Iris Pro P6300 intel X11 driver (was Re: intro)

[Greg V]

On 10/23/2017 09:17, Scott Bennett wrote:

> Tom Rushworth <tom.b.rushworth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Problem summary: new machine with Intel Iris Pro P6300 graphics, FreeBSD
>> 11 runs in console mode but I can't get an X server running.
>>
>> This is just a partial update on the issue, I haven't had time to finish
>> all the suggestions.
>>
>> Suggestion 1 - try FreeBSD 12
>> I spent a day and installed head as of 2017/10/15 (or thereabouts) but
>> it doesn't work out of the box (the console works, just not the X server
>> with the intel driver or any other default driver).  I have lots more
>> digging to do with it to make sure I really do have the latest, and that
>> the configuration is correct, so this is ongoing.
>>
>> Suggestion 2 - try TrueOS
>       TrueOS *is* FreeBSD 12 (at the moment) at its heart.
Well, TrueOS is based on the drm-next fork, which updates i915kms & 
amdgpu to match modern Linux (currently 4.12):
https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics

Plain FreeBSD -CURRENT does not have the new graphics drivers, it only 
supports Intel GPUs up to and including Haswell, but you can set it up 
easily now…
>> I downloaded the USB stick image.  There doesn't seem to be a 'live'
>> option in that image (at least I couldn't find it with a few minutes of
>> poking around), and the installer does not use the intel driver, so I
>> hunted down another drive for the machine and did a full install.
>> Configuring the video driver to be intel during the install does give a
>> working X server, and checking the XOrg.log file confirms that the intel
>> driver is the one being used.
>>
>> So now I either have to learn to like TrueOS and Lumina, or figure out
>> where my source version or configuration is wrong for the FreeBSD-12
>> setup :).  I'm probably going to do a bit of both.
>       Or you can just install the window manager of your preference, and
> use that.  I haven't yet used TrueOS, but the times I've installed and used
> PC-BSD (the predecessor to TrueOS) I always installed my usual choice
> (WindowMaker) and proceeded happily on.  Lumina will still be there if you
> need to use it.  The only nuisance is that some of the special TrueOS
> graphical applications may work better with Lumina, just as the earlier ones
> did with KDE, which was the PC-BSD standard before Ken Moore wrote Lumina
> for PC-BSD.
>> The good news is that there is a working intel driver for the Iris Pro
>> P6300.
>>
>> Thanks for the help and suggestions - I'll update again if I figure out
>> the plain FreeBSD-12 setup.

The new graphics drivers (drm-next) are available as a port now, instead 
of the fork:
https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/kms-drm
https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-next-kmod

Just install graphics/drm-next-kmod, configure rc.conf to load it like 
the post-install message says, and reboot.
In Xorg, you can try both intel (SNA) and modesetting (Glamor) drivers.
modesetting tends to have hard-to-defeat screen tearing, but it's fast, 
lightweight and reliable.