Thanks. Are you certain this Silicon Integrated 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter is supported in GNU/Linux ? I note from the ‘man sis’ page:
The sis driver supports PCI, AGP and PCIe video cards based on the following chipsets:
SiS5597/5598 SiS530/620 SiS6326/AGP/DVD SiS300/305 SiS540 SiS630/730 SiS315/E/H/PRO SiS550/551/552 SiS650/651/661/741 SiS330 (Xabre) SiS760/761 XGI Volari V3/V5/V8 XGI Volari Z7
No where in that listt do I see the SiS 771 nor SiS 671.
When I look at the Xorg.0.log file I note:
21.176] Current Operating System: Linux EEL013 3.1.0-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 3 14:45:45 UTC 2011 (187dde0) i686
21.176] Kernel command line: root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDS721616PLA380_PVC300Z5RV0T8J-part6 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDS721616PLA380_PVC300Z5RV0T8J-part5 splash=silent quiet vga=0x31a
.........
21.206] (II) LoadModule: "sis"
21.207] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so
...........
21.207] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
........
21.209] (II) SIS: driver for SiS chipsets: SIS5597/5598, SIS530/620,
SIS6326/AGP/DVD, SIS300/305, SIS630/730, SIS540, SIS315, SIS315H,
SIS315PRO/E, SIS550, SIS650/M650/651/740, SIS330(Xabre),
SIS660/[M]661[F|M]X/[M]670/[M]741[GX]/[M]760[GX]/[M]761[GX]/[M]770[GX],
SIS340
21.209] (II) SIS: driver for XGI chipsets: Volari Z7 (XG20),
Volari V3XT/V5/V8/Duo (XG40)
........
21.281] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for sis
21.281] (--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
21.282] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw"
21.282] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
........
** 21.287] (II) UnloadModule: "sis"**
21.287] (II) Unloading sis
.......
21.289] (II) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument (Screen blanking not supported by vesafb of Linux Kernel)
21.289] (==) FBDEV(0): Backing store disabled
Its pretty clear from that log file that your computer is using the very basic low performance (but highly compatible) FBDEV graphic video driver.
So I asked myself if your SiS 771/671 is supported. I can’t tell. I note from the xorg-X11-driver-video file that it comes with:
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.la
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so
and when I look at the change history I note:
* Mon Aug 23 2010 sndirsch@suse.de
- xf86-video-sis 0.10.3
* sis video driver 0.10.3 for server 1.9
* obsoletes xf86-video-sis-19070.diff,
xf86-video-sis-website.diff
with no update since August 2010.
I tried to find the development page for the SiS,… I found this depreciated (out of date) link: SIS 671 (Intel D201 GLY) and GEODE LX/GX Linux drivers for XWindows/Xorg which noted
no longer maintain these. The most up-to-date patch set is available here: xorg-video-sisimedia.
SIS 671 (Intel D201GLY) and Geode LX/GX XOrg video drivers with XVideo acceleration and fixed high resolution issues. These drivers are different from freedesktop Xorg tree or the OLPC Geode driver.
where the xorg-video-sisimedia link referred to xorg-video-sisimedia 0.9.1 which appears older than the 0.10.3 in openSUSE-12.1.
I note a reference to Mandriva Linux picking up the driver as sis-media … but I got no where following that up. So I can not tell who (if anyone) maintains these drivers. I did a search for " 0.10.3 sis " but I could only find packager references and not developer references.
I also looked for SiS proprietary drivers and failed. I’m not saying they are not out there, … I just ran out of the time that I want to spend as an unpaid volunteer. Sorry.
So I am a bit of a loss as to how to get your PC to load the sis drivers, and indeed at a loss if there is an update.
I suppose you could try to get the resolution you want with the basic and primitive fbdev graphic driver, but thats not a nice solution.
Out of curiousity, could you try this: …
(1) install the program midnight commander (mc) which is a text editor that can be run in a full screen text mode as a regular user or as root (by typing command ‘mc’ (no quotes)). It can be navigated via very friendly function keys. Its useful if stuck in a text mode and one needs to edit a configuration file.
(2) edit the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf so that it looks something like:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
#Driver "radeon"
Driver "sis"
## 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
save the change, and reboot using the boot code ‘nomodeset’ when booting.
Does that work at all ? If not, remove the edit and we are back where we started.