That's very surprising. As I recall, i2c-dev just adds /dev nodes for various i2c devices (some of which would be exposed by nouveau, most likely just the connector one to read EDID in your case, as temp/etc sensors came later). It shouldn't cause nouveau to do anything differently -- just allows user-space to have access to the i2c adapters.
You can try messing with the i2c implementation a bit with nouveau.config=NvI2C=1 which will flip the internal implementation from the "shared" bit-bang implementation, to a dedicated nouveau one. But it shouldn't matter. And as I mentioned before, not sure how the i2c-dev module can affect it either way -- either the shared impl works or it doesn't. You can also try booting with nouveau.debug=debug to see if you can glean any meaningful information from the "broken" case. I also remember reports of a later mobile board (NV28M) having weird clock-related and cursor layout issues (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54700, https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78543). Not directly related to your situation, but just pointing to it in case it triggers some ideas. In your testing, it might also be wise to differentiate warm vs cold boots. You can also force re-initialization of the board with nouveau.config=NvForcePost=1 Cheers, -ilia On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 5:40 PM Roger <rogerx....@gmail.com> wrote: > > HARDWARE: > Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop > nVIDIA Geforce2 Go (NV11) with Intel AGP > > PROBLEM: > Display corruption whenever nouveau module was loaded, seemingly at random. > > CULPRIT: > Whenever the i2c-dev.ko driver/module was loaded, the display would become > corrupted, or as if the timing became out of sync with hardware > specifications, > with weird moving pixels throughout the display. > > If the i2c-dev is built into the kernel, possible the display would turn-off > upon nouveau module loading, but could be possibly worked around (I think) by > building the nouveau driver statically into the kernel, possibly loading prior > to i2c-dev loading? > > Been having this problem for many years, finally found it, and nothing found > via Google on i2c-dev & nouveau. > > WORKAROUND: > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf > blacklist i2c_dev > > Or, rebuild the kernel without i2c-dev. > > Quite a few Linux distributions either compile the i2c-dev into the kernel, or > load the module during booting, creating significant display problems (as > noted > above) when trying to install from a Linux distribution CD/DVD. Most people > performing an install, I'm guessing, are then simply performing a nomodeset > during boot and/or reverting to VESA/UVESAFB. > > > -- > Roger > http://rogerx.sdf.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Nouveau mailing list > Nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org > https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nouveau _______________________________________________ Nouveau mailing list Nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nouveau