No HDMI Video with Optimus Intel i915

I'm not sure if this is actually an Optimus related bug, but:

Thanks to Rocko (rockorequin) in bug #700646

"This will give you nvidia optimus support in Linux: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee

ie do something like:

mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee.git
cd bumblebee
sudo ./install.sh

Note that you can uninstall it if you want via the ~/src/bumblebee/install-files/bumblebee-uninstall script.

bumblebee uses the Intel card for normal graphics and VirtualGL to use the nvidia card if you run the application preceding it with optirun64 (or optirun32 for 32 bit applications like wine). It works great on my i7 + 540M!"

More information about the bumblebee (prime-ng 2.0) for Optimus that Rocko described above can be found at http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTQxNg
An alternative approach for some Optimus laptops was also added to the Linux 3.0 kernel which will be used by the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTQzMA for further details (this article refers to the 2.6.40 kernel but it was decided to rename this kernel to 3.0).

Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" alpha 3 was released on August 4th 2011 if you want to test it before it's final release on October 13th 2011 - see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricReleaseSchedule

Hi, Thanks for following up.

I have tried with bumblebee both installed and removed, bumblebee allows optirun to let a single process befit from the Nvidia chipset, the intel chipset still needs to drive the HDMI port (which is where the current issue is).

Cheers,
Dave

It seems like the HDMI port is only wired up to the Nvidia chip, see https://lists.launchpad.net/hybrid-graphics-linux/msg00701.html

Hi, You're right it is definitely wired up to the nvidia GPU.

After a bit of prodding I was able to pick up events on the HDMI port with the nouveau module loaded:
[ 529.473101] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: unplugged HDMI-A-2
[ 533.386255] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: plugged HDMI-A-2

which is better! but I haven't yet managed to get the hdmi port to display anything using any of the recommended configurations or work arounds on the link posted.

xrandr is still only seeing the plug for the screen that's part of the laptop:
$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm
   1920x1080 60.0*+ 59.9
[...]
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

It's worth noting for anyone interested in using this laptop with Ubuntu that the Mini DisplayPort does "just work".

Ahah, I was missing the dmesg line:
[ 127.878392] vga_switcheroo: client 0 refused switch

Stopping X and performing the switch does allow switching to the nvidia GPU ("DIS"crete):
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
0:IGD: :Pwr:0000:00:02.0
1:DIS:+:Pwr:0000:01:00.0

and picking up the screen:
$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-2 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1024x768 60.0
   800x600 60.3 56.2
   848x480 60.0
   640x480 59.9
HDMI-2 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm
   1920x1080 60.0*+ 50.0
[...]

So it's now almost there, I can use Intel xor nVidia GPUs but not both at the same time.

I don't know what the VGA plug that xrandr is picking up is, I can enable it but it doesn't show up anywhere and I have no external VGA plugs.

David - one of the Nouveau developers is working on improving support for MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module) chips (including many Optimus laptops) and needs some more data to check his implementation.

To see if you can help, please navigate to /sys/firmware/acpi/tables and run:

grep MXMS *

(note the space before the *) Please let us know whether there is any output or not, and if there is please post the output here.

No matches:
root@dave-xps:/sys/firmware/acpi/tables# strings * | grep MXMS
root@dave-xps:/sys/firmware/acpi/tables#

I've uploaded the whole directory in case that helps too:
http://lyte.id.au/paste/tables_for_launchpad_294503.tgz

Actually I just realised that the tar of those tables was useless as all the files tar as 0 bytes :S sorry.

And the command you actually asked for (clearly not enough coffee today):
root@dave-xps:/sys/firmware/acpi/tables# grep MXMS *
root@dave-xps:/sys/firmware/acpi/tables#

Thanks for testing. I don't think we need the whole directory of all the tables.

David Schoen, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]