Macbook Pro 7,1 (with 320M) with EFI boot: Failed to initialize display subsystem

ghanssen · 02-25-12, 12:46 PM

This is a standard 64-bit ArchLinux install on the mid 2010 13" MacBook Pro model using EFI boot (no BIOS emulation). Graphics driver is NVIDIA 295.20.

Upon starting, the X server fails with "(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the display subsystem for the NVIDIA" (see attachment), resulting in permanent loss of the screen, independent of whether xorg.conf is empty or generated by the nvidia-xconfig.

Note that legacy booting (using the BIOS emulation of the Apple firmware) works well (but has other, non-relevant issues). Dumping the video bios and adding "loadbios vbios.bin int10.bin" to the EFI Grub2 configuration didn't change much.

luceth · 02-25-12, 08:10 PM

I'm using a Macbook Air 3,2 that also has the 320M built-in. I've been banging on this problem without success for a while now; I just assumed that it was an unsupported configuration. (Apple's EFI implementation is known to be wonky.)

@ghanssen - After some effort, all of my hardware works fine in BIOS emulation mode. If you like, PM me with your other issues and I'll see if they're something I resolved.

02-25-12, 08:10 PM	#2
luceth Registered User Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 4	Re: Macbook Pro 7,1 (with 320M) with EFI boot: Failed to initialize display subsystem I'm using a Macbook Air 3,2 that also has the 320M built-in. I've been banging on this problem without success for a while now; I just assumed that it was an unsupported configuration. (Apple's EFI implementation is known to be wonky.) @ghanssen - After some effort, all of my hardware works fine in BIOS emulation mode. If you like, PM me with your other issues and I'll see if they're something I resolved.