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<p>That's correct: if the i915 module isn't loaded, then the console works normally. I tried loading the driver by hand after booting and the console becomes frozen: nothing new is displayed. But, yes, the system is still running. I've always been able to SSH when the console is frozen. The console does take input: I tried typing the shutdown command as you suggested and the system did respond by shutting down cleanly.</p>
<p>I turned on the debug messages and it produced a ton of output. Nothing stood out to me, other than the error I mentioned earlier. I don't know what to look for really. But the error was this:</p>
<p>error: [drm:pid886:gen6_gmch_probe] *ERROR* Can't set DMA mask/consistent mask (-5)</p>
<p>Another thing to mention is that I've had kernel.kms_console=1 in loader.conf. I got that from an example but don't actually know what it means. Generally, I'm wondering where to find documentation on settings like that, and maybe find out about related ones.</p>
<p>Chuck</p>
<p>On 2021-05-20 03:26, karu.pruun wrote:</p>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">So I am I right to think that you can get the console fine but loading<br /> i915 gives a frozen screen?</div>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">To test this is true, remove automatic<br /> loading of i915 from /etc/rc.conf and see if you get to the login<br /> prompt. Then try manually loading i915 on console, as root do 'kldload<br /> i915'. You can get more debug messages by setting 'drm.debug=0x777' in<br /> /boot/loader.conf.<br /><br /> It will be a lot of debug output but might help diagnose the issue.<br /><br /> Question: when the screen freezes after kldloading i915, can you still<br /> ssh into the machine? Can you do 'shutdown -r now' by typing on the<br /> console?<br /><br /> Best<br /><br /><br /></div>
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