[CentOS] Centos 6.3 - unsupported video hardware

Wed Mar 6 22:45:58 UTC 2013
Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>

On 03/06/2013 04:18 PM, Dale Dellutri wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:
>> On 03/06/2013 03:47 PM, Dale Dellutri wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 03/06/2013 02:51 PM, Craig White wrote:
>>>>> On Mar 6, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I pulled one of my old OQO model 2 out of the junk bin and installed
>>>>>> Centos 6.3 over Centos 5.3.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The internal video does not work in graphics mode (text works fine),
>>>>>> though a monitor attacked to the VGA port works fine.  Although my
>>>>>> intension is to use this as a portable test server, it would be nice if
>>>>>> the video was available.  How might I go about figuring out the Xorg
>>>>>> magic to get it working?
>>> When you say "internal video does not work", what do you mean?
>>> Is the laptop screen black, garbled, flickering, unresponsive?
>>
>> Scrolling flickering, blue and white image.
>>
>>
>>> If black, did you try startx for the command line?
>>
>> Have not switched to init 3 to try.
>>
>>
>>> Are there any errors (EE) or warnings (WW) in /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
>>
>> (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such device
>>
>> (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
>> (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
>> (WW) CHROME(0): Manufacturer plainly copied main PCI IDs to subsystem/card
>> IDs.
>> (WW) CHROME(0): Unable to estimate virtual size
>> (WW) CHROME(0): [XvMC] XvMC is not supported on this chipset
>> (WW) Lid Switch: Don't know how to use device
>>
>>
>>> Anything in /var/log/messages or dmesg?
>>
>> what would I search for?
> Error messages pertaining to the video controller.
>
>>
>>> What is the output of lspci | grep VGA?
>> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700/VX700 [S3
>> UniChrome Pro] (rev 03)
> Use the info in this line (VIA CX700 VX700 or UniChrome Pro) to do a
> google search.  Add linux to the search terms to see what driver you need.

I had another oqo2 in the dustbin with C5.3 on it.  I powered it up and 
it came up in init 3 mode.  When I did startx the external monitor came 
up nicely, but the system's screen was white.

Then I remembered (they have been in the dustbin for a few years).

I never got the video working back on C5.3.  In fact I had to play 
around with xorg.conf to get better than 800x640 for the external 
monitor, so C6.3 is an improvement.

So no driver that I can find.  Oh well.  They will just be little 
servers for testing.