Recently I installed OpenSuse on an older desktop box to use as a media center. Everything is working, except for a display issue. Pop up menus and the panel are displaying a white/black bar artifact. I’ve experienced this once before when I had winXP installed as well as WindowBlinds. WB had a setting for such issue; pixel mapping I believe.
TIA!
Pauliehttp://spaceghetto.org/images/screenvrv.png
Welcome to the forums! Thanks for the graphical description of your symptoms, but it will be helpful to know details of the actual graphics hardware too.
This terminal command will help with that
/usr/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
Cut and paste the output here, (and please wrap it with CODE tags for easier reading).
Now there may be (or may not be) a solution to this, but knowing a bit about the graphics chipset and driver in use will help shed more light on the situation.
On Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:56:03 +0000, derrrface wrote:
> Pop up menus and the panel are displaying a white/black bar artifact.
What video controller is in this system?
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
paulie@linux-1ekd:~> /usr/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
22: PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.318]
Unique ID: VCu0.bosDeWFb0KB
Parent ID: vSkL.K3WJKbXW3V7
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: “ATI Dell Optiplex GX260”
Vendor: pci 0x1002 “ATI Technologies Inc”
Device: pci 0x5157 “RV200 QW”
SubVendor: pci 0x1002 “ATI Technologies Inc”
SubDevice: pci 0x103a “Dell Optiplex GX260”
Driver: “radeon”
Driver Modules: “drm”
Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xd7ffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xc000-0xcfff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xd9000000-0xd900ffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xd8000000-0xd801ffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 11 (73281 events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: “pci:v00001002d00005157sv00001002sd0000103Abc03sc00i00”
Driver Info #0:
XFree86 v4 Server Module: radeon
Extensions:
Options: norenderaccel
Driver Info #1:
XFree86 v4 Server Module: radeon
3D Support: yes
Extensions: dri
Options: norenderaccel
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #10 (PCI bridge)
This Dell an old machine using radeon 7500 (RV200) graphics technology, so unfortunately you’re limited to using the open source radeon driver. You may want to consider replacing the video card with something newer if practical.
TigerDirect computer kit from about 10 years ago. 1.3GHZ, 524MB RAM, 128GB UDMA HD, etc… I replaced the card that came with the kit (4MB VGA generic) with a 64MB Radeon/S-video card a couple years later because I thought It would be better. Nothing but problems. Even with a clean install of XP I have video issues from the get-go…
I do believe I have the original card in my garage somewhere and plan on switching it out tomorrow, I have a feeling this will fix things. After-all I’m running the SAME OS on a dated HP laptop (DV4000) w/o any issues.
If not: I’m still quite happy, I replaced my Boxee Box (for free) with something much better!
kinda OT, but: how do I do a command line dump of my BIOS/CMOS settings? I would like to post this as I feel some settings are wrong. My desktop BIOS has 10x more settings then my laptop; some I am unsure of and perhaps are adding to the sluggish performance.
kinda OT, but: how do I do a command line dump of my BIOS/CMOS settings? I would like to post this as I feel some settings are wrong. My desktop BIOS has 10x more settings then my laptop; some I am unsure of and perhaps are adding to the sluggish performance.
I doubt that the BIOS settings would be impacting on the performance you are experiencing. More RAM wouldn’t go amiss though, although you may have trouble obtaining the RAM type used in your system.
dmidecode will provide some (not all) of the BIOS information.
Couldn’t find the original card, but I did find something else.
Geforce MX4000 64MB, DDR PCI card.
Is it ok to simply replace and reboot? Is there anything I should do beforehand?
If going from AMD (ATI) hardware to AMD (ATI) hardware where the open source driver is in use, my understanding is you should simply need to replace and boot.
BUT before you remove your old copy, make a copy of (1) dmesg (2) /var/log/Xorg.0.log file associated with old card, and keep it somewhere. Also make a copy of output of ‘xrandr’ with old card and keep it somewhere. That may come in handy later for comparison purposes.
I installed the card, worked but lost the signal for about a second every couple minutes. I installed the nVidia drivers from YaST, rebooted. Now I’m stuck at 640x480 resolution, my only other option is 320x240, the loading screen is 1024x768 or whatever…
Tried Monitor preferences, nvidia-settings (from terminal)… What am I missing?
You could try sax3. 
Its under development, but it will establish the initial edits to config files (likely still at 640x480), after which you can hand edit to get your 1024x768.
Am 12.11.2011 17:36, schrieb derrrface:
>
> I installed the card, worked but lost the signal for about a second
> every couple minutes. I installed the nVidia drivers from YaST,
> rebooted. Now I’m stuck at 640x480 resolution, my only other option is
> 320x240, the loading screen is 1024x768 or whatever…
>
> Tried Monitor preferences, nvidia-settings (from terminal)… What am I
> missing?
>
Which version of nvidia driver is installed now? Just to be sure
rpm -qa '*nvidia*'
glxinfo | grep -i opengl
What you describe sounds as if it is not used but the fbdev driver.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
I’m lost at this point. No idea what to do to fix this.
Couldn’t find a download for Sax3…
OpenGL version string 1.5.8 NVIDIA 96.43.19
The “Monitor” is listed as CRT if this means anything significant.
Am 12.11.2011 17:41, schrieb Martin Helm:
>
> Which version of nvidia driver is installed now? Just to be sure
>
> rpm -qa '*nvidia*'
> glxinfo | grep -i opengl
>
> What you describe sounds as if it is not used but the fbdev driver.
>
To be more explicit you should see only 96.43.19 versions listed by the
rpm command!
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
rpm:
nvidia-gfx-kmp-default-96.43.19_k2.6.37.1_1.2-27.1.i586
X11-video-nvidia-96.43.19-28.1.i586
Am 12.11.2011 18:06, schrieb derrrface:
>
> I’m lost at this point. No idea what to do to fix this.
>
> Couldn’t find a download for Sax3…
>
> OpenGL version string 1.5.8 NVIDIA 96.43.19
>
> The “Monitor” is listed as CRT if this means anything significant.
>
I can nowhere see which openSUSE version you are using, so I guess 11.4
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/sax/openSUSE_11.4
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
Yes, running 11.4
I believe your problem may be related to your xorg.conf file. Under /etc/X11/xorg.conf there are two sections called Monitor and Screen you might check these and make sure the color depth and available resolutions are correct. Here is an example.
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “DCLLCD”
ModelName “DCL20AT”
HorizSync 24 - 82
VertRefresh 50 - 75
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “Device0”
Driver “intel”
VendorName “Intel 945GM”
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0”
Device “Device0”
Monitor “Monitor0”
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1680x1050”
EndSubSection
EndSection
See the modes section under Screen? make sure that all available modes are listed. Here is a link to more information about xorg and explanations of various options.
Appendix
Best of luck.