Author Topic: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?  (Read 7066 times)

FlyingBlackbird

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 102
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« on: February 02, 2020, 11:16:19 am »
I am playing around with an "old" NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti in my Blackbird system with Fedora 31 but I do not manage to create a working xorg.conf.

RPMFusion does not contain the proprietary NVIDIA drivers since the ppc64le architecture seems not to be supported by NVIDIA for this GPU.

nouveau is available and I assume this driver should work on Power9

Code: [Select]
Xorg -config /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/21-gpu-driver.confto test my xorg.conf at the console complains with messages like

Code: [Select]
Fatal server error:
(EE) no screens found(EE)
(EE) Server terminated with error (1).

so it would be helpful if you could provide a working xorg.conf that uses nouveau so that I can focus on getting AST2500 out of the way (from my display)...
« Last Edit: February 02, 2020, 11:17:52 am by FlyingBlackbird »

MauryG5

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 754
  • Karma: +22/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2020, 01:29:43 am »
The Xorg.conf file is very precise and as soon as you make a mistake, it doesn't work and it no longer loads the GUI until you delete it and report the situation as it was originally. I also had a bit of trouble putting the right syntax, then luckily the MPC user gave me a tip and I did it ... The examples that are reported on Wiki in general are on AMD GPUs, if not answers no one tries to ask Raptor support directly, only they can give you a hand in this sense. Unfortunately, Nvidia GPUs have proprietary drivers and are used very little by the Power community, we use almost all AMD so it is not easy to find information on using NVdia on Power ... Raptor runs the 2070 on Power, see if they know something about the your card ...

pocock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 296
  • Karma: +32/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2020, 04:14:46 pm »
I tried putting a Quadro K2200 into my Talos II.

It is running Debian buster

The card appears in the lspci output.

I added the package:

Code: [Select]
apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
systemctl restart gdm3

Xorg.0.log shows that the nouveau driver loads but it fails to initialize

Code: [Select]
[   161.140] (II) NOUVEAU driver Date:   Mon Jan 28 23:25:58 2019 -0500
[   161.140] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :

[   161.271] (EE) [drm] Failed to open DRM device for pci:0033:01:00.0: -19
[   161.271] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[   161.271] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting
[   161.271] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory

This failure is mentioned here in the Nouveau Troubleshooting guide

I didn't have more time to test it so I took out the K2200 card and put the Radeon back into the machine.

For any NVIDIA card, I feel it is a good idea to test the exact same OS and Nouveau version on an x86 host for comparison, to see if the issue is only a fault on powerpc64 or if the issue is in Nouveau for all architectures.

Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com

FlyingBlackbird

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 102
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2020, 01:47:20 pm »
I tried putting a Quadro K2200 into my Talos II.
...
Xorg.0.log shows that the nouveau driver loads but it fails to initialize

May this problem possibly be related to the 4K page size issue you mentioned in another post (https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,200.0.html)?


pocock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 296
  • Karma: +32/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2020, 02:56:20 pm »

Yes, I only discovered that by chance while investigating the btrfs issues.

I compiled a kernel package with 4k page size and I have another SSD with Debian in an ext4 filesystem that should boot with 4k page size.  I'll probably try it in the next couple of days to see if it works with Nouveau and the Quadro K2200
Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com

pocock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 296
  • Karma: +32/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2020, 01:00:01 pm »
After compiling the Debian buster kernel with a 4k page size, the Nouveau driver and Quadro K2200 immediately worked
Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com

pocock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 296
  • Karma: +32/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2020, 03:08:13 pm »

I took this a bit further

On a positive note, Quadro K420 also worked immediately

On the other hand, when I put the system under heavy load, Nouveau crashed.  I was still able to ssh into the box, kill Xorg and start Xorg again.  This may not be a problem specific to this platform, it may be Nouveau.  amdgpu hasn't given me any similar problems when I have the system under load.
Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com

MauryG5

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 754
  • Karma: +22/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Working xorg.conf for nouveau driver for a NVIDIA graphics card?
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2021, 06:53:07 am »
Pay attention to Nvidia graphics cards, I think you all know better than me that they are limited for us at Power, due to the drivers that to take advantage of the 3D acceleration, need the proprietary Nvidia drivers that are obviously not available on Power, a problem that fortunately  there is no on the AMD counterparts ...