Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1002 mails)

[Stan Goodman <stan.goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 14 July 2011 1903:18 Felix Miata Felix Miata 
<mrmazda@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2011/07/14 14:36 (GMT) Karl-Heinz tm composed:
> > Stan Goodman composed:
> > > Because my venerable Pentium 4 motherboard died yesterday, I have
> > > a new MB (i5 CPU on an Intel HD67BL board) and have installed
> > > 64bit v11.4 on
>
> That's a Sandy Bridge. It may be too new to be fully supported by
> 11.4. Whether that's the case you may have to investigate if
> suggestions & comments following prove inadequate or useless.

Yes, Sany Bridge, as I have now found in my search. The Intellinux site 
says there is a Linux driver. Intel cautions against trying to compile 
the source code DYI, and refers one glibly to "your distribution". 
Bummer. There are Wincrap drivers, of course, for many generations of 
Windows.

I assume and hope that openSuSE will have such a driver in the 
reasonable future. In the meantime, I will see about occupying the sole 
PCI slot with a less exotic graphics card, or suffer with what I have, 
until the needed driver appears. 

> > > it. I am non-plussed by some of the behaviors I observe. I hope
> > > someone can help me understand them.
> > >
> > > 1) But immediately upon booting the installation DVD yesterday,
> > > and again when I started up the installed system todday, I was
> > > asked to choose a display mode. I was offered a small group of
> > > options to pick
>
> Offered where? Immediately as boot was initiated, same as when
> vga=ask is on cmdline?

On the first graphic screen, I got to choose the graphics standard by 
selecting a function key (forgot wich), but there I had a free choice 
with no limitations. That led to a text screen, which confrontedd me 
with the very reduced selection.

> > > be entering the number. The one I wanted was listed as:
> > >
> > > f 35A 1600x1200x32...(I would have chosen 60Hz if it were offered)
> > >
> > > I tried enterring "f", "35A", and "f 35A", and was rewarded each
> > > time with an error message telling me that the entry was not a
> > > valid mode.
>
> You may need to get vga=whatever off of cmdline to get around this
> problem. If your chipset/CPU are supported, you should at least let
> it try the defaults, then work on fixing them if they work but you
> don't like them.

That is effectively what I have done. In the face of my sturbbornness, 
the system gave up and defaulted to 1024x768x60.


I think this problem has been solved, in the sense that there is not a 
present real solution, and a straighforward workaround for the time 
being is to get an ATI card for the PCI slot.

I'll repost the other two problems in a new thread, since nobody seems 
to have noticed them.

Thanks...


> > > Permitting the system to make up its own mind, the boot proceeded,
> > > and I went to  Systems Settings to see what it had chosen. It is
> > > 1024x768 at 60Hz (no better resolution is offered). Even the
> > > ancient Pentium 5 was able to give me the higher resolution, and
> > > at the 60Hz refress rate. My conclusion is that there is an
> > > setting I must change, but I see nothing suggestive in the BIOS,
> > > so I may be overlooking something. Perhaps someone can see what
> > > that might be.
>
> Probably you need to upload dmesg output and Xorg.0.log if you can't
> find clues in them yourself. Does the behavior change by selecting
> the failsafe boot option?
>
> > on your problem #1:  what video card are you using?
>
> I'll bet Stan thinks he told you, though indirectly. You can see if
> you look up his motherboard that it has both a PCIe slot, and more
> importantly, provides HDMI and DVI ports, which accompany support
> for an Intel CPU that has Intel video on the CPU die.
> http://www.missingremote.com/review/intel-sandy-bridge-core-i5-2500k-
> and-dh67bl-motherboard
>
> >  I have had this
> >
> > behaviour on machines where the kernel does not recognise the video
> > card (e.g. Nvidia) correctly and then switches to the vesa/fb
> > driver, offering nothing better than 1024*768.  Installing the
> > proper video driver would fix that issue.
>
> Actually it depends on whether the issue is X or the ttys, and
> whether KMS is or is not disabled.
>
> > Mode f 35A sounds weird.  The VESA mode for 1600/1200/32 is 322,
> > which is equivalent to Linux's video mode number 834.  Have to
> > tried passing the command "vga=834" to the kernel command line
> > upon boot?  Unfortunately this may not work even if the kernel
> > does control your video card correctly as this mode is not
> > strictly standardised
>
> KMS has standardized by ignoring vga= on cmdline. If you want vga= to
> do anything useful you must disable kernel modesetting, but if
> you're running Intel video, disabling KMS also disables access to
> the Intel X driver.
>
> With KMS and KMS-supported video chips, cmdline mode control is done
> with video=, e.g. video=1600x1200@60, which gives 1600 horizontal by
> 1200 vertical with 60 refresh and default depth. Lacking video= on
> cmdline, KMS sets mode for both ttys and X according to EDID if EDID
> is valid, using whatever mode the EDID claims as native for the
> display.
>
> It may be no acceptable solution is possible for his hardware short
> of installing 12.1. 12.1M3 was supposed to be released today, but
> because of some kernel problems for some users that's been delayed.
> That won't prevent installing it via HTTP right off the mirrors from
> the boot.iso.
>
> Another option would be to put a known-supported gfxcard in a slot if
> it's true Sandy Bridge support wasn't complete in 11.4.
>
> If you do install 12.1, be sure to avoid being a double-duty guinea
> pig by going into detailed package selection and tabooing systemd.
> Also, if you goto 12.1 any time before it goes GA, questions about
> it belong on opensuse-testing and/or opensuse-factory lists, not
> here.

-- 
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx