FreeBSD won't start using the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 ti as primary card

ziomario

ziomario

Hello.

I'm trying to passthru my Intel graphic card on a Windows 10 or Linux bhyve VM instead of the nvidia card and for this reason I'm trying to use the nvidia card and driver as primary on FreeBSD. My PC has two graphic cards :

1)

Code: 
vgapci0@pci0:2:0:0:     class=0x030000 rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x10de device=0x1e04 subvendor=0x19d
a subdevice=0x2503
vendor     = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device     = 'TU102 [GeForce RTX 2080 Ti]'
class      = display
subclass   = VGA

2)

Code: 
vgapci1@pci0:0:2:0:     class=0x030000 rev=0x02 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x3e98 subvendor=0x145
8 subdevice=0xd000
vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
device     = 'CoffeeLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630]'
class      = display
subclass   = VGA

I tried to start my PC selecting the nvidia card as primary card from the BIOS and I've configured the xorg.conf file giving the proper bus id value to both the cards :

Code: 
Identifier "Card0"
       Driver      "nvidia"
       BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"

and the intel as secondary :

Code: 
Identifier  "Card1"
        Driver      "intel"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"

I've also tried to cut the sections of the xorg.conf that were referring to the Intel driver and BusID,but has not solved the problem.

In addition I've installed the nvidia driver from ports with the command : pkg install nvidia-driver,I've loaded the nvidia.ko module file from the /boot/loader.conf , I have removed the intel and the drm drivers used by the Intel graphic card,called :

Code: 
xf86-video-intel
drm-fbsd13-kmod
drm-kmod
gpu-firmware-kmod

unfortunately my PC wont boot from the nvidia card. Mouse and keyboard freezes just before the desktop manager (xfce and kde5) starts. What's missing / what's wrong ?
 
I think drm-kmod is needed by nvidia.ko and nvidia-modeset.ko; both should be loaded. I think nvidia-modeset has a dependency on nividia so you can just kldload nvidia-modeset and it should load both. I load both in rc.conf, kld_list variable.

drm-kmod is not just for the intel drivers, it gives the interface to the kernel pieces for the nvidia.
 
ziomario said:
In addition I've installed the nvidia driver from ports with the command : pkg install nvidia-driver,I've loaded the nvidia.ko module file from the /boot/loader.conf
Click to expand...
Won't work. Instead you'll need to add "nvidia-modeset" to your kld_list in /etc/rc.conf.
 
Yepp! I observed the exact same problem and figured out the same solution with my RTX 3050:

Loading the nvidia kernel modules while booting will hang up the system terribly.
You'll need to load the modules after the system is up: manually, per script or via rc.conf

DON'T load the nvidia kernel modules in /boot/loader.conf
Your system will not even come up as far to provide a shell. So you'd need to boot externally to correct that entries.
Beware of using nvidia-xconfig!
1. You need to copy the config file(s) from /etc/X11 to /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf - IF you want/need those config files.
Just creating a driver-nvidia.conf similar to the examples in the handbook works fine for me.
2. nvdida-xconfig will add the entries into /boot/loader.conf - DON'T let it be!

Instead add
Code: 
kld_list=nvidia
kld_list=nvidia-modeset
into /etc/rc.conf
This will work.

I'm neither sure if both are needed nor which one. I did not found any satisfactionary explanation to that, so I did as on my old machine and added both - works.

As not proven - not even tested - I suspect a conflict within PCIe since my new system is installed on a ZFS-mirror of two M.2 nvme.
 
Profighost is correct about "don't put them in loader.conf" and don't use nvidia-xconfig to generate one.

Add to the kld_list line in /etc/rc.conf, it should look something like this (you don't really need the full path):

kld_list="/boot/modules/nvidia-modeset.ko /boot/modules/nvidia.ko"

A lot of the autodetection for X works very nicely, now so all you really need is to create a couple of stub confs:

/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-nvidia.conf
Section "Device" Identifier "NVIDIA Card" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" Driver "nvidia" BusID "PCI:2:0:0" EndSection

You could also create another one for the Intel driver.

When testing things with X I prefer booting to a console, logging in and typing startx. Makes it easier to test and recover. Once you like the way that it works, reenable your graphical login.

I don't know if it's been fixed, but using Nvidia as the primary display used to have issues switching virtual consoles after starting X. Basically green blobs or a black screen. The way to fix it is add the following line
to /boot/loader.conf (reboot for it to take effect):
hw.vga.textmode="1"
 
Profighost said:
Instead add
Code: 
kld_list=nvidia
kld_list=nvidia-modeset
into /etc/rc.conf
This will work.
Click to expand...
Accidentally. The second kld_list overules the first and happens to be the correct one. Remember rc.conf is basically a shell script, variables can only be defined once.

Code: 
#!/bin/sh

mylist="foo"
mylist="bar"

echo $mylist

If you want to put multiple values in kld_list you have to define it like this: kld_list="module1 module2 module3". This can be easily done by using sysrc(8): sysrc kld_list+="nvidia-modeset".
 
I have a 2080 rtx but no built in default video card. All I did was install the base then run desktop-installer and all works beautifully now.
 
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