hybrid-graphics-linux team mailing list archive

[Alex Williamson <alex.l.williamson@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Bastien Schuhmacher
<b.schuhm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I tested your module on my Asus N53Jf with ubuntu 10.10 and 2.6.38.
>
> It seems to be working right now, although it gets me a little confused.
>
> echoing ON and OFF impacted battery drain rate as expected, so I guess
> discrete GPU is shut down properly.
>
> Then I tried  to switch to discrete. I echoed DDIS, then tried an X restart
> with Alt+sys+K (Ctrl-Alt-Bckspc doesn't work for a reason..).
> This gave me a blank screen I could not leave. I noticed that the screen was
> lit though.

If you have one available, does plugging in an external monitor
trigger the display to turn on?  2.6.38 is supposed to have the vga
switcheroo client reprobe hook, but I haven't actually tested this
with that kernel yet.  You might boot to the default ubuntu 10.10
kernel and do the install and see if things work better.  That would
be a more similar vintage to the fedora 14 kernel I'm using for
testing.

> On reboot, I had a blank screen between GRUB and GDM, so I assume I was on
> discrete. This time the screen was not even lit, it was completely off.

The laptop will typically reset back to IGD on reboot.  At least I've
never seen mine come up with discrete graphics unless I flip the
switch in the BIOS setup.

> Now, what confuses me is the output of cat
> /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch wich says :
> 0:DIS: :Off:0000:01:00.0
> 1:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0
>
> But I noticed echo OFF no longer lowers battery drain. Rate stays at ~30W,
> which is a typical rate when GPU is ON.
> Is the cat command unreliable ? Or do I misunderstand it?

How did you setup the modules, loading by hand, or automatically via
initramfs?  Seems like maybe they're not getting loaded right on the
reboot.

> I don't really have use of the discrete card, but the good news for me is I
> don't get frozen on shutdown anymore with the xorg cold bug. May be related
> to the new kernel tough, as I was running under 2.6.35 and updated to test
> this module.

I'm not familiar with the "xorg cold bug", but I do get freezes on
shutdown sometimes with my system.  I was working on an init script
that would power the discrete graphics on early in shutdown to see it
that would help.  Thanks,

Alex