X11 problems in Fedora 10

[asdasdas]

Hi folks,

I have only 1 problem left to fix on my Linux machine: the graphics card.

Now first off, please clue me in on how I can troubleshoot this by
determining WHAT driver is being used, and what graphics/video hardware
the system has detected. This is a machine that my roommate's father
built and I don't really feel like ripping apart the case right now (but
I will if necessary) to check things out. It IS onboard (integrated)
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

If anyone out there can help me out, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and have a good day!

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by asdasdas
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Sounds like the kernel does not have high memory enabled.

Post by asdasdas
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

"lspci |grep Display" show show which video "card" is in the system

"grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf" will show which drivers xorg is currently
setup to use.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[asdasdas]

[***@localhost X11]# pwd
/etc/X11
[***@localhost X11]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [KM400/A] Chipset
Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II]
(rev 74)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.
KM400/KN400/P4M800 [S3 UniChrome] (rev 01)

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by asdasdas
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Sounds like the kernel does not have high memory enabled.

Post by asdasdas
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

"lspci |grep Display" show show which video "card" is in the system
"grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf" will show which drivers xorg is currently
setup to use.
Regards, Dave Hodgins

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by asdasdas
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.
KM400/KN400/P4M800 [S3 UniChrome] (rev 01)

Check the driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, to ensure it's set to use "via". If it already
is, a newer version may be needed.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[fghfhfghfghfh]

Do I have to recompile the kernel from scratch to enable high memory or
is there an easier way to do this?

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by asdasdas
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Sounds like the kernel does not have high memory enabled.

Post by asdasdas
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

"lspci |grep Display" show show which video "card" is in the system
"grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf" will show which drivers xorg is currently
setup to use.
Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Aragorn]

On Thursday 19 February 2009 20:54, someone identifying as *fghfhfghfghfh*
wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by fghfhfghfghfh
Do I have to recompile the kernel from scratch to enable high memory or
is there an easier way to do this?

Most distributions supply more than one kernel, among which at least one
will have high memory support. And if they don't, then you could indeed
download the vanilla sources from /kernel.org/ and roll your own.

It's really not that difficult, and you'll learn something new in the
process. :-)

(P.S.: Don't top-post. Use interleaved posting instead and trim out the
irrelevant sections. It is better Netiquette that way. ;-))

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by Aragorn
On Thursday 19 February 2009 20:54, someone identifying as *fghfhfghfghfh*
wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by fghfhfghfghfh
Do I have to recompile the kernel from scratch to enable high memory or
is there an easier way to do this?

Most distributions supply more than one kernel, among which at least one
will have high memory support. And if they don't, then you could indeed
download the vanilla sources from /kernel.org/ and roll your own.

Define high memory support, please. Linux kernels come in three general
flavors for intel x86-based systems:

32-bit supporting 4GB of physical memory
32-bit supporting 64GB of physical memory using PAE
64-bit supporting 1TB of physical memory.

Give the OP's machine is less than 2GB, any linux kernel should work
just fine.

scott

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by Scott Lurndal
Define high memory support, please. Linux kernels come in three general
32-bit supporting 4GB of physical memory
32-bit supporting 64GB of physical memory using PAE
64-bit supporting 1TB of physical memory.

Don't forget 32-bit supporting 880MB, when the .config file has
CONFIG_NOHIMEM=y
# CONFIG_HIMEM4G is not set
# CONFIG_HIMEM64G is not set
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM is not set

See http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Errata#One_detects_only_up_to_880MB_of_RAM

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by Scott Lurndal
Define high memory support, please. Linux kernels come in three general
32-bit supporting 4GB of physical memory
32-bit supporting 64GB of physical memory using PAE
64-bit supporting 1TB of physical memory.

Don't forget 32-bit supporting 880MB, when the .config file has
CONFIG_NOHIMEM=y
# CONFIG_HIMEM4G is not set
# CONFIG_HIMEM64G is not set
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM is not set
See http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Errata#One_detects_only_up_to_880MB_of_RAM
Regards, Dave Hodgins

Ah, the old 1/3 split. I've been using 64-bit linux for the last 5 years and have
forgotten about that.

scott

[Darren Salt]

I demand that Scott Lurndal may or may not have written...

