Laptop FreeBSD - Make It Tea

Try to learn something about everything, and everything about somethingThomas Huxley “Darwin's bulldog” (1824-1895)
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====== Laptop Freebsd ======

I moved my Dell laptop from Devuan Linux to FreeBSD and here are some things I needed to do and some things I did for convenience....

===== Graphics =====

I found the basic install of the recommended ''drm-kmod'' package and ''i915kms'' driver wouldn't work - it crashed/hung during boot.

Removing this package and using the SCFB video driver worked, but didn't give (for example) DPMS control of the LCD screen.

I used SCFB temporarily be adding an xorg conf file ''20-vesa.conf'' to ''/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/''

<code bash>
Section "Device"
        Identifier "Card0"
        Driver "scfb"
EndSection
</code>


This was a reasonable workaround, but I found the solution to using correct Intel i915kms driver here : [[https://blog.hofstede.it/freebsd-150-on-the-thinkpad-t480-efficient-stable-and-8-hours-on-battery/]]

This is what worked:


==== Installed new packages =====

''drm-latest-kmod''

''gpu-firmware-intel-kmod-kabylake''

==== added to /etc/rc.conf ====


  kld_list="i915kms"


==== added to /boot/loader.conf ====


<code>
# Graphics and power tuning
i915kms_load="YES"
drm.i915.enable_rc6=7
drm.i915.enable_fbc=1
drm.i915.lvds_downclock=1
drm.i915.enable_psr=1
compat.linuxkpi.i915_disable_power_well="0"

</code>

-----------------------------


''i915kms''  now loads and I have access to DPMS for turning off the LCD
screen.

==== LCD Panel on/off ====

I made a few small shell scripts to assist in controlling the
battery consumption by being able to alter LCD brightness, and turn
the LCD off via DPMS and makde i3 shorcuts to them.

(later I made the same key actions for DWM when I moved back to using DWM)

now I can "$mod+Shift+o" to reduce brightness and "$mod+Shift+p" to
increase it, and "$mod+Shift+i" to turn the LCD screen off
completely.

I also added a devd rule to turn the LCD screen off when the lid is
closed - this confused me initially, as it worked when testing it
by adding the rule, restarting devd and testing, from within an
X-Session.... but didn't work when devd was started during
bootup...

This was due to the lack of DISPLAY if the script was triggered
from "outside" the X session. Changing the script to set the
DISPLAY variable was the solution.

=== /etc/devd/rules.d/lid.conf ===

<code>
notify 20 {
match "system" "ACPI";
match "subsystem" "Lid";
match "notify" "0x01";
action "/home/g4slv/bin/on";
};
notify 20 {
match "system" "ACPI";
match "subsystem" "Lid";
match "notify" "0x00";
action "/home/g4slv/bin/off";
};

</code>


The lid actions call one of these ->

''~/bin/on''

<code bash>

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

su g4slv -c 'setenv DISPLAY :0.0 && /usr/local/bin/xset dpms force on'

</code>

''~/bin/off ''

<code bash>
#!/usr/local/bin/bash

su g4slv -c 'setenv DISPLAY :0.0 && /usr/local/bin/xset dpms force off'

</code>


Other tweaks
============

Small scripts to automate swithing between Wifi and Ethernet

=== net_wlan.sh ===

<code bash>
#!/bin/sh

doas service netif stop em0 
doas service netif start wlan0
doas service dhclient restart wlan0

</code>

=== net_eth.sh ===


<code bash>
#!/bin/sh

doas service netif stop wlan0 
doas service netif start em0
doas service dhclient restart em0

</code>


==== /etc/rc.conf ====

<code>
hostname="proton"
keymap="uk.kbd"
#wlans_iwlwifi0="wlan0"
wlans_iwm0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA  DHCP"
ip6addrctl_enable="NO"
ipv6_activate_all_interfaces="NO"
ifconfig_wlan0_ipv6="inet6 ifdisabled"
ifconfig_em0_ipv6="inet6 ifdisabled"
ifconfig_lo0_ipv6="inet6 ifdisabled"
#ifconfig_wlan0_ipv6="inet6 accept_rtadv"
create_args_wlan0="country GB regdomain NONE"
sshd_enable="YES"
sshd_flags="-4"

ntpd_enable="YES"
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"
ntpd_flags="-4"

ftpd_enable="YES"
ftpd_flags="-4"


moused_nondefault_enable="NO"
# Set dumpdev to "AUTO" to enable crash dumps, "NO" to disable
dumpdev="AUTO"
zfs_enable="YES"
cupsd_enable="YES"
devfs_system_ruleset="system"
dbus_enable="YES"


avahi_daemon_enable="YES"

avahi_dnsconfd_enable="YES"
inetd_enable="YES"
rwhod_enable="YES"

kld_list="i915kms"
#kld_list="${kld_list} if_iwlwifi"


powerd_enable="YES"
powerd_flags="-a adaptive -b minimum "
update_motd="NO"
dynamic_motd="YES"
ifconfig_em0="DHCP"
autofs_enable="YES"

</code>

==== /boot/loader.conf ====

<code>
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
zfs_load="YES"
i915kms_load="YES"
drm.i915.enable_rc6="7"
drm.i915.semaphores="1"
drm.i915.enable_fbc="1"
drm.i915.lvds_downclock=1
drm.i915.enable_psr=1
compat.linuxkpi.i915_disable_power_well="0"
fuse_load="YES"
iwm8265fw_load="YES"
</code>

===== Further Information =====


Page created  : 04/06/26 11:04 BST

Page updated : ~~LASTMOD~~

{{tag>computer freebsd}}
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