't wake the monitor up, or 
doesn't ever show the X session again until I reboot.

I am a C programmer and I don't mind helping to fix this if it turns out 
to be relatively simple issue and my help is desired. Is this a known 
limitation, and does anyone have a clear idea what the problem is or 
where to look?

Thanks,
-Ben Johnson

Re: i915 KMS interferes with nVidia card

[Jani Nikula]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2014, Ben Johnson <intel-gfx@geekamole.com> wrote:
> Sorry if I'm violating list etiquette in any way--the readme link to 
> intellinuxgraphics.org no longer works.

Thanks for letting us know. Better now?
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx

> My hardware:
> Asrock Z77 Extreme4 with iGPU Multi-Monitor enabled. Primary graphics is 
> set to PCIe but that doesn't make a difference.
> i7 3770k / HD 4000
> nVidia GTX 660 running nVidia's binary drivers v334.21, although 
> multiple versions have the issue
>
> My software:
> Stable Gentoo with gentoo-sources-3.12.13, although multiple kernels 
> have the issue
>
> I am trying to use both the HD 4000 graphics and the nVidia card 
> simultaneously in a single-seat multiple-X-server Zaphod scenario. I 
> have another cheap nVidia card on order so I don't have any urgent need 
> and maybe not any need at all to get this working with i915.
>
> The Zaphod setup works fine with the exception of two problems that 
> occur only when the i915 driver is loaded with modesetting enabled. 
> I.e., not loading i915 or setting "nomodeset" or "i915.modeset=0" at 
> boot resolves the issue, but does not allow the HD 4000 to be used. With 
> i915 loaded normally:
>
> 1) The nVidia virtual terminals are messed up. They appear zoomed-in and 
> don't update.
> 2) The nVidia card does not resume correctly from suspend-to-ram. It 
> prints some errors to dmesg and either doesn't wake the monitor up, or 
> doesn't ever show the X session again until I reboot.
>
> I am a C programmer and I don't mind helping to fix this if it turns out 
> to be relatively simple issue and my help is desired. Is this a known 
> limitation, and does anyone have a clear idea what the problem is or 
> where to look?

I don't have any ideas off the top of my head, maybe others do. However
you should expect problems reproducible only with closed source binary
drivers to have a relatively low priority.

BR,
Jani.



-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Technology Center

Re: i915 KMS interferes with nVidia card

[Bruno Prémont]

On Wed, 12 March 2014 Ben Johnson <intel-gfx@geekamole.com> wrote:
> My hardware:
> Asrock Z77 Extreme4 with iGPU Multi-Monitor enabled. Primary graphics is 
> set to PCIe but that doesn't make a difference.
> i7 3770k / HD 4000
> nVidia GTX 660 running nVidia's binary drivers v334.21, although 
> multiple versions have the issue
> 
> My software:
> Stable Gentoo with gentoo-sources-3.12.13, although multiple kernels 
> have the issue
> 
> I am trying to use both the HD 4000 graphics and the nVidia card 
> simultaneously in a single-seat multiple-X-server Zaphod scenario. I 
> have another cheap nVidia card on order so I don't have any urgent need 
> and maybe not any need at all to get this working with i915.
> 
> The Zaphod setup works fine with the exception of two problems that 
> occur only when the i915 driver is loaded with modesetting enabled. 
> I.e., not loading i915 or setting "nomodeset" or "i915.modeset=0" at 
> boot resolves the issue, but does not allow the HD 4000 to be used. With 
> i915 loaded normally:
> 
> 1) The nVidia virtual terminals are messed up. They appear zoomed-in and 
> don't update.
> 2) The nVidia card does not resume correctly from suspend-to-ram. It 
> prints some errors to dmesg and either doesn't wake the monitor up, or 
> doesn't ever show the X session again until I reboot.
> 
> I am a C programmer and I don't mind helping to fix this if it turns out 
> to be relatively simple issue and my help is desired. Is this a known 
> limitation, and does anyone have a clear idea what the problem is or 
> where to look?

Wild guess, maybe you would have some more chances of success if the nvidia
was the GPU with active VGA bits (e.g. telling vga-arbitration to have
nvidia card active/primary).

That way the nvidia blob would have best changes of living in a tested
environment and i915 hopefully being able to do its work anyway.

Bruno

Re: i915 KMS interferes with nVidia card

[Ben Johnson]

On 03/16/2014 07:13 AM, Bruno Prémont wrote:
> Wild guess, maybe you would have some more chances of success if the nvidia
> was the GPU with active VGA bits (e.g. telling vga-arbitration to have
> nvidia card active/primary).
>
> That way the nvidia blob would have best changes of living in a tested
> environment and i915 hopefully being able to do its work anyway.
>
> Bruno
>

I read/skimmed Documentation/vgaarbiter.txt and googled for a while but 
it's not clear to me how to do what you are suggesting. Do you mean to 
write something to /dev/vga_arbiter? This is what it has with just the 
nvidia module loaded:

/ # head -n 1 /dev/vga_arbiter
count:1,PCI:0000:01:00.0,decodes=none,owns=none,locks=none(0:0)

-Ben