Well I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't expect the upgrade to go this bad. I have a G400 32mb graphics card which has had problems before with Suse releases, but was working OK. Yesterday I tried to upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3. It's still not working properly. I originally had Xfree 4.1.0 and a 2.4.7 kernel. I'd had a couple of problems with blank consoles, but adding the "NoHal" option seemed to fix it. The 7.3 kernel didn't seem to work at all. When yast2 changed screens in X, it crashed. When the console screensave kicked in, it crashed. So I installed the source. Copied the vmlinuz.config settings and switched off the frame buffer support. Then I recompiled it. The first time it booted up, the screen was blank, but I could telnet in. I switched off the vga boot screen and rebooted. It seemed better. I could switched between consoles. So I started X and that seemed OK. Then I exited it. It crashed. The resulting fsck was a bit worrying. So I guess I have several options: a) Try the Matrox drivers from their website b) Put 2.4.7 back on. c) Try the Suse 2.4.14 kernel package d) Try rebuilding the 2.4.14 Suse source with framebuffers switched off e) Try the same with the vanilla 2.4.15 sources Any suggestions? Jason __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com
Jason Poynting wrote: [edit G400 32mb graphics card [edit] When the console screensave kicked in, it crashed. [edit] So I started X and
that seemed OK. Then I exited it. It crashed. The resulting fsck was a bit worrying.[edit]
Hi: I have had similar problems. This is very disturbing because I specifically bought the G400 because the MGA was one of the best supported graphics chipsets for XFree86. I research very carefully what hardware to but when building a Linux box. I have had no problems whatever with two G400 boxes running any Linux until suse 7.3. Now it is a mess. I am having the same crashes as you. 1. Does anyone know for sure what is the cause of this problem? Is it the kernel, XFree86, or just a configuration issue? I will not accept any suggestion that it is the card, because I have seen two G400s running flawlessly for almost 2 years in two machines across several versions of Suse Linux and XFree86. 2. What will fix this? It is pathetic to have a Linux system crashing like this, especially with a piece of mainstream graphics hardware. I hope for sure this can be straightened out. Good luck, and I will begin researching this in depth in the next few days, as I have had the first two crashes of an entire Linux box while running only as a user since 1.2.8. This is very disappointing. I can't accept having Linux boxes behave like Windows 3.1. ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
Not sure if this will be helpful at all, but here is a problem I ran into: I installed Suse 7.3 on my laptop, which has a somewhat weird graphics chipset. I couldn't get X11 to work because Suse choose to setup XFree86 version 3 (which doesn't support the chipset without a patch). After I realized this was happening, I started SaX2, which switched the machine to XFree86 version 4 - and all worked fine. Alain On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 09:26:16AM -0800, Christopher R. Carlen wrote:
Jason Poynting wrote:
[edit G400 32mb graphics card [edit] When the console screensave kicked in, it crashed. [edit] So I started X and
that seemed OK. Then I exited it. It crashed. The resulting fsck was a bit worrying.[edit]
Hi:
I have had similar problems. This is very disturbing because I specifically bought the G400 because the MGA was one of the best supported graphics chipsets for XFree86. I research very carefully what hardware to but when building a Linux box. I have had no problems whatever with two G400 boxes running any Linux until suse 7.3. Now it is a mess. I am having the same crashes as you.
1. Does anyone know for sure what is the cause of this problem? Is it the kernel, XFree86, or just a configuration issue?
I will not accept any suggestion that it is the card, because I have seen two G400s running flawlessly for almost 2 years in two machines across several versions of Suse Linux and XFree86.
2. What will fix this? It is pathetic to have a Linux system crashing like this, especially with a piece of mainstream graphics hardware.
I hope for sure this can be straightened out. Good luck, and I will begin researching this in depth in the next few days, as I have had the first two crashes of an entire Linux box while running only as a user since 1.2.8. This is very disappointing. I can't accept having Linux boxes behave like Windows 3.1.
____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
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Alain wrote:
Not sure if this will be helpful at all, but here is a problem I ran into:
I installed Suse 7.3 on my laptop, which has a somewhat weird graphics chipset. I couldn't get X11 to work because Suse choose to setup XFree86 version 3 (which doesn't support the chipset without a patch). After I realized this was happening, I started SaX2, which switched the machine to XFree86 version 4 - and all worked fine.
