video-swicher, a tool to switch betweeen the integrated and the dedicated video card on laptops that have switchable graphics cards. As far as I know, this the the first and (up to now) only tool for this job!The package is easy to use. It comes with an upstart job that can disable the unused video card on system boot (configurable via a configuration file in
/etc/default) and a binary to change the active card. It can only be run by root (or via sudo) since it needs to write into a file on /sys which is owned by root and it needs to shutdown any running display manager.Up to now there's only one available package,
video-switcher which provides the upstart job and the binary. A second package providing a GUI will follow within the next days.Grab the package by the usual means (available in my PPA) and tell me what You think!
- Install
Code: $ sudo apt-get install video-switcher - Use
Code: $ sudo video-switcher [int|ded]
P.S.: You might ask Yourself: How come there's version 1.0.3 available if this is the release announcement? Well, I uploaded the package, found some bugs, deleted it and fixed them. When I tried to upload the fixed version as 1.0.0 again, the system rejected the code claiming that there was already a version 1.0.0 that differed. So I had to make it version 1.0.3.
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Hi. I suppose you're using vga_switcheroo to do the switching. Have you noticed the strange behaviour when suspending and resuming? I'm referring to the fact that vga_switcheroo says the card is switched off, but it is in fact on.
AntwortenLöschenI've spent days trying to troubleshoot why my linux installs worked cool the first day and hot as hell the day after. The solution I had found was to turn on the card before suspending, resume, then turn the card back on. It really hasn't been ideal, because it slowed down the processes a lot. Besides, it caused quite a bit of problems when logging out of X or shutting down the system. Specifically, I got 'atombios stuck in loop' messages and the system hang two out of three times I shut it down. I had solved them in a similar way, adding scripts to gdm.
On the other hand, surfing the internet, I found this other possible solution
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Flinux-hybrid-graphics.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fusing-acpicall-module-to-switch-onoff.html
It works great with my tablet. I can now blacklist the radeon module as I use the ATI card only for HDMI, and to watch 1080p it's windows anyway :-( It involves compiling a minuscole module without any dependency, but I don't know if you could put it in a package. After resume you can turn the card off without problems (doing so with vga_switcheroo without turning it on before suspend would result in a system crash). And there are no problems with 'atombios stuck in loop'
I really think you should look further in this direction, as I think it's more convenient and flexibile.
As a side note, sorry to hjack your blog, but could you post something on fan management? I found out this kernel module allows you to call any acpi function you want and after a lot of troubles I found the one to shut the fans down completely. I'm really proud of this discovery, because the fan got on my nerves very easily, especially when they kick on with a cpu temperature of 42° celsius.. If you want I can do a little write-up so that everyone can benefit from this, as I suppose your blog would get a lot more traffic than I'd ever achieve.
Thank you,
Nicolò
Hey, thanks for posting Your experience! I haven't heard about problems with suspend/resume before (probably because I rarely use it myself), but I'll have a look into that.
AntwortenLöschenIf I don't get around using the ACPI module to safely switch between video cards, I guess I'll somehow try to incorporate it into my package.
If I then find the time to, I'll also have a look at that fan issue, although I probably will be very conservative on that. I don't want to break my or somebody else's laptop by turning off a fan for too long. If I get to that, it would be great if You could give me (a link to) an overview of ACPI functions.
However, all of this will have to wait for some (maybe even some more) time, since I'll be getting really busy in the next few weeks. I'll let You know when I've got some spare time again.