[sf-lug] Intel graphics chipsets (was /firmware/radeon)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Akkana Peck (akkana at shallowsky.com):

> Rick Moen writes:
> > If you wanted to be truly helpful in helping others help you, you could
> > have posted the results of getting your video chip data from lspci, like
> > maybe...
> > 
> > $ lspci | grep VGA
> 
> A side question, not part of maestro's problem: how do you find out
> the chipset on Intel machines? If I run lspci | grep VGA on this
> Lenovo X201, it says:
> 
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

Which is indeed pretty generic.  That's the label conventionally
assigned in the PCI IDs database (/usr/share/misc/pci.ids) to PCI ID
'00:02.0', you see.  The problem is that Intel builds its video chipset
functionality into the Memory Controller Hub aka northbridge chip.  Or
rather, that was the answer I would have given in the 1990s and Oughts,
before increasing integration (to the best of my knowledge) eliminated
the concept of northbridge and southbridge chips on motherboards.

How about 'lspci -v -s 00:02.0'?  Are the additional detail lines more
useful?


If not:  (Just doing some experimenting, here.)

'lspci -nn | grep VGA' will get you (at the end of the line, in square
brackets) the 32-bit hex string that is the _full_ PCI ID, like this:

$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 02)

The '8086' prefix is the Vendor ID, where '8086' = Intel (cute!).  The
2a42 is the Product ID.  Linux kernels use the entire 32-bit identity to
pick the best driver from some internal table.

'8086:2a42' is not your chip.  I've just copied that string from someone
else's explanation of this matter, where the example was a different
Intel graphics chip (FWIW, a 'Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset
Integrated Graphics Controller').  

Thing is, though, I strongly suspect that whatever you do with the PCI
ID information, the identification string you end up with will be a
little generic, because Intel simply isn't very specific in this matter.
I.e., if adding the -v flag isn't sufficing, then lspci just isn't going
to be the right tool.

Xorg's probing is probably more informative, so look at
/var/log/Xorg.0.log .