I decided to try a few other Linux distros (I currently use Mandriva 2007.1 Spring) and so downloaded the live/install CD. The initial boot is slow, but not bad - until the system enables X. Suddenly the screen goes blank, then a few seconds later my monitor displays a "No signal" box and goes into powersave mode. My system has an NVidia GeForce 5200 card connected to a 17" Proview LCD monitor (default resolution, 1280x1024). Being familiar with Linux, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-F1 and switched to the terminal prompt, ran xorg.config, pressed Ctrl-Alt-F7 then Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server, and finally got a working graphical login prompt (though of course using the nv driver as xorg.config wouldn't be aware of the proprietary driver), and I must say that looks pretty nice. But someone unfamiliar with Linux would be rather lost at how to fix that. Also, not certain if "No signal" simply means it was out of range. The server didn't crash, the computer thought it was running, but I had no way to see it. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Insert CD 2. Boot computer 3. wait for bootup Actual Results: See description. Expected Results: It should have shown me the graphical login screen. 1.5 GHz P3 with 768 MB RAM NVidia Geforce 5200 with (I think) 128 MB 17" Proview monitor (forget the actual model number, but it supports 1280x1024 at both 60 Hz and 75 Hz).
OK. The issue is almost definitely the LCD. Can you get me the exact model? We hard-set our monitor modes to standard SVGA (1024x768@60) so it should work on any SVGA-compliant monitor. Unfortunately, many cheaper LCD makers do not actually follow the SVGA specification. Try booting with "gentoo xres=1280x1024" and see if it works.
Will see next time I reboot. Monitor says the model number is 700P. It does work at 1024x768, that's the resolution I was set at prior to buying the monitor. (It works, but is ugly due to having to repeat pixels to make it fit.) I noted during my last boot (since my prior post) that it initially sets the driver as vesa, but then says something about changing it ... I'll have to see if I can backup the original xorg.conf before reconfiguring.
Created attachment 128193 [details] Backup of original xorg.conf No, the new resolution had no impact I could see. In the old xorg.conf, the listing for the monitor (other than lack of name) seems to be correct, it lists vertical refresh as 50-75 Hz ... I'll see if I can attach it to this. It was set to "vesa" (which of course should work, though the "nv" driver should be better).
Actually, vesa is *way* better than the nv driver. There's very little work put into the nv driver to make it fast, so plain vesa actually works better on amd64 and x86 than nv. It's sad, but the truth.
That would be fine if it actually worked ... Must be a conflict between the vesa driver and some other module that gets automatically enabled (GLCore. glx, dri, etc.). Switching the driver to nv will allow X to display (albeit in ugly 1024x768 mode). No, not sure which module(s) yet. Disabling dri,or disabling GLcore and glx, is not itself enough, but I don't know beyond that which modules may be a problem. During the bootup sequence, what it says after correctly detecting my graphics card and monitor capabilities is "* Enabling OpenGL" followed by another note that mentions nvidia - something about "Detected nvidia" followed by "Switching to xorg-x11 OpenGL". Not familiar with any location which would log the exact wording, I suppose I should try to see if I can find that...
Can you test this on 2008.0 Beta 1 and see if it works for you?
No real change, no. "No signal", this time xorgconfig didn't help. Restarting and poking around with vim, nothing had a notable effect until I switched to the nv driver. Yeah, refresh rates, video modes, no change until I select nv. Didn't enable my network either, had to reboot and swith to the hard drive so I could post this.
What if you switch to fbdev, rather than nv? Does that work?
Doesn't work with the current setup. If I merely replace "vesa" with "fbdev" it says something about a mode conflict, apparently the initial framebuffer is set at 32bpp while the xorg.conf specifies 24bpp. I tried changing to 32, but that gave some other complaint about a weight of 000 which I really didn't understand ...
Any chance you could actually get us those errors?
Not certain, since this version didn't autodetect the network ... guess it ought to work with a USB key huh? Okay then, which files and/or logs would you like?
Created attachment 149848 [details] Xorg.0.log when booted without framebuffer I have also an issue with nvidia card with 2008.0 beta1. I got somewhat various colour-stripes across the screen, switch via ctrl+alt+F1 to console mode gave me and LCD with turned off backlight so I could hardly see any text in the console text mode. 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7100 GS (rev a1) 03:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6121 SATA II Controller (rev b1) 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01) 05:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev c0)
Created attachment 149849 [details] Xorg.0.log when booted with framebuffer When booted with framebuffer support I got X started, I see somehow the underlying contoures of the desktop but it is hardly usable, with zillions of tiny dots breaking the screen shown all over. LCD monitor says it is running in 1024x768 but it looks like the real virtual size of the screen is much larger, say like when virtual desktop size would be 1600x1280 or so. Mouse pointer moves fine, although too fast.
No more livecds, so closing this bug.
