X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/c08f23d223f802799c1fe7810bdd986039f8e0c2..180710ae32114dcd9a23f1a3703b08273221af11:/blog/index.rss
diff --git a/blog/index.rss b/blog/index.rss
index 75f42828ca..1ad6d8a5ce 100644
--- a/blog/index.rss
+++ b/blog/index.rss
@@ -6,6 +6,109 @@
http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/
+
+ Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video
+ http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html
+ http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html
+ Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200
+ <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
+the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
+or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
+last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
+on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
+The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
+control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
+turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
+not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
+i915 driver used by the
+<a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
+EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
+
+<p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
+i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
+/etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
+option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
+can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
+
+<pre>
+echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
+update-initramfs -u -k all
+</pre>
+
+<p>Since March 2012 there is
+<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
+mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
+hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
+brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
+<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
+intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
+<tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
+struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
+number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
+number.</p>
+
+<p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
+-vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
+ 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
+ (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
+ Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
+ Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
+ ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
+ <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
+ Latency: 0
+ Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
+ Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
+ Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
+ Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
+ Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
+ Capabilities: <access denied>
+ Kernel driver in use: i915
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
+ ...
+ /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
+ { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
+ ...
+}
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
+<tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
+invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
+<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
+(at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
+developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
+yet shown up in
+<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
+web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
+emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
+the Debian bug tracking system instead as
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
+sure the patch is not lost.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
+with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
+worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
+something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
+the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
+have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
+this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
+developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
+developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
+during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
+you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
+
+
+
Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html
@@ -778,106 +881,5 @@ boot.</p>
-
- Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
- http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html
- http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html
- Tue, 14 May 2013 23:30:00 +0200
- <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
-release today. This is the release announcement:</p>
-
-<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
-2013-05-14</strong></p>
-
-<p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
-alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
-codename "Wheezy".</p>
-
-<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
-
-<p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
-on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
-configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
-server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
-waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
-Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
-initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
-other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
-
-<p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
-not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
-version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
- default.</li>
- <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
- <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
- <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
- ibus-anthy.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
-<ul>
-
- <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
- reliability improvements.</li>
- <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
- of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
- <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
- problems.</li>
- <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
- direct:// URL.</li>
- <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
- <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
- <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
- <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
- servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
- <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
- log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
-<ul>
-
- <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
- (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>). Only install
- libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
- <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
- <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
- available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
- <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
- <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
- <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
- (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
- <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
- password submission problem
- (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
-
-<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
-<ul>
-
- <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
- <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
-
-<p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
-
-<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
-
-<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
-
-
-