On Sun, 2008-12-21 at 22:48 +0100, Alain PORTAL wrote:
Le dimanche 21 décembre 2008, William L. Maltby a écrit :
If you get to single-user with a boot (adding the " 1" in grub edit mode), alternate consoles will have some stuff of possible value. <CTRL>-<ALT>-<Fx> (where the Fx is function key F1, F2, F3, ...) should switch you to other screens. Also, <ALT>-<RIGHT> or <ALT>-<LEFT> can be used to cycle through. If X has not been started, the <CTRL> can be omitted from that first set I mentioned.
If I start up in single user mode, I get only one console. No switch possible. So I start in run-level 3.
I forgot about that. Run level 3 is good too.
Once you are at the root prompt, do the system-config-display with no parameters. Looking at the alternate consoles while the config is running might be helpful.
If I run system-config-display in, saying tty1, it start successfully. If I switch to tty2, then back to tty1, I don't see the system-config-display dialog any more, just the command I typed before.
Drat! Yes, running in text mode, the screen buffer gets lost when you switch virtual terminals. So many things I've forgotten over time.
If the system finds _any_ driver it can use - e.g. vga, svga, vesa - it should bring up a graphical screen that has a computer icon and some tabs for display, multi-head, etc. There's a couple drop-down menus that let you select resolution, color depth, etc.
Unfortunately, resolution is too low (320x200), so, I can't see the "Cancel" and "Valid" or "OK" button of the system-config-display dialog.
Try again with the resolution parameters like Alan suggested but with lower resolution and "vga", e.g.
system-config-display --set-resolution=640x480 --set-driver=vga
Note that I changed "vesa" to "vga" since the card mentions only vga.
I don't know if that will work because I see the "insufficient memory" message you mention below. That may be a result of color depth combined with memory limitations. But if it does work, maybe you get going good enough to proceed.
BIOS! That memory thing reminds me. See below.
Select something not too "heavy" and save the settings and exit.
If only part of the screen is visible, maybe the screen is scrollable?
Unfortunately not.
Try moving the mouse off the edge (Hmm. Is the mouse working during this process? I forgot to test that).
Mouse is working.
- Can you get/see what I described at all?
- If you can, and if you make and save changes, you should be able to
get to a graphical screen later. BUT FIRST ... 3) At a root prompt, type dmesg | less and look for any messages that might give clues. This might be useful regardless of the results of 2).
Also, there might be useful messages in /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.*.
I don't know if I can post such heavy files here... This is a devel list, not a user one. Xorg.0.log is 38Kb and messages is 435Kb !
Not the whole file, just save some of the pertinent lines in a file and copy them into the reply. But maybe this won't be needed. See below about possible BIOS.
I don't recall what card you have - nvidia?
VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M71 [Mobility Radeon X2100] (rev ce) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Well, then you should be able to get any vga or svga compatible mode going. (S)VGA is a well-defined set of standards that if a card says it is compatible, the interface is "standard" and the card says it can support those compatible modes.
Since the text mode changes worked with the "vga=" added, there may be some hope yet.
I think now it's a X server problem as it can't compute modelines for vga module. I get, in Xorg.0.log, many lines as: (II) VGA(0): Not using default mode "320x240" (insufficient memory for mode)
Lines differs in mode value
(II) VGA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1200" (insufficient memory for mode)
I know that the 1920x1200 mode is doable.
Have you gone into BIOS and seen what is there that might be affecting this stuff? I know there are often selectable modes for video cards. Often in a laptop, main memory is shared with the video card. If you have not allocated enough memory to the video, maybe that is causing a lot of the problems? If you "system" memory is really small, you may not be able to get decent resolution with higher color resolutions.
If your BIOS has settings, start off with 4 bit color depth. That gives 16 colors only, but it's a start. Also pick a low resolution, like 640x480 or 800x640(?).
Maybe a combination of 4 bit color depth, low resolution, more memory shared with video chip, etc. makes it start working. Oh! Don't forget the video card mode if the BIOS has a setting for it.
Regards Alain
<snip>
We're starting to get close to the end of things I can think of. I hope something works here!
On 2008-12-21, 22:38 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
Note that I changed "vesa" to "vga" since the card mentions only vga.
Forget about VGA, it is really obsolete now -- all graphic cards you are likely to encounter in the wild are VESA-compatible, which is what you want.
Matěj
On Mon, 2008-12-22 at 00:33 +0100, Matej Cepl wrote:
On 2008-12-21, 22:38 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
Note that I changed "vesa" to "vga" since the card mentions only vga.
Forget about VGA, it is really obsolete now -- all graphic cards you are likely to encounter in the wild are VESA-compatible, which is what you want.
