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I have a Macbook 15" Pro 8.2

Which apparently is supposed to be switchable between the GFX cards with vgaswitcheroo. But /sys/kernel/debug/ contains no switcheroo folder.

syslog gives me this.

[   21.631041] vga_switcheroo: enabled
[   21.631075] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[   21.631149] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[   21.631154] [drm:radeon_get_bios] *ERROR* Unable to locate a BIOS ROM
[   21.631163] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Fatal error during GPU init
[   21.631165] [drm] radeon: finishing device.
[   21.631166] [TTM] Memory type 2 has not been initialized
[   21.632193] radeon 0000:01:00.0: no bo for sa manager
[   21.632197] vga_switcheroo: disabled

it seems that it tries to enable it but then fails. In other faqs on the net i hear that when booting in efi mode there is no bios. And because of this the ati card cant initialize properly. Sounds like it could be the reason. Anyone know how to load the bios rom when in efi mode?

--ok some updates-- There is a patch that works. Allowing the loading of the video bios from a file for the 3.4 kernel.

These features have been merged into 3.6-rc 3 apparently. But I'm on that kernel and still cant switch over to the ATI card.

apparently others have the same issue

tomodachi
  • 14,832
  • Did you mean /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/? – Lekensteyn Sep 05 '12 at 15:59
  • yup, edited the question – tomodachi Sep 05 '12 at 16:46
  • You write that you have a 13" Macbook Pro 8.1, but that has only integrated graphics. So you either have a MBP 8.2 or 8.3. –  Sep 20 '12 at 09:38
  • Yup its a 8.2. changed the number. – tomodachi Sep 20 '12 at 11:18
  • Which drivers do you use?
  • Have you ever tried to connect to an external display and run your MacBook with two screens? In my case either the MacBook's LCD or the external Display remains black. I am currently using the Open Source X-Org drivers (default in 13.04?). Yesterday I tried to install the AMD/ATI 13.4 driver, but eventually I failed. Is there a nice howto somewhere on how to install these drivers properly? Or aren't these drivers necessary to get vga-switcheroo running?
  • – J. Hund May 24 '13 at 10:40
  • commenting on your answer is closed, so I gotta ask here: - Your point is using Kernel 3.8, so Ubuntu Raring should do - /dev/sda6 is your Ubuntu root partition? - This should be compatible with Ubuntu Kernel updates, when ESP/EFI/ubuntu/ is mounted to /boot (usual place of vmlinuz and initrd), right? – arney May 03 '13 at 13:49
  • updated my answer to clarify your questions a bit – tomodachi May 24 '13 at 09:10
  • I'm using the native open souce radeon driver. Using a secondary external display along side the laptop display works. – tomodachi May 25 '13 at 18:09