[gentoo-user] Nouveau blank screen

[Håkon Alstadheim]

I have an old but good graphics card, "NVIDIA Corporation GT200GL 
[Quadro FX 3800]". The proprietary driver is EOL, not supported after 
kernel 3.14.*, so I'd like to switch to nouveau. I'm having trouble 
getting nouveau to work at all, it is giving me a blank screen and 
apparently not grabbing my keyboard (ctrl:swapcaps has no effect).

Nothing stands out as errors in Xorg.0.log, same errors are both under 
nvidia and nouveau, but nvidia gives me a useable desktop. Both seem to 
detect my monitor (benq) correctly.

---
$ grep '(EE)' Xorg.0.log.nvidia Xorg.0.log.nouveau | grep -v '(WW)'
Xorg.0.log.nvidia:[    39.193] (EE) systemd-logind: failed to get 
session: PID 2112 does not belong to any known session
Xorg.0.log.nouveau:[    35.428] (EE) systemd-logind: failed to get 
session: PID 2167 does not belong to any known session
Xorg.0.log.nouveau:[    37.322] (EE) NOUVEAU(0): [COPY] failed to 
allocate class.
---
The PID belongs to /usr/bin/X, see below.
---
I'm running gentoo-sources-4.3.3 kernel with experimental feature to 
select Haswell architecture. The host is a virtual machine running under 
app-emulation/xen-4.6.0-r6. Driver is 
x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.11, use-flag glamor enabled.

I've run emerge -e @world after installing the kernel, just in case some 
part of the system was incompatible with the kernel. Specifically pam 
has been recompiled several times. I have jiggled countless other knobs, 
to no effect.

-- systemctl log for kdm (disabled means it is loaded manually, 
autologin into fluxbox works) : ---
# systemctl status -l kdm
● kdm.service - KDM Display Manager
    Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/kdm.service; disabled; vendor 
preset: enabled)
    Active: active (running) since ma. 2016-01-11 16:56:11 CET; 28min ago
  Main PID: 2157 (kdm)
    CGroup: /system.slice/kdm.service
            ├─2157 /usr/bin/kdm -debug 0x108 -nodaemon
            └─2167 /usr/bin/X -br -novtswitch -quiet :0 vt7 -nolisten 
tcp -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-y7Kmbb

jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]: receiving command from sub-daemon for 
display :0 ...
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> 1
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]: receiving int from sub-daemon for display 
:0 ...
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> 1001 (0x3e9)
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]: receiving string from sub-daemon for 
display :0 ...
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> 6 bytes
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> "hakon"
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]: receiving string from sub-daemon for 
display :0 ...
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> 8 bytes
jan. 11 16:56:18 gt kdm[2157]:  -> "fluxbox"
------
--
The [COPY] message is supposed to be harmless according to a discussion 
with the developers I found on some website, since my card does not 
support that feature.

I'm using this script to switch graphics-driver, before rebooting and 
launching kdm with autologin:
----
cat `which graphics-nvidia `
#!/bin/bash
NEW=`basename $0`
case $NEW in
     graphics-nouveau)
     eselect opengl set xorg-x11
     eselect opencl set mesa
         rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml
     mv /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml
     perl -pe 's(^ *blacklist nouveau)(#$&);s(^ *# *blacklist 
nvidia$)(blacklist nvidia)' /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml > 
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
     # dummy empty nvidia.rules
     touch /etc/udev/rules.d/99-nvidia.rules
cat <<XORGX11 > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10device.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "noveau device"
  Driver "nouveau"
EndSection
XORGX11
     ;;
     graphics-nvidia)
         rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml
     mv /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml
     perl -pe 's(^ *blacklist nvidia$)(#$&);s(^ *# *blacklist 
nouveau)(blacklist nouveau)' /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.gml > 
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
     eselect opengl set nvidia
     eselect opencl set nvidia
     # remove dummy empty nvidia.rules
     rm /etc/udev/rules.d/99-nvidia.rules
cat <<XORGNV > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10device.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "nvidia device"
  Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
XORGNV

     ;;
esac
---

The script is not pretty, I know :-/

So, it seems everything is working with nouveau, except there is no 
picture and no keyboard.