Re: Nouveau driver and kernel 2.6.32-5

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:52:54 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Powell wrote:
> 
> I experienced a similar problem on an older Nvidia card.  If you want to
> get the old behavior back, create a file in /etc/modprobe.d with an extension
> of .conf.  For example: /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf.  Then turn off kernel
> mode setting with a line in this file that looks like this:
> 
>    options nouveau modeset=0
> 
> This will give you the hardware text-mode video modes on the text consoles
> (1-6 by default) as before.  Then, as root, run
> 
>    update-initramfs -u
> 
> against the 2.6.32-5 initial RAM file system.  Then, shutdown and reboot.
> The nouveau video driver in X won't work if the nouveau kernel module doesn't
> do mode setting.  This should get your nv driver back.  Blacklisting the
> nouveau kernel module might work too, but using modeset=0 as an option was
> how I solved it.  (Make sure that /etc/modprobe.conf does not exist.  If it
> does, then files in /etc/modprobe.d will be ignored.)

I just did another

   aptitude update
   aptitude full-upgrade

sequence today, and I find that the solution listed above is no longer complete.
I find that I now must specify

   driver = "nv"

in the "Device" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get the nv driver back.
The nouveau X driver now apparently works even if modeset=0 is specified
as a nouveau kernel module parameter.  I also found by experimentation
that blacklisting the driver does not work.  The nouveau X server
explicitly loads it.  You must explicitly specify the nv driver in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf if you want to use it instead of nouveau.  But
specifying modeset=0 as a kernel module parameter does seem to get the
hardware text video modes back on the text console, even if the nouveau
driver is used by X.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
 : :'  :
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