Alain
X 3.x.x works fine on G400 systems. That isn't the problem here. There are known problems with G400 and framebuffer support. But perhaps there is something else goind on, because now we have two people who have recompiled to turn off framebuffer, and are having crashes clearly related to X. -- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
I have had some suggestions, so I thought I'd report back on my complete
lack of progress.
I tried going back to the original 2.4.10 as shipped with Suse 7.3. I set
the line "vga=normal" for lilo and booted it up. Again it started OK in
text mode. Then I started X. Again it was OK, but when I tried to switch
back to the console using Ctrl-Alt-F1, it crashed.
Next I tried the Matrox drivers from their website. The only difference
was that the machine made a nasty beeping noise when it crashed.
I have now gone back to 2.4.4 from Suse 7.2 and it works fine.
My XF86Config has the following lines for the Matrox card:
# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************
# Any number of graphics device sections may be present
# Standard VGA Device:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
# The chipset line is optional in most cases. It can be used to override
# the driver's chipset detection, and should not normally be specified.
# Chipset "generic"
# The Driver line must be present. When using run-time loadable driver
# modules, this line instructs the server to load the specified driver
# module. Even when not using loadable driver modules, this line
# indicates which driver should interpret the information in this
section.
Driver "vga"
# The BusID line is used to specify which of possibly multiple devices
# this section is intended for. When this line isn't present, a device
# section can only match up with the primary video device. For PCI
# devices a line like the following could be used. This line should not
# normally be included unless there is more than one video device
# intalled.
# BusID "PCI:0:10:0"
# VideoRam 256
# Clocks 25.2 28.3
EndSection
# Device configured by xf86config:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Matrox Millennium G400"
Driver "mga"
Option "NoHal"
#VideoRam 32768
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection
# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************
# Any number of screen sections may be present. Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen. A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "Matrox Millennium G400"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
#Modes "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"
Modes "1280x1024"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
And an lspci -vvx shows:
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G400 AGP
(rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Matrox Graphics, Inc. Millennium G400 32Mb SDRAM
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop+
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort-
* Christopher R. Carlen [Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:26:16 -0800]:
1. Does anyone know for sure what is the cause of this problem? Is it the kernel, XFree86, or just a configuration issue?
I don't know for sure, but if a kernel without framebuffer doesn't help, I'd suspect the Matrox HAL-Lib, which is a binary only library. If you need neither the DVI support nor dual head support, I'd try compiling XFree86, or more specifically the mga driver, without the Matrox HAL library. Philipp -- Penguins to save the dinosaurs -- Handelsblatt on Linux for S/390
--- Philipp Thomas
I don't know for sure, but if a kernel without framebuffer doesn't help, I'd suspect the Matrox HAL-Lib, which is a binary only library. If you need neither the DVI support nor dual head support, I'd try compiling XFree86, or more specifically the mga driver, without the Matrox HAL library.
I disabled both the HAL library and the framebuffer in the kernel. Neither helped. What fixed it was adding: append="disableapic" to lilo.conf. It's now working fine with the HAL switched off, but with the standard Suse kernel with framebuffer switched on. Jason __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com
On Monday 26 November 2001 04:33 am, Jason Poynting wrote:
Well I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't expect the upgrade to go this bad. I have a G400 32mb graphics card which has had problems before with Suse releases, but was working OK.
Yesterday I tried to upgrade from 7.2 to 7.3. It's still not working properly. I originally had Xfree 4.1.0 and a 2.4.7 kernel. I'd had a couple of problems with blank consoles, but adding the "NoHal" option seemed to fix it.
Have you tried the vga=normal boot up option?
I've fixed it. It seems that I needed to add disableapi to lilo.conf. I'm not entirely sure what that does, or whether this has anything to do with the Matrox card. And after all that, my digital camera still doesn't work any better via USB. That was all I really wanted. As an aside, anyone know why Suse don't compile Kamera into KDE? Jason __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com
participants (5)
-
Alain
-
Christopher R. Carlen
-
Jason Poynting
-
Joshua Lee
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philippt@t-online.de