[Pm-utils] Problems with 98smart-kernel-video and intel graphics chipsets

Michael Biebl mbiebl at gmail.com
Sat Sep 20 15:04:57 PDT 2008


2008/9/20 Jesse Barnes <jbarnes at virtuousgeek.org>:
> On Saturday, September 20, 2008 12:03 pm Dan Nicholson wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Victor Lowther
>>
>> <victor.lowther at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sat, 2008-09-20 at 08:28 -0700, Dan Nicholson wrote:
>> >> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 6:50 AM, Victor Lowther
>> >>
>> >> <victor.lowther at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 21:03 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
>> >> >> Can someone with more knowledge about intel hardware and its kernel
>> >> >> modesetting driver please comment on the current status of this
>> >> >> driver with regard to quirk handling and which one should be applied
>> >> >> or filtered out.
>> >> >
>> >> > We will probably have to annoy the driver developers directly.
>> >> >
>> >> > I suspect that the Intel driver will ultimatly still require the s3
>> >> > and the vbe post, state, and mode quirks.
>> >>
>> >> That will definitely not be necessary when all is said and done. A
>> >> major driving factor of getting the modesetting done in the kernel was
>> >> so it would stand a better chance to handle suspend and resume. A
>> >> definite goal in all that is that banging the BIOS will not be
>> >> necessary and the card can be reprogrammed directly.
>> >>
>> >> http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0705.2/0893.html
>> >>
>> >> I read that the Intel kernel modesetting driver is lacking
>> >> suspend/resume support right now.
>> >>
>> >> That being said, nobody except Fedora users even have the kernel
>> >> modesetting drivers yet. The disabling of quirks in smart-video was
>> >> supposed to be taking advantage of fixes in the DRM i915 driver that
>> >> went in to 2.6.26.
>> >
>> > Hmmm... do you have an idea of what, exactly, those fixes were?
>>
>> Not exactly. I mean, there were lots of commits about saving and
>> restoring specific state like this:
>>
>> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdi
>>ff;h=e948e994
>>
>> I don't really know graphics card programming to the point where I
>> could point out a magic bullet to you. I cc'd Jesse Barnes since he's
>> done a lot of work on the Intel video drivers.
>>
>> Jesse, in pm-utils, we have a hook that will call vbetool with quirks
>> stored in HAL so that video is restored correctly. However, for kernel
>> 2.6.26 and newer, we assume that the i915 driver will be able to
>> handle suspend resume and don't call vbetool.
>>
>> So, should we expect that on recent releases that the i915 driver
>> should be able to bring the display back on its own?
>
> For the most part.  In current kernels there are a couple of older, 8xx based
> platforms that we don't fully restore (ThinkPad X40 is one that I'm aware
> of).  We're working on fixing that but I don't have an ETA.
>

Hm, but the original bug reporter was reporting this issue on a 915 chipset.
(and kernel 2.6.26).

Is 2.6.26 too old, does the kernel need special patches for that
actually to work?

Or put in other words: What are the exact prerequisites
(hardware/software) for kernel modesetting to actually work. And what
kind of quirks are no longer necessary then (all?) ?

Cheers,
Michael


-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?


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