How do I make Knoppix use DEDICATED graphics card?

[winger9]

Hi

Could one of you fine gentlemen tell me how to make Knoppix use the DEDICATED
graphics card on my laptop please?

I've got Knoppix distro 7.0.2, ver 3.3.7, on hard disk.

I have an Acer Aspire 5755G laptop with a DEDICATED graphics card (Nvidia
Optimus GeForce GT 630M, 2Gb). And I believe (but I'm not sure) that the laptop also has
an INTEGRATED graphics card.

I believe (but I'm not sure) that at the moment, Knoppix is using the integrated
card, and not the dedicated one. Do you know how I can make it use the dedicated
card please?

Also, can I SWITCH between dedicated and integrated cards, because I've a
feeling that the dedicated card might be heavy on battery use. If so, how do I
do that?

lspci gives me the following:

$ lspci | grep -i vga
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 Device 0de9 (rev a1)
$

To keep things shorter here, I've put 2 reasons further down, why I *THINK* that
the dedicated card isn't being used.

It could be relevant to say how I created Knoppix on this laptop. I have 2
laptops (at the moment), and they are very similar in spec (eg i5, 1Tb HD). The
main difference is that the Acer 5750 (I'll call it the OLD laptop) has an
INTEGRATED graphics card only, while the 5755G (I'll call it the NEW laptop) has
a DEDICATED graphics card.

On the old laptop I have Knoppix on the partition /dev/sda6. So I cloned that
partition onto the new laptop, onto a pre-existing partition (also /dev/sda6).
The difference is that /dev/sda6 on the old laptop is about 300Gb, whereas it's
about 700Gb on the new laptop. I used clonezilla to do the clone.

The system runs basically OK on the new laptop, after the clone, and, as I was
hoping, "looks" mostly the same. Strangely, there ARE some differences. For
example, in some text-input boxes, when you move the cursor to say the left end,
you get a thuddy bell sound, which isn't there on the old laptop Knoppix. Also,
in LXDE, I've no longer got the useful 4 desktops on a rotating cube - just
2 "workspaces" instead. I've no idea how there could be differences on an
identical cloned system.

Once again, I would be most grateful if you could tell me how to make Knoppix
use the DEDICATED graphics card on the new laptop please?

Many thanks, John.


(PS I've put an "lspci -v" at the end, as requested. I've had to abridge it
to keep within 10,000-character limit.)


--------------------------------------------------------------------

2 reasons why I *THINK* that the dedicated card isn't being used:
================================================== ===============

REASON 1: When I boot, the system gets to the following stage. It says roughly:

init level 5
knoppix@Microknoppix:#

And the cursor sits at the end of the 2nd of the above 2 lines for about 5
seconds. Then the screen sort of refreshes (a sort of quick blink). And it
continues sitting there for ANOTHER 7-10 seconds. I think that the system
might be looking for a driver/controller for the dedicated card (just a guess).

I also have an Acer 5750 laptop with just an integrated graphics card (same
Knoppix system). I'll call it the OLD laptop. And when I boot THAT, the system
DOESN'T go through the second 7-10 second process above. As a result, the old
laptop gets to the desktop about 10-15 seconds quicker than the 5755G (I'll
call it the NEW laptop).

REASON 2:

Once you're at the desktop, you know when you select some option within a GUI,
you sometimes get a smaller window/dialogue presented. Well on the old laptop,
on those smaller windows, in the top right-hand corner you're offered three
symbols: minimise, maximise, close. But on the new laptop, the only symbol
given is "close". (But you can still drag the edges to resize the window.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is "lspci -v" as requested (abridged):

$ lspci -v

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core
Processor Family Int
egrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
Memory at d1400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 3000 [size=64]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: i915

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0de9 (rev a1)
(prog-if 00 [VGA c
ontroller])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0505
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at a0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 2000 [size=128]
Expansion ROM at d1000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: nouveau

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High
Definition A
udio Controller (rev 04)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 48
Memory at d1b00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family
USB Enhanced Ho
st Controller #1 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23
Memory at d1b09000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit
Ethernet PCIe (rev
10)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at d1830000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K]
Memory at d1840000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at d1850000 [disabled] [size=2K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: tg3

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43227 802.11b/g/n
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e040
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at d1a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: wl

05:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev
04) (prog-if 3
0 [XHCI])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
Memory at d1900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd

[Capricorny]

First, you can see from lspci output that Noveau, the open Nvidia kernel driver, is in fact loaded. So I would guess things are formally OK.

Second, it seems that you have cloned a Knoppix regular HD install - that's double risk-taking IMHO. Knoppix isn't made primarily for regular HD install - though it may work very well as such, and whenever you clone an ordinary install onto different hardware, you should expect problems. Which is why you should never do it unless you know exactly what you are doing.

I've no idea how there could be differences on an
identical cloned system.

Maybe you should try to get some ideas about that before proceeding further with cloning practices?

Third, why haven't you tried to go the ordinary Knoppix route? Install to USB media, boot from that, look at the messages and logs produced, try first with the graphics cheatcodes if things don't go well. You can also do all the ordinary X testing and tweaking if you boot into console mode. And remember, Nvidia cards are notorious potential trouble generators on Linux systems - but Nvidia provides drivers, so you can always fall back on using them.

[mentalflycoon]

Ok, I saw this thread because Im looking for a way to do something in knoppix that it took me years to figure out on ubuntu....how to prevent an unwanted integrated gpu driver from being automatically loaded, and thus degrading the performance of the system when a dedicated gpu is in use.

Ok, so I have 2 older pc's running ubuntu linux, one is a dell optiplex 210L, which has an intel i915 integrated gpu, but it also has an NVIDIA GT 610 pci card installed, so on ubuntu, there is a file, /etc/modprobe.d that allows you to "blacklist" certain drivers.

Essentially when you install a proprietary NVIDIA driver on an ubuntu system, you edit this file, as root, with "blacklist nouveau" (without the quotes of course) and similarly, in my case "blacklist i915" to prevent the operating system from loading either the integrated gpu driver, or the nouveau NVIDIA open source driver.

So that "blacklist i915" essentially tells ubuntu to just ignore that device, which should really be disabled by the bios, but isnt, due to dell's flakey bios. Alternately, one can use synaptic package manager to completely remove the offending integrated driver alltogether, if so desired. The performance and stability improvements that result from this simple blacklisting of the driver for the integrated gpu are absolutely astounding.

Now I do know that in the case of the "optimus" gpus, people commonly use bumblebee, but in my case I think what I want to do is create a knoppix live DVD thats customized for my system to just permanantly ignore the integrated gpu...

Im a total newb to knoppix, so any suggestions/instruction on how to do this properly would be greatly appreciated. I hope my little story is helpful in solving the issue dealt with in this thread.