switching to console distorts video

I’ve played with linux quite a bit, but now is the first time I haven’t just given up. However I can’t solve this alone that I’ve found.

I boot into gnome just fine, but as soon as I switch to console 1 or 2 or N (insert number here) it distorts my video across all of them. It seems like it’s changing the refresh rate either horizontal or vertical and I just don’t know how to solve the problem. If it distorts I can’t get it back to decent readable graphics without a reboot. Was doing the same thing in ubuntu, and that’s part of the reason I installed suse.

I am running 1600X1200 with 50 refresh rate in gnome and have swapped the console resolution around, trying different options but still have the same problem.

thanks for any help

I suppose its always possible it is a graphic driver problem. Is there any chance you could tell use exactly

  • what graphic hardware, and *]what graphic driver
    you are using?

… before I forget WELCOME to openSUSE forums and WELCOME to openSUSE.

sry about that, I realized it right after I posted

I have a pavilion dv7-3xxx series with Core I7-720 processor 4gb ram and nvidia gt 320M with 1gb vram.

Running dual boot windows 7 and Opensuse 11.2-AMD64 downloaded and installed yesterday. I used Yast to install the current NVIDIA driver version 190.53

Typically our users who have such video problems have “legacy ATI hardware” and have difficulty with the “as packaged” radeon and radeonhd drivers.

In your case you have new nVidia graphic hardware with a proprietary driver. I do not know what to recommend. You could go back to the opensource nv driver, but my guess is it will not work as well.

Are you certain you are running the proprietary nvidia driver (even though it is installed). Please, can you take a look at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and confirm the driver it states you are using ?

If the proprietary nvidia driver you should see lots of entries with:
(II) NVIDIA(0): and
(==) NVIDIA(0):
and if using the opensource nividia driver:
(II) NV(0): and (==) NV(0):

which do you see ?

… some practical graphic theory: openSUSE Graphic Card Practical Theory Guide for Users - openSUSE Forums

it shows nvidia in all situations, so I’m using the correct driver, not the opensource version.

It seems like the issue only occurs when de-initializing the video card, then re-initializing it. I would describe the distortion as a horizontal vibration. to me it looks like possibly the horizontal refresh rate gets changed switching to console and just cant right itself.

I’ve tried a few things since last post. I booted to init 3 and then started x. Started up fine but then when changing to console again or relogging it still distorts.

I found out that my xorg.conf file wasn’t configured, so i set that up but it had no effect.

My next idea is changing the refresh rates either horizontal or vertical to make sure they are correct always. is there a place to do that in console and in x? so they match?

also, is there a way to re-initialize the video devices from console?(like bandaid it so I dont have to reboot when it happens.)

any help would be appreciated

also a quick correction, I have a 230M not a 320M

Text console and Xwindows are totally different beasts. The proprietary driver does not run in text mode and no Xord setting will effect it.

You can set the resolution of the text mode in the kernel vga settings in /boot/grub/menu.lst file

here is a list


     | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
 ----+-------------------------------------
 256 |  0x101    0x103    0x105    0x107
 32k |  0x110    0x113    0x116    0x119
 64k |  0x111    0x114    0x117    0x11A
 16M |  0x112    0x115    0x118    0x11B
 

Is is most likely your monitor the is having a problem with the default values

oops, didn’t mention it here but I have tried over 10 different settings. most of which I know are supported by my video card and by my monitor in console, and still no dice. It isn’t the display, that is perfect until I switch modes. its at the moment I switch that things distort. almost like the console has an unsupported sync rate, horiz or vert, but it only manifests after I’ve started X. if I booted straight into console and left it there, no problems. I can swap consoles without problems it’s only when X has started and needs to de-initialize to switch to console mode that I have problems.

is there a way to set the refresh rates, horiz and vertical in console mode? I think that might work.

Ok that is odd.

Is this a desktop? If so try turning your monitor off then back on. Maybe it is not resyncing correctly.

wish… no, this is my laptop. its brand new and I know how linux can sometimes be with new hardware, but it picked up everything with surprising ease, this is my only problem. not a huge one, just have to make sure not to switch to console unless absolutely necessary. I would just like to solve it so I don’t have to worry about it anymore and I can use linux like i’m used to