Yep. But not knowing why it's not working, I figure (based on experience) start with the lowest common denominator (so to speak) and work up from there.
He had tried vesa in a parameter to system-config-display, as suggested by Alan, and it hadn't worked. So I figured try something that _ought_ to work on stuff even 10 years old (or older) and go from there.
I have high hopes that the BIOS settings might be the key.
Matěj
<snip sig stuff>
On 2008-12-22, 00:11 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
He had tried vesa in a parameter to system-config-display, as suggested by Alan, and it hadn't worked. So I figured try something that _ought_ to work on stuff even 10 years old (or older) and go from there.
OK, if *that* didn't work, then I would ask really to pay a visit to bugzilla.redhat.com, component xorg-x11-drv-ati, attach xorg.conf and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
Thanks,
Matěj
On Mon, 2008-12-22 at 17:56 +0100, Matej Cepl wrote:
On 2008-12-22, 00:11 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
He had tried vesa in a parameter to system-config-display, as suggested by Alan, and it hadn't worked. So I figured try something that _ought_ to work on stuff even 10 years old (or older) and go from there.
OK, if *that* didn't work, then I would ask really to pay a visit to bugzilla.redhat.com, component xorg-x11-drv-ati, attach xorg.conf and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
Well, having faith that things really _are_ working, one of his messages in the log file about insufficient memory reminded me that many laptops and less-expensive desktops have shared memory. I've suggested that he check BIOS for various things.
I've also suggested that the OP select some appropriate subset of the messages and X.org log files if the BIOS things don't solve it.
I still don't believe it's necessary for him to rebuild X or any underlying components yet. Of course, I operate in almost total ignorance, so that belief may be totally bogus.
Thanks,
Matěj
BTW, did you forget about the plugins problem we were pursuing? I'll post a reminder in a few minutes so we don't hijack/pollute this thread.
<snip sig stuff>
On 2008-12-22, 17:38 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
Well, having faith that things really _are_ working, one of his messages in the log file about insufficient memory reminded me that many laptops and less-expensive desktops have shared memory. I've suggested that he check BIOS for various things.
No such thing should be necessary to get Xorg working. If it doesn't work without such black magic, then it is broken.
Matěj
On 2008-12-22, 17:38 GMT, William L. Maltby wrote:
Well, having faith that things really _are_ working, one of his messages in the log file about insufficient memory reminded me that many laptops and less-expensive desktops have shared memory. I've suggested that he check BIOS for various things.
No such thing should be necessary to get Xorg working. If it doesn't work without such black magic, then it is broken.
Matěj
Perhaps removing all of xorg, Gnome and xwindows is inorder and then a reinstall via yum of the groups is in order?
yum groupinstall "X Window System" "GNOME Desktop Environment"
Between a possible bad install to all of the tinkering...return to the baseline and try again.
Le dimanche 21 décembre 2008, William L. Maltby a écrit :
Unfortunately, resolution is too low (320x200), so, I can't see the "Cancel" and "Valid" or "OK" button of the system-config-display dialog.
Try again with the resolution parameters like Alan suggested but with lower resolution and "vga", e.g.
system-config-display --set-resolution=640x480 --set-driver=vga
Don't work. Even 320x240 don't work.
Note that I changed "vesa" to "vga" since the card mentions only vga.
Noted.
I don't know if that will work because I see the "insufficient memory" message you mention below. That may be a result of color depth combined with memory limitations. But if it does work, maybe you get going good enough to proceed.
BIOS! That memory thing reminds me. See below.
I think now it's a X server problem as it can't compute modelines for vga module. I get, in Xorg.0.log, many lines as: (II) VGA(0): Not using default mode "320x240" (insufficient memory for mode)
Lines differs in mode value
(II) VGA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1200" (insufficient memory for mode)
I know that the 1920x1200 mode is doable.
Have you gone into BIOS and seen what is there that might be affecting this stuff? I know there are often selectable modes for video cards.
There is no selectable video modes in the BIOS.
Often in a laptop, main memory is shared with the video card. If you have not allocated enough memory to the video, maybe that is causing a lot of the problems? If you "system" memory is really small, you may not be able to get decent resolution with higher color resolutions.
System Memory: 1024MB Video Memory: 512MB
We're starting to get close to the end of things I can think of. I hope something works here!
As you can see, nothing work ;-) I'm sure now this is a X server bug, this is why I wanted to try to rebuild xorg. I understand now this isn't reasonable.
http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3309 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=441065
Regards, Alain
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Alain PORTAL -
Matej Cepl -
Warren, Eucke -
William L. Maltby