CentOS - Jul 2011 - Intel HD graphics & CentOS 6: Error inserting i915

I installed CentOS 6 to Acer 7750 laptop, which has Intel Sandybridge CPU 
( i5-2410M) with integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000.

By default X won't use intel driver for graphics, but vesa instead, which 
limits the resolution to 1024x768. I tried to force the use of intel driver 
by writing a xorg.cof file, but then X doesn't start at all.

I updated libdrm and xorg-x11-drv-intel from elrepo. This intel driver 2.15 
is newer than in Fedora 15 Live CD, and with it the graphics work properly.

The problem seems to be related with i915 kernel module:

(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
FATAL: Error inserting i915 
(/lib/modules/2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko): 
No such device
(EE) No devices detected.

I've tried kernels from CentOS Base repo, and CentOS-Plus repo too, no 
difference.

I found a similar old bugzilla entry:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=495524

Somewhere (don't find the source any more) I saw that i915 would need 
intel_agp module, and that would be the problem. This goes a little bit 
beyond my knowledge level.

Maybe this has been fixed somewhere about a year ago:
https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/120293/
But is this patch something that is still missing from latest CentOS 
kernels?

If someone has a solution for this, please advice.


Regards,
Timo

On 30/07/11 14:40, Timo Neuvonen wrote:
> I installed CentOS 6 to Acer 7750 laptop, which has Intel Sandybridge CPU
> ( i5-2410M) with integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000.
>
> By default X won't use intel driver for graphics, but vesa instead,
which
> limits the resolution to 1024x768. I tried to force the use of intel driver
> by writing a xorg.cof file, but then X doesn't start at all.
>
> I updated libdrm and xorg-x11-drv-intel from elrepo. This intel driver 2.15
> is newer than in Fedora 15 Live CD, and with it the graphics work properly.
>
> The problem seems to be related with i915 kernel module:
>
> (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
> FATAL: Error inserting i915
>
(/lib/modules/2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko):
> No such device
> (EE) No devices detected.
>
That looks to me like the kernel driver also needs updating to support 
your hardware.

The problem is that isn't trivial due to the dependencies that module has:

$ modinfo i915 | grep depends
depends:        drm,drm_kms_helper,i2c-core,video,i2c-algo-bit

So you'd also need to update those modules and their dependencies, and 
modules that depend on those modules might then break. As I said, not 
trivial. IMHO really you need to be running a newer kernel and/or distro 
with native support.

On Saturday 30 July 2011 16:40:45 Timo Neuvonen wrote:
> (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
> FATAL: Error inserting i915 
>
(/lib/modules/2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko):
> No such device
> (EE) No devices detected.
You need at least a 2.6.38 kernel.

From: http://intellinuxgraphics.org/2011Q1.html