Live CD 11.4 display problem on Dell Inspiron

Podge15 · November 9, 2011, 4:57pm

I have been trying unsuccessfully to use both of the two Live CD’s (openSUSE-11.4-GNOME-LiveCD-i686.iso and …KDE…)
on my Dell Inspiron 510m notebook. Both versions do not display properly on the screen, e.g. the background appears to be in stripes which overlap. I have tried using all the F3 video options (800x600, 1024x768 and vesa), but they all give the same result. I am obliged to use Ctl Alt F1 followed by root login and ‘shutdown -h now’ to get out. Under these circumstances I cannot take the risk of performing an install.

A few weeks ago I used the Ubuntu 11.10 live CD and had no such problems with the display. I can also use the Knoppix 5.3.1 Linux CD, so the problem appears to be with the Open Suse live CDs.

Any suggestions will be welcome.

DenverD · November 9, 2011, 7:51pm

On 11/09/2011 05:06 PM, Podge15 wrote:
>
> Both versions do not display
> properly on the screen, e.g. the background appears to be in stripes
> which overlap.pears to be with the Open Suse live CDs.
>
> Any suggestions will be welcome.

that background sounds exactly like what it really is…see here:
http://tinyurl.com/3qde66h yep, if that is what you see then you are
seeing exactly the right background…

i know, i know…only a SICK person would pick a “broken” video as a
default background…but. . . . but, no one asked me if i thought their
pick was a good idea, or not…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

Podge15 · November 10, 2011, 10:29pm

You’re quite right, though I found it hard to believe than any reasonable person would create such a disturbing background.

However this was not the only problem I had with the Live CD. I tried again and the result still appears to be unstable -for example when I click on one of the icons in the bar at the bottom of the screen, the corresponding menu appears only for an instant, ands then it’s gone. Black gaps appear in the display at various places. These effects just put me off any further attempts with this release, even though I have had Open Suse 10.2 on another notebook for several years without any problems.

DenverD · November 10, 2011, 11:08pm

On 11/10/2011 10:36 PM, Podge15 wrote:
>
> You’re quite right, though I found it hard to believe than any
> reasonable person would create such a disturbing background.
>
> However this was not the only problem I had with the Live CD. I tried
> again and the result still appears to be unstable -for example when I
> click on one of the icons in the bar at the bottom of the screen, the
> corresponding menu appears only for an instant, ands then it’s gone.
> Black gaps appear in the display at various places. These effects just
> put me off any further attempts with this release, even though I have
> had Open Suse 10.2 on another notebook for several years without any
> problems.

many many folks have been put off unnecessarily by initial video
problems which arise from the new ‘automatic’ setup of X…long gone is
Xorg.conf and good old SaX to help with the painful set up of X…

instead we have this automatic creature with almost works, most of the
time…

so, you have nvidia, ATI or Intel graphics…as long if you don’t have
that new Intel (what do they call it) i forget what they call it
dual-death or something…two cards, take your pick, mix and match…

anyway try this: begin the boot from the Live CD, at the first green
screen (the one that defaults to the top choice, either “openSUSE Live
Gnome” or “openSUSE Live KDE” just as soon as you see it start typing


nomodeset

then press enter…i guess all that video strangeness will be gone…

then while you playing with the live version read:

http://tinyurl.com/23mgej6
and
http://tinyurl.com/37v9y7m

where you will see how (cough cough) easy it is to fix…actually, that
last URL often leads to a “1-Click Install” of a video driver which
(especially when compared to 10.2) will make you smile BIG!

but, if you are so easily put off…its ok with me…enjoy wherever you
land and lot by again in a year or two and take another look…

one thing about openSUSE–it is always changing…sometimes good,
sometimes better…sometimes not so much.

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

Podge15 · November 17, 2011, 3:31pm

I checked the video info on my Dell, it shows ‘Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller’, short name ‘855GM’.
A search showed that there are known problems with 855GM and Linux, see:

Opensuse 11.4 and intel 8xx graphics card (i855 gm)

also:

Intel GPU 8xx issues, will 11.3 have them too?!

Imho it would appear that the problems are not yet solved.

I tried the ‘nomodeset’ and the most obvious result was that the background image appeared in the most fascinating color
combinations, positively psychedelic! The good news is that the icons were ok and could be used, but given the color problems
I didn’t see this as the way forward.

I’ve read through the two articles which you gave and made a number of attempts using the ‘3’ boot option to get text mode and then
edit the /var/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf file to add a line 'device=“xxxx”, with xxxx being vesa, intel, I810, or intellegacy,
before running an ‘init 5’ to go into graphics mode.
‘vesa’ gives an error which in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file shows a problem with hsync and 640x480. ‘intellegacy’ results in an
endless loop, possibly because it requires software which is not available on the liveCD. The other tries resulted in
various problems with the display as mentioned previously.

Most of the suggestions in the articles appear to apply to an installation of Open Suse, rather than a live CD, because
they often require a ‘shutdown -r now’, which will obviously cause all manual changes to be lost when the Live CD is
re-booted.

I feel that if this is the best that the OpenSuse developers can do with a liveCD which is presumably intended to attract people
to OpenSuse, then I will pass. Note that as I already mentioned, the current Ubuntu LiveCD caused no such problems with my Dell.

martin_helm · November 17, 2011, 3:48pm

Am 17.11.2011 15:36, schrieb Podge15:
> I feel that if this is the best that the OpenSuse developers can do
> with a liveCD which is presumably intended to attract people to
> OpenSuse, then I will pass.
Maybe you should report that as a bug to them, probably they are not
aware of that. (The developers are not here, so writing it here has no
effect).

> Note that as I already mentioned, the current Ubuntu LiveCD caused no
> such problems with my Dell.
>
Do you know which driver is in use on the ubuntu cd or a special setting
for the X server which you could use on openSUSE?

Podge15 · November 18, 2011, 10:00pm

I found an answer (in German which I have partly translated below) to your question here:

Das Ende der unendlichen Geschichte

This blog dated 2011/09/09 reports an X-Server-Update for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10:

xorg-server (2:1.10.4-1ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

Christopher James Halse Rogers ]

Drop i8xx-disablement patch. 2.6.39 and later kernels contain a patch
which allegedly fixes the cache-incoherency problems. (LP: #817814)

The patch to be dropped has the effect that when an 855GM chipset is detected, the Intel driver is not loaded, and thus
by default the FrameBuffer driver is automatically loaded. In order to use the Intel driver, one has to create an xorg.conf
file and explicitly order the X-server to use it.

Without this patch in Ubuntu 11.10 the X-server uses the Intel driver, so that manual intervention is no longer required.

There are two restrictions:

The 855GM chipset is no longer supported by the Ubuntu developers, so that any bug reports will most probably be
marked as 'cannot be resolved' and the originator recommended to contact the developers of the driver.

The 3D version of Unity will not work, because it requires at least OpenGL 1.4, while the 855GM chipset only supports 1.3.	
Unity-2D will thus be started automatically.

End of translated text.

This appears to explain what I have reported, assuming that this same patch is still included in OpenSuse 11.4

Podge15 · November 23, 2011, 4:35pm

I have just downloaded both the Gnome and KDE versions of the Open Suse 12.1 live CD, and both booted without any of the
display problems with my Dell Inspiron 510m (‘Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller’, short name ‘855GM’) which I reported
with OpenSuse 11.4.

My thanks for your help.