[snip]

Post by Scott Lurndal
Define high memory support, please. Linux kernels come in three general
32-bit supporting 4GB of physical memory
32-bit supporting 64GB of physical memory using PAE
64-bit supporting 1TB of physical memory.

And 32-bit, supporting 896MB of physical memory. Four variants. [1]

Post by Scott Lurndal
Give the OP's machine is less than 2GB, any linux kernel should work
just fine.

Not quite true...


[1] Flavours? How is one supposed to determine which is which by *taste*?

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by fghfhfghfghfh
Do I have to recompile the kernel from scratch to enable high memory or
is there an easier way to do this?

Most distributions have multiple kernels available, already compiled, ready
for installation. I'm not familiar with Fedora, so hopefully someone else, who
is, will jump in.

In general terms, it's been common in the past, for distros to default to a
maximum compatible kernel, compiled for i586, without highmem, so it'll
work on an old pentium. Mandriva used to do this, but now has highmem
enabled, on it's default kernel.

Check the list of packages available, to see if there is one such as kernel-server,
etc.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Trevor Hemsley]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:12:56 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, "David W. Hodgins"

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by asdasdas
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Sounds like the kernel does not have high memory enabled.

High memory (or lack of) gives you 896MB not 755.5MB. The weird amount sounds
more like there is an onboard graphics adapter set to use a huge amount of RAM
in hte BIOS.

[asdasdas]

There is no xorg.conf file...

[***@localhost X11]# pwd
/etc/X11
[***@localhost X11]# ls -l
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-09-06 03:13 applnk
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-02-17 14:28 fontpath.d
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1061 2008-11-11 08:59 prefdm
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2009-02-13 09:02 xinit
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 547 2008-08-25 07:13 Xmodmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 493 2008-08-25 07:13 Xresources

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by asdasdas
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.

Sounds like the kernel does not have high memory enabled.

Post by asdasdas
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

"lspci |grep Display" show show which video "card" is in the system
"grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf" will show which drivers xorg is currently
setup to use.
Regards, Dave Hodgins

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by asdasdas
There is no xorg.conf file...

Ok. That's another difference between Mandriva and Fedora. Check the FILES
section of "man Xorg", for a list of the locations where the server configuration
files can be stored, and locate which one Fedora is using.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Aragorn]

On Friday 20 February 2009 23:44, someone identifying as *David W. Hodgins*
wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by asdasdas
There is no xorg.conf file...

Ok. That's another difference between Mandriva and Fedora. Check the
FILES section of "man Xorg", for a list of the locations where the server
configuration files can be stored, and locate which one Fedora is using.

Dave, I think that the absence of an /xorg.conf/ file is the very cause of
his problem, if you read up to the original post in the thread. ;-)

[David W. Hodgins]

Post by Aragorn
Dave, I think that the absence of an /xorg.conf/ file is the very cause of
his problem, if you read up to the original post in the thread. ;-)

Interesting. Just for the heck of it, I renamed my xorg.conf file, and ran
startx. As per /var/log/Xorg.0.log, it correctly identified the graphics card,
and picked the right driver. It also correctly identified my mouse, and
keyboard, including the multimedia keys. The only difference, is the
resolution is limited to 1024x768, whereas I normally use 1280x1024.

Quite a difference from when I first started using x11.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 17:16, someone identifying as *David W.
Hodgins* wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by Aragorn
Dave, I think that the absence of an /xorg.conf/ file is the very cause
of his problem, if you read up to the original post in the thread. ;-)

Interesting. Just for the heck of it, I renamed my xorg.conf file, and
ran startx. As per /var/log/Xorg.0.log, it correctly identified the
graphics card, and picked the right driver. It also correctly identified
my mouse, and keyboard, including the multimedia keys. The only
difference, is the resolution is limited to 1024x768, whereas I normally
use 1280x1024.
Quite a difference from when I first started using x11.

Indeed it is! Back when I first installed Mandrake 6.0, I had to
use /Xconfigurator/ to come up with a working /XF86config/ file, and then
it wasn't even always correct.

I suppose the autodetection thing is also what they use on Live CDs/DVDs. I
barfed when I used my Gentoo Live CD on my Big Machine - not that it
matters because I prefer the manual commandline installation method anyway
- because it has both an ATI PCI card and an nVidia PCIe card.

The former is to be used in character mode only in the XenLinux /dom0,/ and
the latter is to be used in a workstation install in one of the /domUs/
which gets direct access to that particular videocard by hiding it
from /dom0/ using a boot parameter.

I did notice that in its error messages, the Live CD seemed to think that I
only had an nVidia card. There was nothing in there pertaining to the
Radeon, although it was *using* the Radeon. Both cards are connected to
different channels on one of my monitors and the channel connected to the
nVidia didn't get a signal. That's how I could tell. ;-)

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 17:44, someone identifying as *Aragorn* wrote
in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by Aragorn
On Saturday 21 February 2009 17:16, someone identifying as *David W.
Hodgins* wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

Post by David W. Hodgins

Post by Aragorn
Dave, I think that the absence of an /xorg.conf/ file is the very cause
of his problem, if you read up to the original post in the thread. ;-)

Interesting. Just for the heck of it, I renamed my xorg.conf file, and
ran startx. As per /var/log/Xorg.0.log, it correctly identified the
graphics card, and picked the right driver. It also correctly identified
my mouse, and keyboard, including the multimedia keys. The only
difference, is the resolution is limited to 1024x768, whereas I normally
use 1280x1024.
Quite a difference from when I first started using x11.

Indeed it is! Back when I first installed Mandrake 6.0, I had to
use /Xconfigurator/ to come up with a working /XF86config/ file, and then
it wasn't even always correct.
I suppose the autodetection thing is also what they use on Live CDs/DVDs.
I barfed when I used my Gentoo Live CD on my Big Machine - not that it
matters because I prefer the manual commandline installation method anyway
- because it has both an ATI PCI card and an nVidia PCIe card.
The former is to be used in character mode only in the XenLinux /dom0,/
and the latter is to be used in a workstation install in one of the
/domUs/ which gets direct access to that particular videocard by hiding it
from /dom0/ using a boot parameter.
I did notice that in its error messages, the Live CD seemed to think that I
only had an nVidia card. There was nothing in there pertaining to the
Radeon, although it was *using* the Radeon. Both cards are connected to
different channels on one of my monitors and the channel connected to the
nVidia didn't get a signal. That's how I could tell. ;-)

My apologies for setting the follow-up in that post
to /comp.os.linux.redhat./ I am using KNode and it adds a follow-up
automatically.

I simply forgot to remove this follow-up before sending off my post - in
which case it'll complain that there isn't a follow-up set, but it'll send
it off nevertheless, albeit that you have to confirm that you want to send
it to all of the crossposted groups with a blank follow-up field.

I love KNode, but I hate its political correctness... <grin>

(Follow-up corrected this time)

[White Spirit]

Post by asdasdas
Hi folks,
I have only 1 problem left to fix on my Linux machine: the graphics card.
Now first off, please clue me in on how I can troubleshoot this by
determining WHAT driver is being used, and what graphics/video hardware
the system has detected. This is a machine that my roommate's father
built and I don't really feel like ripping apart the case right now (but
I will if necessary) to check things out. It IS onboard (integrated)
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).

Does the on-board graphics chip use shared system memory? If the memory
is faulty, that could be the cause of both problems.

[asdasdas]

Problem solved. Its the RAM (memory). Now my video is perfect! no
lines or dots...

Post by asdasdas
Hi folks,
I have only 1 problem left to fix on my Linux machine: the graphics card.
Now first off, please clue me in on how I can troubleshoot this by
determining WHAT driver is being used, and what graphics/video hardware
the system has detected. This is a machine that my roommate's father
built and I don't really feel like ripping apart the case right now (but
I will if necessary) to check things out. It IS onboard (integrated)
graphics. After we took out the 256 MB ram stick that his dad had
included, we put in two 512 MB sticks (for a total of 1 GB), but only
755.5 MB is detected. This is when the problem began.
Anyhoo, there are blue dots in the monitor (covering the whole screen),
and on black background there are red lines (covering all the black area).
If anyone out there can help me out, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and have a good day!