nouveau nomodeset needed during installation: what do the parameters do exactly?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,
as i tried to install opensuse Tumbleweed on my new Dell XPS 15 9560 notebook, during the hardware detection or kernel initialization the system kind of freezed and then just reboots.
From other systems i knew that this could be related to the graphic driver/hardware, but the last time i had this problem it was possible to simply type in “nomodeset” as additional parameter right in the installation menu, this time this was not working but after some searching i found a solution. Basically i had to press ‘e’ and was able to edit the grub2 boot parameter, and added two boot parameters:
nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0

and the installation worked. But i also noticed that those parameters are automatically added to the kernel parameters of the installation system, found in yast. that is why i want to find out what they are doing and if i maybe can remove them.

  1. Are both of these parameters needed?
  2. What does each of them do?
  3. My understating is that they are related to the nouveau driver not supporting my graphic card, does this mean i can remove them as soon as my card is supported?
  4. is there a overview listing exactly which graphic devices are currently supported?
#2

You can use the same method:

Hit ‘e’ on the grub screen, and edit the boot command line to remove one or both of those parameters. And see whether it boots cleanly.

I’m pretty sure that they got there because the installer assumed that what worked during install might be a good thing to use.

You can edit that boot line in “/etc/default/grub”. After editing, run

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

to update the boot menu. However, test first. Testing with ‘e’ during boot is temporary (once only). Editing “/etc/default/grub” changes what automatically gets in the grub boot menu whenever that is rebuilt.

#3

ok removing both did not work, but removing nouveau.modeset=0 works!
I will try to just remove nomodeset now

edit: ok removing only “nomodeset” and keeping “nouveau.modeset=0” also works and it even made my system way faster and more responsive (gnome)
Also my ALT + CNTL + Fn works terminal switching works again

#4

Hi
Since you have dual graphics… nvidia and intel gpu, things are a lot different in the setup…

#5

ok, as i said: removing only of of them works, but the best results are when “nomodeset” gets removed. I guess this is more general and affects other stuff to, not just nouveau

#6

Then I guess that’s what you should go with.

#7

ok thank you, i still realy understand what those paramters do but at least the system works better now

#8

Hi
You are disabling the nouveau driver so it’s defaulting to the intel gpu (i915), check with the output from;


/sbin/lspci -nnk | egrep -A3 "VGA|3D"
#9

The output is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:591b] (rev 04)
    Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:07be]
    Kernel driver in use: i915
    Kernel modules: i915
--
01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile] [10de:1c8d] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:07be]
    Kernel modules: nouveau
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [168c:003e] (rev 32)