Can't configure Intel video card: hard freeze or fallback to VESA

[Pete Wright]

On 03/23/2017 06:50, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm relatively new to FreeBSD, after having used GNU/Linux (mostly
> Slackware) exclusively over the last fifteen years. I'm the manager of a
> small IT company in South France, and I'm regularly working as a Linux
> trainer. Recently I've become more and more curious about FreeBSD, since
> I'm a bit wary of the never-ending puzzle of the Linux world, and I'm
> looking for something sane and well-documented.
>
> I'm reading the fine FreeBSD handbook, but right now it looks like I
> have a showstopper. In my office I have a "sandbox" network consisting
> of three Dell Optiplex 330 PCs. This kind of hardware is extremely
> common in schools or administrations in France.
>
> All three PCs have the following video card.
>
> vgapci0 at pci0:0:2:0:   class=0x030000 card=0x02201028 chip=0x29c28086
> rev=0x0a hdr=0x00
>      vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>      device     = '82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller'
>      class      = display
>      subclass   = VGA
>
> To set it up, I basically followed the X11 chapter in the FreeBSD
> handbook. There seemed to be no way to make this card work with the
> 'intel' video driver. Either the system would make a hard lock up or
> fall back to the vesa driver.

do you have the Xorg exception from when it failed back to the vesa 
driver?  also, are you using an Xorg.conf or letting X detect things on 
the fly (which is the preferred method).  any debugging info would be 
helpful.

as an interim workaround the SCFB driver is a good alternative to VESA.  
it is software accelerated, but in my experience performs a bit better 
than the VESA driver.  SCFB is available via pkg's like so:

$ sudo pkg install xf86-video-scfb


-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA