Matrox/MGA-G200e video

[gerhard54]

I installed Kubuntu 11.10 from the alternate CD on an Fujitsu Primergy TX150 S3 server..
Every thing is working as expected, except the video.

• The screen or sometimes only part of the screen is crossed by white and black horizontal stripes.
• Sometimes is looks like the screen is compressed to narrow vertical stripes on repated several times across the width of the monitor.
• Sometimes only one window is affected and resizing is temporarily solves the problem.
• And yes, sometimes evrything is OK!

What I found out:

• The on board video card seems to be a Matrox/MGA-G200e.
• The "xserver-xorg-video-mga"package was automatically installed during installation, so I suppose my guess abaout the make of the video is correct
• I installed the "mga-vid-common" package. Runing "mga_vid_test" results in an error "Couldn't open driver. /dev/mga_vid"

So it seems the mga driver doesn't get loaded?

Has anyone solved this or a similar problem?

Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Hi....

Welcome to the forums

Would you first open a terminal and post the output of this command...

sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a

In addition, I was able to find the man page for your chipset here, if it helps.

Regards...

[gerhard54]

Hello,

thank you for the fast reply.

Output from lspci is:

walter@D000423cb73f6:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation E7220/E7221 Memory Controller Hub (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation E7220/E7221 PCI Express Root Port (rev 05)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation E7221 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FR (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6702PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge A (rev 09)
02:05.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030 PCI-X Fusion-MPT Dual Ultra320 SCSI (rev c1)
02:09.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82545GM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 04)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)

Concerning the man page:
I found this page too, what I didn't find is the config file where I could enter the configuration...
It seems xorg.conf is no longer used by Kubuntu?

Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Hi Gerhard...

Thank you but I modified the code above, I thought it would provide more detail. Please post the results of that, if you would. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards...

[gerhard54]

No problem ;-)

walter@D000423cb73f6:~$ sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a
[sudo] password for walter:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: E7221 Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 05
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:f0000000-f007ffff ioport:2000(size=8) memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0080000-f00bffff
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10
Codename: oneiric
Linux D000423cb73f6 3.0.0-17-generic #30-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 8 17:34:21 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
walter@D000423cb73f6:~$

Does this mean, the video controller is NOT a MGA-G200 or the configuration is not correct?

Regards Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Does this mean, the video controller is NOT a MGA-G200 or the configuration is not correct?

Possibly both. Do you have the Matrox card installed as an add-on?

Regards...

[gerhard54]

No, the video controller is on the main board.
As the hardware documentation doesn't give the type of chip set used, except "Intel compatible", I searched the net and found a posting...

Regards Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Hi....

While I realize this won't be a direct solution to your immediate problem, it may be better overall. I don't know how much you have in system memory but it appears that your graphics chip is only allotted 8 MB's of memory. If that's the case and the BIOS doesn't allow you to bump that up quite a bit, I think you are going to have a very difficult time. Flash videos will be impossible. It was hit and miss in that respect with an older P4, 1 GB (memory) system that had a 128 MB FX Geforce 5200 AGP 4X card. The onboard Intel graphics with 64 MB's of memory crashed at anything requiring 3D acceleration.

However, I noticed from your system's manual that you have a one PCI-E x1 expansion port. This would, no doubt, afford a much better experience with your new OS. Examples of such cards can be found here, although depending on how your system was made, you may need a standard plate (not low profile,) like this one.

As to your current problem, does turning off all desktop effects in System Settings help or solve the problem?

Regards...

[gerhard54]

Thanks for your suggestions.

Adding a video card already come to my mind...
But you know, giving up is the last resort

And yes, I have already disabled all desktop effects. With them enabled the system was completely unusable, now its simply annoying.

Regards
Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Adding a video card already come to my mind...
But you know, giving up is the last resort

Hi....

I found this page that has at least a couple suggestions, although I'm not sure if changing drivers is going to surmount the lack of memory. :neutral:

Regards...

[gerhard54]

I finally found the root cause:

The kernel needs the "nomodeset" parameter!
If you have a similar problem, give it a try by adding "nomode" (of course without the double quotes) at the grub command line.

If it works, you can make it permanent by editing /etc/default/grub :

Run:
sudo kate /etc/default/grub

Search for this 2 lines:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

and modify them, by adding the new parameter:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"

Close kate and run:
sudo update-grub

Hope that helps!

Gerhard

[ardvark71]

Cool, thanks Gerhard, you just taught me something!

Regards...

[SteveRiley]

The E7221 is no longer supported by the Intel driver. Adding nomodeset to your kernel boot parameters results in X using the generic VESA driver instead.

[ardvark71]

The E7221 is no longer supported by the Intel driver. Adding nomodeset to your kernel boot parameters results in X using the generic VESA driver instead.

Hi Steve...

So, an older driver that does support it would probably be out of the question, considering kernel versions, etc.?

Regards...

[SteveRiley]

Generally, you need both kernel and X support. Finding a combination of a kernel and an X driver that still work together for such an old card might be problematic now.