Graphics issues with NVIDIA NVS 4200m

[jastewvanc]

Thanks all in this thread helping me configure my Dell Latitude E6520. I thought I'd contribute back by providing a concise description of my system and setup and how I arrived at a working system for this notebook.

I have my Dell E6520 (i7-2720qm Sandy Bridge) working with Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit amd64 kernel version 2.6.36-28, NVidia NVS 4200m. Optimus is turned off in bios. Video @ 1920x1080. Sound and Mic is working as well as the webcam.

I installed the NVIDIA driver:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates 
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install nvidia-graphics-drivers

I had to get system updates after this install before it worked.

I installed the ppa sound driver (which apparently enabled the mic as well):

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r)

Restart is still an issue, but it is tolerable.

[Deronius]

After many hours of frustration I now have drivers enabled and working. Here's what I did.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get nvidia-current

NOTE: The last command is different from other posts. This grabbed the 270.x.x drivers for me. The other suggested methods resulted in 'no package found'.
I continued with...

sudo nvidia-xconfig

***IMPORTANT***
I restarted and entered the BIOS and disabled 'Optimus' under display settings. Hopefully your bios allows you to do that.

I restarted again and finally had drivers enabled and working.

Hope this helps someone.

***EDIT***
Just realized that my BIOS also had a setting to detect 'Optimus' so it was resetting it every boot. I disabled it and haven't run into anymore trouble.

I'm not a big fan of software trying to guess what I want.

[Wlo]

Really helpful, thanks! I didn't spot the "autodetect optimus" thing!

One small note for anyone else finding this thread - it should be

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

and

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Thanks loads!

Wlo.

[jth]

We have a few new E6520s at work and I noticed that there is a Dell-modified image of 10.10 for this model: ubuntu-10.10-i386-dell_A00.iso - http://ftp.dell.com/OS/

Before we boot and nuke, has anyone tried this image? We have already installed and tweaked regular 10.10 on the E6520 with mixed results but we are still getting fairly regular hard hangs with the X server.

[lochutus]

I have a Dell E6420 (i7 with 1600x900 display
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global...spec-sheet.pdf
)

I originally set it up with ubuntu 10.10 and the video would only give me 800x600 or similar. Although the US site lists 10.10 as an available option for an OS on this laptop, Dell Aus do not support linux. They did, however, very helpfully hunt down the video driver option for me and I got it working. Using the monitor preferences app I was unable to get my external monitor to work but using the Nvidia settings app, it detected and I had both working.

Now to the problems. along comes 11.04, I do a fresh install and everything seems to work just fine. Then I try my external monitor and it doesn't work with monitor preferences, nothing fixed there then. I try nvidia settings and it detects, I set it up, save to xorg.conf, restart X. problems, I find this thread, follow the advice and the best I can get is when I get to the login screen both monitors fire up and the external one has the background image and the laptop screen has the background image and login window.

Login and the external monitor goes black and the laptop monitor has no unity sidebar (the one with the icons in it on the left hand side of the screen) and the top bar has no unity icon in the top left corner and nothing on the right handside except the weather appindicator I installed, the dropbox appindicator I installed and the bluetooth indicator.

clicking with the mouse shows no menus. ctrl-alt right/left arrow, moves to another workspace where the external monitor now shows the background image (as does monitor) and some icons flash temporarily on the desktop then disappear. pressing the power button briefly flashes the logout options window and if you click in the spot where shutdown or logout should be then that will happen.

ctrl-alt-F1 takes me to a login screen where I can swap back to the old xorg.conf and get some functionality back. But I need to external monitor to work. I may have to revert to 10.10 if this isn't fixed soon.

A new anomaly I have discovered since attempting to fix the system. If I right-click on the title bar or an app, say firefox, and select "move to another workspace" the app just shuts down altogether rather than being relocated. If I logout and back in and reopen firefox all the old windows come back.

any ideas? I have attached screenshots of nvidia settings and monitor prefs and the failed xorg.conf

I hope someone can help and that this helps someone else.

cheers

[chandanadesilva]

I have installed 11.04 on a Dell Latitude 6520 with the NVDIA NVS4200M. This works perfectly out of the box with the nouveau driver. Dual screen suspend and start up all work correctly, provided the Optimus box is ticked in the BIOS setup screen.

If the Optimus box is not clicked, the driver does not recognise the video card.

[skrobul]

I have installed 11.04 on a Dell Latitude 6520 with the NVDIA NVS4200M. This works perfectly out of the box with the nouveau driver. Dual screen suspend and start up all work correctly, provided the Optimus box is ticked in the BIOS setup screen.

If the Optimus box is not clicked, the driver does not recognise the video card.

which version of nouveau are you using ? I am having difficulties starting nouvaeu on E6520, dmesg says:

[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Unsupported chipset 0x0d9160a1

[cement_head]

Does this machine suspend/resume & hibernate/thaw with the nVIDIA driver running (i.e. Optimus not checked).

- CH

[bjordan1979]

Bah! I'm banging my head against the wall. I have a new Thinkpad T420 and can't for the life of me get the Nvidia drivers to work with 10.10.

If I set the graphics to discrete in the BIOS (use Nvidia) I get the blinking cursor hang on boot.

If I set it to integrated in the BIOS it boots up just fine. I've tried purging all nvidia settings and installing using the x-swat PPA. However every time I install the drivers, shutdown, enable discrete graphics and reboot I get the blinking cursor.

I'll continue looking into it tonight.

For the people who got it working what order are you doing things as far as BIOS settings? Do you boot up in Integrated install drivers, then reboot in Discrete? Boot with Optimus install drivers, reboot in Discrete, etc?

[sillyxone]

Sorry for reviving a solved thread, but many people are still asking questions. Please feel free to move this to a new thread.

Here is what I found after suffering the last two weeks with a new E6420:

- sound and wireless don't work out of the box in 10.10, so I use 11.04 instead

- Disabling Optimus will cause the 4200M to run fulltime (5hr battery, dmesg shows only nVidia VGA). This requires either nvidia-current or the driver downloaded directly from Nvidia. These two basically the same, just different versions.

- Enabling Optimus will use the Intel graphic, which is weak (7hr battery, dmesg shows both Intel and nVidia VGA), but the Intel driver is supported out of the box (used primarily). You can selectively run apps with 4200M by using the experimental bumblebee project. However, bumblebee is too experimental for me.

- When I dual-boot into Windows XP, the Windows' nVidia driver will automatically disable Optimus in the BIOS. On the next reboot back to Ubuntu, I got a black screen (perhaps because Ubuntu doesn't know that it needs to switch from Intel driver to nVidia driver). I had to boot into recovery mode and re-install nvidia-current, also purge xorg.conf.

- the nvidia driver is fine, Compiz works great, suspend/resume works fine. However, it would segfault (error 4, nvidia_drv.so) and crashes xorg every few days (I don't shutdown my laptop, leaving it running/suspend).

- External monitor work fine with both Intel and nvidia graphics, I can connect to my HDTV just fine. The shortcut (Fn-F8 ) doesn't work with nVidia driver, had to use disper instead.