unfortunately some cards do not display this info in Video BIOS on boot. Is there any command *from Linux* to make it?

Doesn't YaST -> Hardware Info tell you this?

Matthew

Unfortunately it does not show the video RAM.

On Oct 26, 06 18:16:09 +1000, Basil Chupin wrote:

...

how to do so under openSUSE ?

The best I found is "lspci -v -v" but it's very incorrect sometimes... On some systems is shows the video RAM reliably... on others not at all.

If the driver outputs the amount of memory it found, it is the most reliable source for this information. Start the Xserver with 'X -logverbose 9 :0' (or use :1 if you're already running X), then kill the Xserver (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and check /var/log/Xorg.0.log (.1.log, respectively) for some line from the driver that tells you how much graphics memory it found. That particular line can differ from driver to driver, so you have to check for yourself. Matthias -- Matthias Hopf __ __ __ Maxfeldstr. 5 / 90409 Nuernberg (_ | | (_ |__ mat@mshopf.de Phone +49-911-74053-715 __) |_| __) |__ labs www.mshopf.de

On Thursday 26 October 2006 1:48 pm, Alexey Eremenko wrote:

Actually yes, the command : "vi /var/log/Xorg.0.log"

Is the most reliable one, and it shows the video RAM much better than other commands. (like lspci -v -v) But it requires quite some digging in the file to find it out...

Perhaps "cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -c mem" would make it easier to find B-)

Perhaps "cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -c mem" would make it easier to find

Unfortunately this method doen't works on some systems (such as VMware 5). Therefore unreliable. Not to mention that I don't want to count, but "see" the lines. I found better way: "cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i ram" To also see the lines, it could be: "cat -n /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i ram"

why insist on using two operations where one suffices ???

grep -i ram /var/log/X......

direct instead of cat -> pipe -> strain pipe output

Agreed. So the best command until now has been: "grep -i ram /var/log/Xorg.0.log" Please test it... maybe we can ask for a feature-request on openSUSE bugzilla to make this feature easier ? i.e. viewable by one command (w/o parameters), and perhaps Yast? Because as I said in the original post, there are hundereds of small things in Linux, even for experienced Linuxoids, that make life hard. :( such a simple thing like asking for video RAM took a long discussion among Linuxoids.... terrible.

People, I have added a feature request for that issue: Bug 215522 - [feature-request] add simple way to show the Video RAM https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=215522

On 06/10/26 16:38 (GMT-0400) Alexey Eremenko apparently typed:

Agreed. So the best command until now has been:

"grep -i ram /var/log/Xorg.0.log"

For those who don't use grep enough to remember its syntax, like me, an easy option is to view Xorg.0.log. That's how I found out that the answer was in that file in the first place, in order to provide my answer posted upthread Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:28:09 -0400. On way to view a file was posted by someone else upthread - with vi, which I noted was overkill (opening an editor to view a file). An alternative viewing method is available in the OFM swiss army knife - F3 in mc, which works whether you're on a console or in X. I usually have at least two instances open at any given time, one on tty2, another in each X session inside Konsole. Anyone unfamiliar with what to do when X is broken really ought to try mc, preferably before finding yourself with a broken X. If you need to fetch an upgraded or missing package to feed to rpm, that's easily done with wget, but only if you have the appropriate URL. You could get that URL with a text mode browser, but have fun figuring out out to get it and save it in your preferred location. In contrast, mc has built in ftp, which you can use to go directly to the source, and fetch simply by a stroke of the F5 key. And, you'll get a true archive, not some timestamp modified version like you get from "saving" with a web browser. These may all be things Konq can do, but Konq requires X, unlike mc. -- "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped." Psalm 28:7 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

# cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep VideoRAM (--) MGA(0): VideoRAM: 16384 kByte # lspci -v | grep Mb Subsystem: Matrox Graphics, Inc. Millennium G400 16Mb SGRAM #

That command won't work on VMware machine. Therefore unreliable. It wont work on some S3 Trio cards as well....

hwinfo --gfxcard

Then, search the output for lines containing words "Memory Range". There you will find upper and lower memory boundaries in hex. Convert hex to decimal, and you'll get what (I guess) is what you want. You might want to divide the number of bytes you get there by 1024*1024 in order to get number in megabytes...

