Re: nouveau vs nvidia - fresh install, nouveau wins

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 8:33 AM, George Galt <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 11:05 AM, Fedor Pikus <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 1:13 AM, Axel Thimm <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 00:26 -0700, Fedor Pikus wrote:
>>>> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Axel Thimm <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> > On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 20:36 -0700, Fedor Pikus wrote:
>>>> >> The NVidia RPM is configured to blacklist nouveau, which usually does
>>>> >> the job of removing it. But recently I ran into the case where it does
>>>> >> not work. It goes like this:
>>>> >> 1) Do fresh install of F14 (may be others, but that's all I tried).
>>>> >> 2) During install, configure F14 update repos
>>>> >> 3) After install, add ATRPM repos and install NVidia drivers
>>>> >>
>>>> >> NVidia module does not load, lsmod shows that nouveau is there.
>>>> >> Blacklist does not help, blacklisting nouveau on the boot line does
>>>> >> not help,
>>>> >
>>>> > Have you tried nouveau.modeset=0?
>>>>
>>>> Yes, tried that and rdblacklist=nouveau. I think the problem is that
>>>> initrd is built during the install and is configured for
>>>> high-resolution text modes, and all modules in initrd are loaded even
>>>> if they are later not used.
>>>
>>> I thought these commands would prevent the loading of nouveau from
>>> initrd/initram.
>>>
>>> Try booting into mode 3 or mode 1 and see if the nouveau driver has been
>>> loaded (lsmod | grep nouveau). BTW you need both the nouveau.modeset=0
>>
>> That's how I tracked it to initrd, I booted "single" and nouveau was
>> there, that's before most things are loaded. Well, that, and removing
>> nouveau.ko.
>>
>>> setting *and* the blacklisting at modprobe level, e.g. nouveau needs
>>> blacklisting at two levels.
>>
>> When it's not in initrd, blacklist in modprobe.conf is sufficient.
>> When it's in initrd, it just gets force-loaded on boot.
>>
>>>
>>> I have the above kernel command line option and blacklist nouveau
>>> in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf and didn't have a nouveau/nvidia clash
>>> since ever.
>>>
>>>> So I may be able to rmmod nouveau if I disable graphical boot, and
>>>> then load nvidia, but it requires manual intervention (and does not
>>>> seem reliable, sometimes nouveau remains with refcount one even when
>>>> lsmod shows no uses of it).
>>> --

> A long time ago, Axel posted instructions on rebuilding initrd, which
> should (I believe) fix the issue. I can't find the commands now, but
> perhaps Axel can repost the commands.  I think this is what finally
> fixed the nouveau v nvidia issue for me.

Rebuilding initrd is easy, boot single or 3, cd /boot, and run
mkinitrd -f initrd-<current name> `uname -r`.

The problem is figuring out that you need to rebuild initrd. All
instructions I could find say tha one of several blacklist options
should work, and indeed they do, as soon as you update kernel at least
once (which gets initrd rebuilt).

-- 
Fedor G Pikus ([email protected])
http://www.pikus.net
http://wild-light.com