rj)pete
November 7th, 2010, 12:34 AM
I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction or at least confirm my suspicions.
I picked up an older AMD Athlon machine to use as a CNC box to control a CNC machine I am in the process of building.
I went through the LinuxCNC.org site and downloaded their bundled Ubuntu 10.4/EMC software and have installed it (many times over the last week actually). After the last install, I did a software update in GRUB recovery mode as well.
No matter what I try, it locks up within about 5-10 seconds after a regular Gnome session login with only the desktop background image displayed (although I notice the hard drive light is flashing sporadically).
I can login in with a Gnome failsafe session (and xterm too) although I can't get my wireless network card (no Network Manager in top right) to work and I get default 800x600(60Hz refresh) video.
I can also start the machine in recovery mode (hold down shift on bootup gets me to GRUB menu, select recovery mode and then failsafe graphics from a later menu) and then login with a regular Gnome session. This allows my wireless network card to work (which allowed me to run the software update) and Network Manager is there but my video is still limited to 800x600.
My current suspicion is that xserver/x.org (sorry, I'm not super familiar with the concepts in ubuntu/linux yet) is gagging on my video card. I can't find anything in the log files to tell me anything useful although I'm not sure what I'm looking for so I could have missed it.
If I do an lspci or an lshw command, it identifies the video card correctly and the machine seems to be using the MGA driver but in either failsafe or recovery mode it is limited to 800x600.
I have tried adding nomodeset in the /etc/default/grub file (with a sudo update-grub after) to no avail. I also tried adding an xorg.conf file (it didn't exist which I understand is now normal for 10.04) but that didn't help.
I also tried downloading the Matrox drivers from their website but when I try to install (boy, are their supplied instructions cryptic!) it tells me my version of xserver is not supported.
Here's the hardware details in case that helps:
Asus A7V8x-x motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP2500+ processor running at 1.83Ghz with 1GB memory installed
Video Card is a Matrox Millenium G550 AGP hooked to a beater IBM/Lenovo Think Vision Monitor (max 1280x1024/75Hz).
Probably irrelevant but just in case, the HD is a Maxtor 40GB IDE, the wireless card is a TP-Link TL-WN350GD and the optical drive is a TSST Corp CD/DVD RW SH-222A
BTW, I have also tried installing Ubuntu directly from the Ubuntu website 10.4.1 download with the same result (as far as I can tell, I haven't tried all modes) and I even tried to install kubuntu which seemed to work but still 800x600 video and no wireless. The KDE interface seemed to be just different enough from Gnome to be confusing me in trying to troubleshoot so I bailed on that and reinstalled Ubuntu.
I have been googling the net and searching this forum and I can't seem to find anything definitive. The MGA driver is supposed to support the Matrox G550 as far as I can tell but ???? Sorry for being so verbose but I'm really hoping someone can enlighten me on what to look for to nail down this problem.
BTW, I used to work in IT many years ago (and have dealt with various Unix systems) but these days I'm a Mac user and really rusty at the nuts and bolts of computer hardware so be gentle with your advice. ;-)
Thanks, Ray
I picked up an older AMD Athlon machine to use as a CNC box to control a CNC machine I am in the process of building.
I went through the LinuxCNC.org site and downloaded their bundled Ubuntu 10.4/EMC software and have installed it (many times over the last week actually). After the last install, I did a software update in GRUB recovery mode as well.
No matter what I try, it locks up within about 5-10 seconds after a regular Gnome session login with only the desktop background image displayed (although I notice the hard drive light is flashing sporadically).
I can login in with a Gnome failsafe session (and xterm too) although I can't get my wireless network card (no Network Manager in top right) to work and I get default 800x600(60Hz refresh) video.
I can also start the machine in recovery mode (hold down shift on bootup gets me to GRUB menu, select recovery mode and then failsafe graphics from a later menu) and then login with a regular Gnome session. This allows my wireless network card to work (which allowed me to run the software update) and Network Manager is there but my video is still limited to 800x600.
My current suspicion is that xserver/x.org (sorry, I'm not super familiar with the concepts in ubuntu/linux yet) is gagging on my video card. I can't find anything in the log files to tell me anything useful although I'm not sure what I'm looking for so I could have missed it.
If I do an lspci or an lshw command, it identifies the video card correctly and the machine seems to be using the MGA driver but in either failsafe or recovery mode it is limited to 800x600.
I have tried adding nomodeset in the /etc/default/grub file (with a sudo update-grub after) to no avail. I also tried adding an xorg.conf file (it didn't exist which I understand is now normal for 10.04) but that didn't help.
I also tried downloading the Matrox drivers from their website but when I try to install (boy, are their supplied instructions cryptic!) it tells me my version of xserver is not supported.
Here's the hardware details in case that helps:
Asus A7V8x-x motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP2500+ processor running at 1.83Ghz with 1GB memory installed
Video Card is a Matrox Millenium G550 AGP hooked to a beater IBM/Lenovo Think Vision Monitor (max 1280x1024/75Hz).
Probably irrelevant but just in case, the HD is a Maxtor 40GB IDE, the wireless card is a TP-Link TL-WN350GD and the optical drive is a TSST Corp CD/DVD RW SH-222A
BTW, I have also tried installing Ubuntu directly from the Ubuntu website 10.4.1 download with the same result (as far as I can tell, I haven't tried all modes) and I even tried to install kubuntu which seemed to work but still 800x600 video and no wireless. The KDE interface seemed to be just different enough from Gnome to be confusing me in trying to troubleshoot so I bailed on that and reinstalled Ubuntu.
I have been googling the net and searching this forum and I can't seem to find anything definitive. The MGA driver is supposed to support the Matrox G550 as far as I can tell but ???? Sorry for being so verbose but I'm really hoping someone can enlighten me on what to look for to nail down this problem.
BTW, I used to work in IT many years ago (and have dealt with various Unix systems) but these days I'm a Mac user and really rusty at the nuts and bolts of computer hardware so be gentle with your advice. ;-)
Thanks, Ray