I checked the above on my own system and the result was correct

Memory Range: 0xf0000000-0xf7ffffff (rw,prefetchable)

7ffffff --> 134217727 bytes 134217727 / (1024*1024) = 128 Mb

I have tried that on S3 Tri with 4MB VRAM and it shows: Memory Range: 0xf8000000-0xfbffffff (rw,non-prefetchable) and no prefetchable lines were found. I did as you say: 201,326,591 - 134,217,728 = 67,108,863 (=64 MB, which is simply not true) lspci -vv also shows 64 MB of non-prefetchable memory. But, of course ancient S3 Trio cards have no 64MB of VRAM.

On Thursday 26 October 2006 15:35, solenoid (lists) wrote:

Alexey Eremenko wrote:

...

...

hwinfo --gfxcard

Then, search the output for lines containing words "Memory Range". There you will find upper and lower memory boundaries in hex. Convert hex to decimal, and you'll get what (I guess) is what you want. You might want to divide the number of bytes you get there by 1024*1024 in order to get number in megabytes...

I checked the above on my own system and the result was correct

Memory Range: 0xf0000000-0xf7ffffff (rw,prefetchable)

7ffffff --> 134217727 bytes 134217727 / (1024*1024) = 128 Mb

I have tried that on S3 Tri with 4MB VRAM and it shows:

Memory Range: 0xf8000000-0xfbffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)

and no prefetchable lines were found. I did as you say: 201,326,591 - 134,217,728 = 67,108,863 (=64 MB, which is simply not true) lspci -vv also shows 64 MB of non-prefetchable memory.

But, of course ancient S3 Trio cards have no 64MB of VRAM.

Next is to check "AGP apreture" settings in BIOS. As far as I remember, the default on most BIOSes was 64Mb. I wander if hwinfo takes the whole AGP apreture size and shows it as real memory.

Then again, I remember there were also some S3 Trios with 32 and 64Mb... Are you positive that yours S3 is only 4Mb ?

Regards,

solenoid

Do lspci -v and you'll get something in the line of: (taken from my tripple headed system, 1x dual head Matrox + 1x ATI PCI card) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. G400/G450 (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA]) Subsystem: Matrox Graphics, Inc. Millennium G400 MAX/Dual Head 32Mb Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10 Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M] Memory at e6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Memory at e7000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M] [virtual] Expansion ROM at e6010000 [disabled] [size=64K] Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [f0] AGP version 2.0 02:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 264VT [Mach64 VT] (rev 40) (prog-if 00 [VGA]) Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc Mach64VT Reference Flags: stepping, medium devsel Memory at e9000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] I/O ports at c000 [size=256] [virtual] Expansion ROM at 20000000 [disabled] [size=64K] As you can see the lines begining with "Memory at" shows the mem the card has "on it s own" Happy hunting... --          /Rikard ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- email   : rikard.j@rikjoh.com web     : http://www.rikjoh.com mob: : +46 (0)763 19 76 25 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78  46 1C EE 56 >

On Thursday 26 October 2006 18:06, Felix Miata wrote:

On both 10.0 and Factory I have this in /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

(--) MGA(0): VideoRAM: 16384 kByte -- "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped." Psalm 28:7 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

That implies that you have X set up, no? lspci works on a "console only" system too :) --          /Rikard ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- email   : rikard.j@rikjoh.com web     : http://www.rikjoh.com mob: : +46 (0)763 19 76 25 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78  46 1C EE 56 >

...

That implies that you have X set up, no? lspci works on a "console only" system too :)

Had or have, even if broken. Without X, what's the difference how much RAM a video card has?

Perhaps to help to configure X... :)