Changing Video Driver on 42.2

English Install/Boot/Login
1

My HP Proliant ML110 G7 has a Matrox mgam200 chip. When I install 42.2, the screen is corrupt after login. This can be fixed by booting with nomodeset. However under this condition the system does not correctly recognize the monitor resolutions and I have not been able to correct this by altering 50-monitor.conf. The driver xf86-video-mga, which I believe to be the correct driver, came installed on the system, but the system is using nouveau. I want to try the xf86-video-mga driver without nomodeset, but I have read things I do not understand about needing to “blacklist” nouveau, and I am generally shaky on the subject of drivers. I do not want to get the system into a state from which I cannot recover. Can someone give me the detailed steps to do this safely?

2

Definitely not, as nouveau only supports NVidia cards/chips, and nomodeset would disable nouveau too… :wink:

Well, your main problem apparently is that the mga driver doesn’t work fine (with your chip at least).
You may want to file a bug report about that, either at bugzilla.opensuse.org or at bugzilla.freedesktop.org.

I see two possible “immediate” solutions here though:

  • keep “nomodeset”

In that case, fbdev should be used. Then you can choose the resolution in YaST->System->Boot Loader, fbdev takes that over to the graphical system AFAIK.

You can also choose to uninstall xf86-video-fbdev to force the vesa driver to be used (or set vesa in the xorg config). That may work better.

  • try to remove “nomodeset” and uninstall the xf86-video-mga driver.
    In that case, the built-in “modesetting” driver should be used, which may solve your problems as well (unless it is caused by a bug in the kernel’s mga driver)

IMHO, you should try the second one first, as it should provide better experience.

Feel free to ask if you have further questions…

3

Thanks. First, how can I tell what video driver is being used with and without nomodeset? (I have full use of the machine after login with nomodeset, or without it I can use SSH before login.)

Second, let me be sure I understand the second option exactly:

  1. I remove the “nomodeset” from the GRUB2 settings.
  2. Using Yast2 I remove the xf86-video-mga driver by unchecking it in the YAST2 software manager. (Is there anything else needed to either install or uninstall a driver?)
  3. Reboot.

Let me know and I’ll give it a try.

4

/var/log/Xorg.0.log is the definite answer… :wink:

  1. I remove the “nomodeset” from the GRUB2 settings.
  2. Using Yast2 I remove the xf86-video-mga driver by unchecking it in the YAST2 software manager. (Is there anything else needed to either install or uninstall a driver?)
  3. Reboot.

Correct.

If the system doesn’t boot then, add back the “nomodeset”.
I think you know how, but just in case:

  • press ‘e’ at the boot menu screen, then search for the line starting with “linux” or “linuxefi” and append “nomodeset” at the end, then press ‘F10’ to boot.
5

Unfortunately that did not work. With the driver deleted and nomodeset unset it continues to show a completely corrupted screen after login. (with nomodeset but the driver deleted it still works as before with wrong screen resolutions.)

6

Ok, that tells me that the kernel driver is the problem.
So you should file a bug report, but in this case it would not be freedesktop.org but rather kernel.org.

Or try at bugzilla.opensuse.org, with the same credentials as here.
Our kernel developers tend to be very helpful, though it might happen that they refer you to upstream as well…

Other than that, I already told you:
Either configure a different resolution in YaST->System->Boot Loader, or try the “vesa” driver (which you would get e.g. by uninstalling xf86-video-fbdev).

7

Ok, I will do that. Thanks for your help.

8

FYI
Years (how many? I can’t remember) I experienced problems with the Matrox driver that was installed in an HP Proliant server. Investigation including posting to the HP Help Forum revealed that the Matrox chip and the drivers written for it were never done well, with no real resolution. So, in many cases (including mine at that time) the system fell back to whatever the default driver was that was installed by the OS bootloader (typically VGA for very old machines, VESA for more recent).

For me, this was merely a moderate irritation and not that big a deal since this was a server I’d remote into, anyway… So I didn’t need a big screen to run a console environment running text command line.

You can search for, and maybe post to the HP Help Forums for more information. I doubt that anything would have changed since my postings, even then Matrox was not going to be developed by anyone beyond what existed then.

So, the bottom line is that you might be able to try some different resolutions for whichever driver you’re likely running (VGA or VESA), but YMMV.

If you are able to install another video card that is better supported, <maybe> you’ll have better luck but you’ll have to be very detailed describing your hardware installation and resources. And, maybe there is already a posted solution somewhere for your specific hardware plus your new video card.

HTH,
TSU

9

This was way back in 2012-2013.

10

Thanks for the information. The thing is, the same Matrox driver works fine in the same machine when I run 13.1, so I suspect the driver and chip themselves are ok for each other. Unfortunately I need to get this thing updated from 13.1.

11

Yes. There is a Matrox driver for openSUSE Leap 42.2 and a separate driver for SUSE Enterprise Server SP3. The kernel is much older.

](https://software.opensuse.org/package/xf86-video-mga)https://software.opensuse.org/package/xf86-video-mga

xf86-video-mga

           **Matrox video driver for the Xorg X server**

           mga is an Xorg driver for Matrox video cards.  The driver is fully accelerated, and provides support for the following framebuffer depths: 8, 15, 16, 24, and an 8+24 overlay mode. All visual types are supported for depth 8, and both TrueColor and DirectColor visuals are supported for the other depths except 8+24 mode which supports PseudoColor, GrayScale and TrueColor. Multi-card configurations are supported. XVideo is supported on G200 and newer systems, with either TexturedVideo or video overlay.

The second head of dual-head cards is supported for the G450 and G550. Support for the second head on G400 cards requires a binary-only “mga_hal” module that is available from Matrox, and may be on the CD supplied with the card. That module also provides various other enhancements, and may be necessary to use the DVI (digital) output on the G550 (and other cards).