--- Begin Message ---
- To: submit@bugs.debian.org
- Subject: linux: Don't use nouveau with Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT or alert in dmesg that firmware is needed
- From: Laura Arjona Reina <larjona@debian.org>
- Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2021 12:03:36 +0200
- Message-id: <3c67099bf80ac418b319e98deb257988@larjona.net>
Source: linux
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where
appropriate ***
* What led up to the situation?
I have installed Debian 11 (debian installer RC3) on a PC having a
Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT as main graphics card.
The graphicall install process went well. After finishing the
installation and reboot, I got a blank screen and "Input not supported"
on my monitor.
I changed to tty2 and logged in, and saved the dmesg output (attached),
I noticed that "nouveau" driver was loaded but there was no info about
my card not supported or needing additional firmware.
* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?
I have rebooted and edited the "linux" line during Grub menu, to add
"nomodeset" and then I could have a fallback graphics mode.
I have installed the isenkram-cli package and ran
isenkram-autoinstall-firmware as suggested in the release notes and it
installed firmware for my realtek card (unrelated) and
firmware-misc-nonfree, but rebooting makes Linux pick the nouveau driver
again.
I have installed manually the nvidia-detect package and then I learned
that this card needs the nvidia-legacy-340xx package, which is not
present in bullseye.
I tried to install manually the nvidia-legacy-340xx-driver package from
sid and got the system showing a graphical environment without the need
of adding "nomodeset" to the grub linux line.
However later I read https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and
found:
"Version 340.108 (legacy GPUs) (supported devices)
Older legacy driver, for GeForce 8 series through GeForce 300
series. No Vulkan support, supports up to OpenGL 3.3 depending on your
card.
Use of the 340-series driver is strongly discouraged. It is not
included in stable releases of Debian anymore, has serious unfixable
security vulnerabilities, and may not be updated for new kernels in a
timely manner. You are highly recommended to use the built-in Nouveau
driver if security is a priority. "
So I uninstalled the package.
* What was the outcome of this action?
I'm not sure which is the best way to get this system working, but
anyway I think the average user would get puzzled about dmesg not
alerting anything wrong but the system not showing graphics unless
"nomodeset".
* What outcome did you expect instead?
I think that dmesg should alert the user that the card is not well
supported by nouveau and/or would need to install additional firmware or
be used in fallback mode.
Kind regards,
--
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
APT prefers testing-security
APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-8-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
--- End Message ---