Comment 236 for bug 95444

On 02/22/2009 01:53 AM, Thunderbird wrote:
> What is different when you run it as a user and at startup? In both
> cases the nvidia drivers aren't loaded yet? You are certain that you
> use the same binary in both cases?

I think you misunderstand: smartdimmer gives me that error every time
hald tries to run it. hald runs it in response to me pressing the
brightness up and down keys.

It runs the following to set the brightness: ($value is passed into the
script)

if [ "$HAL_PROP_LAPTOP_PANEL_ACCESS_METHOD" = "nvidia8" ]; then
     smartdimmer -s $((($value +1)*5))
     exit 0
fi

And it runs the following to get the brightness:

if [ "$HAL_PROP_LAPTOP_PANEL_ACCESS_METHOD" = "nvidia8" ]; then
     value=$((`smartdimmer -g | awk '{print $3;}'`))
     value=$((($value /5)-1))
     exit ${value}
fi

I am sure that it is running the same binary there that I am running by
hand, as the only smartdimmer on my system is /usr/bin/smartdimmer, and
it reliably stops working when I copy in the new binary, and works again
when I copy in the old one. Both binaries work fine from the command
line. I just checked, and hald seems to be running the script as root
(according to 'id' and 'whoami'), so I'm completely not sure why I'm
seeing different behavior.

In all these cases, X is up and running with the nvidia drivers.

>
> Perhaps it failed to report bios info when running from a startup
> script. Could you check if the output of 'nvclock -i' shows bios info
> in both situations?

Here's nvclock -i run from a gnome-terminal, as my normal user:
-- General info --
Card: nVidia QuadroFX 570M
Architecture: G84 A2
PCI id: 0x40c
GPU clock: 182.248 MHz
Bustype: PCI-Express

-- Shader info --
Clock: 594.000 MHz
Stream units: 32 (11b)
ROP units: 8 (11b)
-- Memory info --
Amount: 256 MB
Type: 128 bit DDR3
Clock: 601.712 MHz

-- PCI-Express info --
Current Rate: 16X
Maximum rate: 16X

-- Smartdimmer info --
Backlight level: 85%

-- Sensor info --
Sensor: GPU Internal Sensor
GPU temperature: 68C

-- VideoBios information --
Version: 60.84.56.01.02
Signon message: HP VB10 Mobile NB8P-GLM VGA BIOS
Performance level 0: gpu 275MHz/shader 550MHz/memory 301MHz/1.15V/100%
Performance level 1: gpu 475MHz/shader 950MHz/memory 702MHz/1.20V/100%
VID mask: 3
Voltage level 0: 1.15V, VID: 3
Voltage level 1: 1.20V, VID: 3

And here's what it looks like when HAL runs it:

-- General info --
Card: nVidia QuadroFX 570M
Architecture: G84 A2
PCI id: 0x40c
GPU clock: 182.248 MHz
Bustype: PCI-Express

-- Shader info --
Clock: 594.000 MHz
Stream units: 32 (11b)
ROP units: 8 (11b)
-- Memory info --
Amount: 256 MB
Type: 128 bit DDR3
Clock: 601.712 MHz

-- PCI-Express info --
Current Rate: 16X
Maximum rate: 16X

-- Sensor info --
Sensor: GPU Internal Sensor
GPU temperature: 71C

It does indeed look like it's missing BIOS info. Interestingly enough, I
get the same behavior if I use the 0.8b4 version of nvclock, but its
smartdimmer works from hald because it ignores the fact that it can't
look it up.

--
Bem Jones-Bey (<email address hidden>)