[Nouveau] Blank console but X11 works on MCP79 - old regression since 3.8

[Ilia Mirkin]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 12:33 PM, Ondrej Zary
<linux at rainbow-software.org> wrote:
> @@ -483,8 +483,8 @@
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0860: 00000000 -> 00000500
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0864: 00000000
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0868: 00000000 -> 04000500
> -nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    086c: 00000000 -> 00100500
> -nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0870: 0000e900 -> 00001e00
> +nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    086c: 00000000 -> 00100a00
> +nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0870: 0000e900 -> 0000e800
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0874: 00000000 -> ffff0000
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0878: 00000000
>  nouveau 0000:02:00.0: disp:    0880: 05000000
>
> Looks like it's using 8bpp (0x1e00) in 32MB case but 16bpp (0xe800) in 64MB
> case. Why?
>
> I get blank screen even with 64MB with video=1280x1024-8 kernel parameter.
> Console works with video=1280x1024-16 even with 32MB stolen memory.
>
> Conclusions: 8-bit support is broken and bpp reduction is weird.

OK, well that makes a *ton* of sense (8bpp being broken).

I think the idea of bpp reduction is that when you're on your shiny
new Riva TNT with 16MB of VRAM, you don't want to go crazy allocating
all that to a pinned fbcon - almost half of that would go to a single
32bpp 1600x1200 buffer, more for 1920x1200. You want to be able to
have at least a few fb-sized buffers for backbuffer rendering, etc.

The specific limits could probably use tweaking - I think they only
consider VRAM size, not the fb size.

I guess 8bpp worked prior to the change you bisected though, so we
should figure out what we did wrong in the new code.

  -ilia