blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</div>
  24       <div class="date">11th June 2013</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
  26 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
  27 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
  28 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
  29 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
  30 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
  31 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
  32 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
  33 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
  34 i915 driver used by the
  35 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
  36 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
  37
  38 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
  39 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
  40 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
  41 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
  42 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
  43
  44 <pre>
  45 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
  46 update-initramfs -u -k all
  47 </pre>
  48
  49 <p>Since March 2012 there is
  50 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
  51 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
  52 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
  53 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
  54 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
  55 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
  56 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
  57 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
  58 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
  59 number.</p>
  60
  61 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
  62 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
  63
  64 <p><pre>
  65 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
  66     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
  67     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
  68  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
  69  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
  70     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
  71  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
  72     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
  73  Latency: 0
  74  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
  75  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
  76  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
  77  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
  78  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
  79  Capabilities: <access denied>
  80  Kernel driver in use: i915
  81 </pre></p>
  82
  83 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
  84
  85 <p><pre>
  86 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
  87        ...
  88         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
  89         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
  90        ...
  91 }
  92 </pre></p>
  93
  94 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
  95 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
  96 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
  97 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
  98 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
  99 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
 100 yet shown up in
 101 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
 102 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
 103 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
 104 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
 105 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
 106 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
 107
 108 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
 109 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
 110 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
 111 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
 112 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
 113 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
 114 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
 115 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
 116 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
 117 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
 118 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
 119 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
 120
 121 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
 122 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
 123 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
 124 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
 125 backlight.</p>
 126 </div>
 127
 128       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.</div>
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 140 <h2>Archive</h2>
 141 <ul>
 142
 143 <li>2013
 144 <ul>
 145
 146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
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 167
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 169
 170 <li>2012
 171 <ul>
 172
 173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
 174
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