I’ve been at this problem for a few days now, and I think it’s time I give in and ask about it, because I am at a loss.
For all intents and purposes, my computer is a homemade one with these specs
Asus M2N68-AM Plus Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 260 3.2Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS
I am running OpenSuse 11.4, previously with GNOME 3 but on reinstall of the OS I have reverted back to GNOME 2 and I only want to update once this mess is out of the way.
I’m doing a bit of a project, and one of the requirements is that I be able to connect to my TV. I made my own S Video to RCA cable to run out of my PC and into the TV. I tested that on the day I made it with a Windows laptop, worked fine.
Beforehand, my computer was running out of the DVI port into a monitor perfectly, so I can safely assume it is not my graphics card. When I plugged my S Video to RCA cable in, everything looked fine at boot but when it came to booting OpenSuse, X.org failed to start, although I wasn’t around to see the error message (I now know that it was “x server failed maximum number of times” or something of that description). I tried startx on the command line only to get a “no screens found” error or something similar. The only way I could get it to successfully start was to revert to the xorg.conf.install file, which wasn’t ideal and GNOME 3 had to run in fallback mode. I did not like the fact that my graphics card wasn’t running as well as it could. Nevertheless, I tested a few things, and found that a little Java program with LWJGL could not run, Xlib threw this error at me
Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0”
So xorg.conf.install is no longer an option. I tried a variety of other troubleshooting options, first recommended by the OpenSuse wiki and then all sorts of xorg.conf edits. I’ve tried running nvidia-xconfig but the configuration it gives me the same error, I have tried X -configure, only to get the same error.
As a last resort I reinstalled OpenSuse 11.4 hoping that its automatic configuration would solve the problem. It sort of did. Now when I run anything when my xorg.conf file is not xorg.conf.install it successfully starts X.org the first time, and if I shut down and reboot within 10 minutes of it shutting down, X.org refuses to start. I did more searching around and found that I could specify S Video out through xorg.conf. I went back to the xorg.conf.d directory by deleting my xorg.conf file and changed my xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf to this
Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
#Driver "radeon"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "TVStandard" "PAL-G"
Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
BusID "PCI:2:00.0"
## Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
## (here: "DVI-0") can be figured out via 'xrandr -q'
#Option "monitor-DVI-0" "Default Monitor"
EndSection
Which I honestly thought would work, but I got the same error again.
That’s about the end of my story, if you want any more info just ask. I think it’s a bit odd that no matter what I change my xorg.conf/xorg.conf.d files to I always get the same error and not a plethora of different ones.
If anybody can solve my problem without telling me to get a new graphics card, I will be eternally grateful.
I’m not sure if the proprietary nvidia driver utilises the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ configuration files yet; (others who know the answer please chime in). Anyway, did you try to configure (with S-video and DVI displays attached) via ‘nvidia-settings’ (run as root)? This can be used to create or adjust ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf’ for your configuration.
Thanks for the reply. I did nvidia-xconfig, and put the options that I had in 50-device.conf into the device section in the generated xorg.conf file, and rebooted. On desktop boot, the loading bar’s full display failures were a little less dramatic, but enough to kill X.org, and on failsafe the boot stalled directly after “Booting D-Bus Daemon” or something on those lines.
I tried to run nvidia-settings but a nvidia xorg.conf file had to be in place to run, and it uses a GUI so a x server had to be running. For me, those two things together are impossible.
Running xorg.conf.install again. Thanks for the insight, though.
I tried to run nvidia-settings but a nvidia xorg.conf file had to be in place to run, and it uses a GUI so a x server had to be running. For me, those two things together are impossible.
Running xorg.conf.install again. Thanks for the insight, though.
IIRC, many users create /etc/X11/xorg.conf with ‘nvidia-xconfig’ first, then adjust with ‘nvidia-settings’. Can you do this within a running graphical session (ie where no previous xorg.conf is present)?
I’m not sure what you mean, I have run nvidia-xconfig with no xorg.conf file present (and no x server running, just from the terminal), and that didn’t work because, well I still don’t know why it didn’t work and that is what I aim to solve. nvidia-settings won’t work while there is no x server running for some reason, as far as I know, I might be wrong and I would be very happy to use it without one.
I followed the Ubuntu guide before and that’s how I got the settings mentioned in the first post which don’t seem to want to work.
Also, would the fact that I was previously running an ATI Radeon card change anything? Even though I have done a full OS reinstall? Twice.
I’m not sure what you mean, I have run nvidia-xconfig with no xorg.conf file present (and no x server running, just from the terminal)…
No, I was suggesting you execute it from a terminal (as root) with a working desktop session. It will not take effect until you restart X anyway, but I was thinking that nvidia-settings could then be used to adjust it as necessary.
Also, would the fact that I was previously running an ATI Radeon card change anything? Even though I have done a full OS reinstall? Twice.