CrunchBang Linux

goossbears

Member

Registered: 2011-03-02

Posts: 17

Fix for Openbox/Xserver problems using the nVidia GeForce2

Am using crunchbang-10-20120207-i386 installed to hard drive on an HP/Compaq PC TC 1000 with a internal [drm] nouveau graphics appearing on bootstartup (also appears via 'dmesg').
This tablet/workstation multifunction laptop uses the specific nVidia GeForce2 Go (NV11M-100) graphics controller, at least according to the HP Graphics Specifications for this Tablet PC, http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te … eId=321957 and according to the results of 'lspci' from the #! command line.

One fix for #! Openbox graphics problems on this system is to append modeset and vga=7xx to the end of the linux (kernel) line of the the normal Crunchbang Linux... menuentry section in /boot/grub/grub.cfg 

========
The Problem
========
Whenever I started X, Openbox displayed erratic Xserver graphics and screen redraws in the Openbox startup screen and in menu boxes (e.g., in  Terminal). The box containing the System Info and Shortcut Keys, which opens on the upper right of the Openbox startup screen, failed to appear on the TC1000.

=========
The History:
=========
Same exact TC1000 that I posted regarding wireless access over a year ago, see #! forum post http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … pc-tc1000/  User tbradbeer got everything working with #! on the exact same model over a year ago, see forum post of 2011-03-21 at http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … m/page/14/

OTOH, user IsTI37 reported similar display problems as mine using the same nVidia graphics  controller (using xorg.conf files generated by *both* Xorg -config and nvidia-xconfig!) less than a year before that, on 2010-08-30, see http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … by-demons/ User DeepDayze suggested to add 'nomodeset' to the kernel options line and user Awebb suggested to "...Learn how to deal with HAL/udev (depeding on your xorg version) ASAP" to resolve the display problems.
#! user Paul mentions trying some display hacks for older laptops such as for this tc1000, at http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/f … y_problems

Finally, #!'s Openbox DOES display graphics and screen redraws properly when run from a Live Session (failsafe) mode on a USB boot drive created via the suggested UNetbootin. The standard Live Session *without* failsafe did NOT enable proper display graphics and screen redraws, exactly similar to the hard-drive-installed problems I wrote above.
The bootable USB drive uses the following isolinux/live.cfg failsafe entry which gets properly displayed upon starting Openbox:

label livefailsafe
..
   append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live config noapic noapm nodma nomce nolapic nomodeset nosmp vga=normal
..

==============
The Working Solution
==============
A simple edit of the installed hard disk's /boot/grub/grub.cfg file made all the difference in the world!
This grub.cfg now contains the appended nomodeset and vga=7xx words in the normal Crunchbang Linux... menuentry section, as follows:

   linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686 root=UUID=xxxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash nomodeset vga=792

Hope that this fix helps others using #! with similar nVidia GeForce2 graphics controllers!
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xaos52

The Good Doctor

From: Planet of the @s

Registered: 2011-06-24

Posts: 4,307

Re: Fix for Openbox/Xserver problems using the nVidia GeForce2

Thanks for posting this.
One remark:
Editing /boot/grub/grub.cfg is not the recommended way to solve this.
Why not? If you upgrade your kernel, the package management tool will automatically run
update-grub and that will erase all manual modifications to the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

The recommended way is to edit /etc/default/grub
Append your boot parameters to the line starting with
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
so that it looks like this

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset vga=793"

(vga=793 depends on your monitors native resolution)
save the file /etc/default/grub
then run

sudo update-grub

and verify that /boot/grub/grub.cfg effectively contains the parameters you wanted.

Now if you upgrade your kernel, update-grub will be run automatically, but will keep your boot paramaters intact.

hth

Last edited by xaos52 (2012-05-23 08:35:40)

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