Can't configure Intel video card: hard freeze or fallback to VESA

[Conrad Meyer]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 7:44 AM, Bob Willcox <bob at immure.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 02:50:23PM +0100, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
>> I'm reading the fine FreeBSD handbook, but right now it looks like I
>> have a showstopper. In my office I have a "sandbox" network consisting
>> of three Dell Optiplex 330 PCs. This kind of hardware is extremely
>> common in schools or administrations in France.
>>
>> All three PCs have the following video card.
>>
>> vgapci0 at pci0:0:2:0:   class=0x030000 card=0x02201028 chip=0x29c28086
>> rev=0x0a hdr=0x00
>>     vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>>     device     = '82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller'
>>     class      = display
>>     subclass   = VGA
>>
>> My first attempt was based on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64. After a number of
>> failed attempts, I gave 11.0 and even 12.0 CURRENT a spin, with the same
>> results.
>>
>> I tried to install a TrueOS system, and this worked correctly. I can't
>> say what's the magical combination the TrueOS developers applied here,
>> and before I launch into some more trial and error and more guesswork, I
>> thought I'd rather ask here. Ideally, I would like to run FreeBSD 10.3
>> as a desktop on these machines. I would be thankful for any pointers on
>> how to configure this kind of hardware. I'm not a lamer for RTFM, by the
>> way.

Hi Nicolas,

Do you have the i915kms kernel module loaded before starting X?  If
not, try loading that first.  Second, can you try the "modesetting"
Xorg video driver in place of "intel"?

> I'm no expert on this, but have been struggling with Intel GPU support in
> FreeBSD for some time now. If your Dell Optiplex 330 has one of the newer
> Intel CPUs (e.g., Broadwell, Skylake) then the current official versions of
> FreeBSD don't support the internal GPUs in them. I am running an Intel NUC
> with a i7-5557U CPU (Broadwell) and it isn't supported. Currently I'm running
> the 'work in progress' freebsd-base-graphics version of FreeBSD (a spin-off
> from 12-current) that seems to be doing ok (just been running it now for two
> days). Here's some info regarding this version and how to fetch/install/build
> it:
>
> https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics
>
> Good luck, hope you get FreeBSD working for you.

Hi Bob,

>From what I can tell, the Optiplex and graphics hardware are actually
fairly old (<2010) and should be supported by mainline FreeBSD.

Best,
Conrad