M5 and graphics problems requiring nomodeset

On clean installs of 12.1 M5, I encountered graphics problems with both
nVidia and Radeon processors.

The problem on this machine manifested itself as a black screen on the
initial installation reboot. This required a hard reboot and
specification of “nomodeset” to get round it. Subsequent post-
installation reboots without this parameter simply stalled on the
openSUSE splash screen.

On the machine with a Radeon 24000 HD processor, the process was very
similar except that the two screens that appeared were composed of fine,
vertical, coloured stripes. Use of “nomodeset” in this case allowed me to
logon but the post-logon KDE desktop was of a low resolution and required
use of the monitor’s configuration tools.

On both machines, I have also installed 12.1 M2 and upgraded to M5 via
the factory-tested repos. In the case of the Radeon processor, the
machine booted successfully with no necessity to use “nomodeset.”
However, the nVidia machine (using nouveau driver) still required that
parameter.


Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.0; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306

Hi,

My PC has GeForce 7300GT video card. Even with “nomodeset”, openSUSE 12.1 as upgraded from M4 to M5 only boots to a text-only screen!

Hi,

I just checked my PC and it shows that “nouveau” is already installed (filename: xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau-0-0-16_201105_b795ca-5.4.x86_64). Since proprietary Nvidia driver works in M4 but not M5, and because I have been unable to install Nvidia drivers the hard way, I decided to “un-blacklist” nouveau.

Yet after reboot, my PC still boots into a text screen. Nomodeset is purposely left untouched in kernel boot options. My current kernel is 3.0.0-4-desktop. The repos are non-OSS and OSS Factory.

Any suggestions to help me get my KDE desktop back?

Thanks in advance.

IIRC, the NVIDIA driver install will have installed NVIDIA’s proprietary libglx.so etc, so you may need to reinstate the original libraries. The easiest way may be to reinstall the Mesa package.

zypper in --force Mesa

Hi
If it’s using the nouveau driver then also check Mesa-nouveau3d is
installed.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop
up 3 days 2:58, 3 users, load average: 0.06, 0.06, 0.08
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 280.13

Hi
If it’s using the nouveau driver then also check Mesa-nouveau3d is
installed.

Thanks for chiming in here Malcolm…

Hello malcolm and deano,

I re-installed mesa package but still can’t get proprietary Nvidia driver installed. Then upgraded to kernel 3.1.0-rc5-2-desktop and re-installed kernel-devel, kernel-source, kernel-syms, linux-glibc-devel (aka. kernel-headers), glibc-devel, gcc and make. Yet, I am still unable to install Nvidia and still get the same error messages about cc version check failed, etc. (Refer to my Post#35 page 4 to #50 page 5 in openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 5: Post your experiences).

Then I “un-blacklist” nouveau and re-installed nouveau using the command that Malcolm gave. Also tried but failed to install mesa-nouveau3d because the system cannot find it from package sources.
After reboot with nomodeset, my PC still boots into a text-based screen.

lspci -nnk shows the video card but does not show any kernel driver

Then:


#rcxdm start

gives me a login screen with the white bar being frozen at 1/3 of the way.

I think something is preventing either nvidia or nouveau from being installed.

Any ideas and suggestions? Thanks a lot for your help!

>:(

Our reply to you was based around reinstating the nouveau driver, not the nvidia driver (which will be failing for other reasons).

Maybe xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau needs reinstalling too?

lspci -nnk shows the video card but does not show any kernel driver

It won’t if fbdev or vesa driver is in use AFAIU.

Hi deano,

I did re-install xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau. When I said re-installing nouveau I meant the whole thing, i.e. xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau because in 11.4 under Software Management a search for nouveau shows the same whole thing.

Should I try installing sax3 to confirm whether fbdev or vesa is in use, and replace either with nouveau?

If so, how do I download the link for sax3 and install it using just one command in the terminal?

Should I try installing sax3 to confirm whether fbdev or vesa is in use, and replace either with nouveau?

If so, how do I download the link for sax3 and install it using just one command in the terminal?

No, that isn’t really necessary for this. Have a look at the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log

This might reduce the output

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep '(II) LoadModule'

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep '(II) UnloadModule'

BTW, you don’t have /etc/X11/xorg.conf present from any nvidia config do you? If so, remove it.