Bug 60009 - Black laptop screen and external monitor has flickering problem
Summary: Black laptop screen and external monitor has flickering problem
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: DRI
Classification: Unclassified
Component: DRM/Intel (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Intel GFX Bugs mailing list
QA Contact: Intel GFX Bugs mailing list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-01-29 10:55 UTC by Benny Ammitzbøll
Modified: 2013-02-06 08:13 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments
Xorg.0.log (65.20 KB, text/plain)
2013-01-29 10:55 UTC, Benny Ammitzbøll
no flags Details
/var/log/messages (169.35 KB, text/plain)
2013-01-29 11:02 UTC, Benny Ammitzbøll
no flags Details
dmesg output (19.22 KB, text/plain)
2013-01-29 12:53 UTC, Benny Ammitzbøll
no flags Details
dmesg output (kernel 3.7.4) (20.46 KB, text/plain)
2013-01-29 14:27 UTC, Benny Ammitzbøll
no flags Details
Xorg.0.log (kernel 3.7.4) (67.29 KB, text/plain)
2013-01-29 14:38 UTC, Benny Ammitzbøll
no flags Details

Description Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 10:55:04 UTC
Created attachment 73821 [details]
Xorg.0.log

My laptop is an HP Envy 17 3D. I am running Gentoo and using vgaswitcheroo to switch between radeon and intel (i915). I have the radeon driver working with some difficulty (see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58894) - i.e. I have to attach an external monitor to get the laptop screen turned on after KDE has started.

I would like to be able to use the intel driver and switch off the radeon chip because it uses much less power. I can do this using vgaswitcheroo, but the intel driver gives me 2 problems:

1) The laptop screen stays black after the boot process has completed. If I attach an external monitor I can get a picture on that, but the laptop screen just stays black.

2) Moving the mouse pointer to the top left corner (rather, the top left square of maybe 1/3 of the screen) the screen starts to flicker from the mouse pointer and downwards.

I also notice that it takes quite a while before KDE displays anything during the boot with the intel driver enabled compared to the time it takes if the radeon driver is used.

bla-hpenvy17 ~ # lspci -nn | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0116] (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Whistler XT [AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series] [1002:6740] (rev ff)

I notice that the radeon driver uses eDP-1 as output to laptop screen and intel driver uses eDP-2. I think perhaps the laptop screen is still showing the output from the radeon chip, which gives the black screen.

Let me know if you need any more information.
Comment 1 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 11:02:45 UTC
Created attachment 73822 [details]
/var/log/messages
Comment 2 Chris Wilson 2013-01-29 12:36:49 UTC
/var/log/messages is quite confusing, can you attach just the output of dmesg after booting into intel (and experiencing the delay). Both cards are initialised in a fraction of a second, so I'm sure what the cause of the delay is.

I do note you have uvesafb, which is not a good idea...
Comment 3 Chris Wilson 2013-01-29 12:39:55 UTC
During X startup, probing HDMI4 takes 2s each time, and is repeated a few times, which seems the leading candidate for the delay. HDMI4 will be a bogus connector on your machine, so we are triggering a few timeouts.

Please do look for an updated kernel, quite a few fixes landed in the 3.7 tree that will be relevant for your machine.
Comment 4 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 12:53:49 UTC
Created attachment 73827 [details]
dmesg output
Comment 5 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 12:57:11 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> During X startup, probing HDMI4 takes 2s each time, and is repeated a few
> times, which seems the leading candidate for the delay. HDMI4 will be a
> bogus connector on your machine, so we are triggering a few timeouts.
> 
> Please do look for an updated kernel, quite a few fixes landed in the 3.7
> tree that will be relevant for your machine.

Ok, but 3.6.11 is the latest available for Gentoo:

bla-hpenvy17 ~ # emerge --search gentoo-sources
Searching...    
[ Results for search key : gentoo-sources ]
[ Applications found : 1 ]

*  sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
      Latest version available: 3.6.11
      Latest version installed: 3.6.11
      Size of files: 80,622 kB
      Homepage:      http://dev.gentoo.org/~mpagano/genpatches
      Description:   Full sources including the Gentoo patchset for the 3.6 kernel tree
      License:       GPL-2 !deblob? ( freedist )
Comment 6 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 14:27:26 UTC
Created attachment 73832 [details]
dmesg output (kernel 3.7.4)
Comment 7 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 14:34:41 UTC
Correction: 3.6.11 is the latest stable kernel in Gentoo for amd64. I have now unmasked 3.7.4 and tried running with that. Still see the same problems, except a little extra ugly flashing on/off with garbage graphics before KDE shows up.

As for HDMI4, in KDE the Display Settings tells me that eDP2 and HDMI4 are connected (external monitor connected to HDMI output). It also shows VGA1, HDMI2, DP3, HDMI3, DP4 and DP5 as not connected which is a bit weird - since my laptop has two display ports (DP) and one HDMI output.
Comment 8 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-29 14:38:32 UTC
Created attachment 73833 [details]
Xorg.0.log (kernel 3.7.4)
Comment 9 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-01-31 08:32:00 UTC
Any ideas to what I might try? Patches to the code etc. - just throw them my way and I'll try them out.
Comment 10 Benny Ammitzbøll 2013-02-06 08:12:55 UTC
I tried removing uvesafb from my kernel config and that did the trick - both the black screen and the flickering is gone -> RESOLVED.


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