I’ve got this old laptop, an Asus N55S (mfg 2011), Intel i7-2670QM (was a pretty high-end machine when new) that has a discrete nVidia graphics adapter in addition to the CPU’s Intel HD 3000 graphics. I can’t get the nVidia to work; it throws “NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module”.
At the moment, I’m using the Intel GPU, with the internal monitor only. The machine also has an HDMI port, but I am unable to get anything on this. I would like to be able to use this machine with an external monitor on HDMI (dual-head, alongside the internal LCD).
The machine has a VGA port also, but I don’t have a VGA monitor available right now, so I have no idea whether that works (and don’t particularly care).
My guess is that only the discrete nVidia GPU is connected to the HDMI port, and not the Intel GPU. I don’t know whether it is possible to drive both the internal LCD and the HDMI port from the nVidia (I would expect this to be possible), or whether the internal monitor can only be driven by the Intel. This doesn’t really matter to me, though, as long as I can get a usable dual-head setup.
# lspci # selected lines
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116M [GeForce GT 555M/635M] (rev a1)
# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1366 x 768, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm
1366x768 60.0*+
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3 56.2
640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
There are no relevant settings in the BIOS, by the way (e.g., “Select primary monitor”, “Enable HDMI” etc. – nothing of the sort.) The laptop has an [fn]+[f8] keyboard switch to enable/disable the external video port, but this switch appears to do nothing; all the other keyboard hotkeys are working (volume/brightness control etc.) so I don’t think it’s a keyboard problem. But perhaps that button only applies to VGA, not HDMI?
As I understand it, there are three sets of drivers for nVidia GPUs: the free “nv” drivers that only provide basic functionality, the free “nouveau” drivers that support some more fancy features, and the proprietary “nvidia” drivers for full functionality (but not “free as in freedom”). At this stage I don’t particularly care which of these I use, and my most recent attempts have involved the proprietary drivers.
I’ve got the following packages installed from the nvidia repository: x11-video-nvidiaG04, nvidia-glG04, nvidia-computeG04.
I’ll dump my full xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log below. (edit: I truncated some parts of Xorg.0.log.)
Any thoughts on how to get this working, either with these proprietary drivers or with nv/nouveau?
Cheers,
K.
