12.04 > 12.10 > 13.04 Display is detected at wrong resolution and doesn't show launch

[RideABike]

Hello. I started with 12.04 that was running great with zero problems. Wanted to upgrade to 13.04, so I went to 12.10 and then 13.04, both thru the update manager. 12.10 the display resolution was not correct. It was 1024x768 and was called "laptop." This is a desktop, not a laptop. I had hoped 13.04 would fix it, so I went ahead and ignored the error for now and just upgraded again to 13.04. Same problem with the display resolution. Login screen looks perfect. Once I am logged in, I am missing part of the desktop, the lancher bar on the left, and the bar across the top. Video card is an RV730 XT (Nvidia Radeon 4670).

It has been working fine for years since 10.04. Why is it now, with the exact same hardware, that 2 distro versions can't get the resolution correct? Where do I start to fix this? I coped a previously known good xorg.conf file and rebooted, and of course, it didn't help anything.

[fantab]

Reinstall the Graphic driver.

[RideABike]

Thanks for the help. I will try to figure out how and report back on the effectiveness :)

[RideABike]

Well it appears that the 4670 card is not really supported properly on 12.10 and 13.04. There's a few band aid solutions on the web, but I wasn't able to get any of them to make any difference. Looks like I'll probably just upgrade video cards so I won't have to continually deal with this on future upgrades. Gotta love planned obsolescence of a perfectly adequate video card for what I use the system for.

[fantab]

What happens if you uninstall/remove "additional drivers" and use the opensource "xserver-xorg-video-radeon"?


This package provides the 'radeon' driver for the AMD/ATI cards. The
following chips should be supported: R100, RV100, RS100, RV200, RS200,
RS250, R200, RV250, RV280, RS300, RS350, RS400/RS480, R300, R350, R360,
RV350, RV360, RV370, RV380, RV410, R420, R423/R430, R480/R481,
RV505/RV515/RV516/RV550, R520, RV530/RV560, RV570/R580,
RS600/RS690/RS740, R600, RV610/RV630, RV620/RV635, RV670, RS780/RS880,
RV710/RV730, RV740/RV770/RV790, CEDAR, REDWOOD, JUNIPER, CYPRESS,
HEMLOCK, PALM, SUMO/SUMO2, BARTS, TURKS, CAICOS, CAYMAN, ARUBA.

I recently installed Ubuntu on my Bro's desktop with Radeon Card (model?) the "Additional Drivers" were causing various issues... so I uninstalled those and went went with the said driver and no issues.

Also 12.04.1 is compatible with older hardware while 12.04.2 onwards there is more support for "newer" hardware. If you still have problems with that card then reinstall 12.04 if its working well. If you have to download 12.04 again then download 12.04.1 and then upgrade to 12.04.2. Instead of upgrading to a newer card you use 12.04 until 2017 and by then you can get a new computer.

Good Luck...

[MAFoElffen]

Please post the output from these:


glxinfo | grep -i opengl
lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 VGA
/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

[RideABike]

Well.... the xserver-xorg-video-radeon package was already installed. I purged it, rebooted, reinstalled, and rebooted. Nothing changed. There's also nothing listed under additional drivers in "Software & updates."

[RideABike]

Please post the output from these:


glxinfo | grep -i opengl
lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 VGA
/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p



brantley@brantley-test:~$ glxinfo | grep -i opengl
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".



brantley@brantley-test:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 XT [Radeon HD 4670] [1002:9490]
Subsystem: PC Partner Limited Device [174b:e101]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV710/730 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4000 series] [1002:aa38]



brantley@brantley-test:~$ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Error: GLX is not available on the system

[MAFoElffen]

I read up on bug reports last night on this. What a mess. They had to do with hd2xxx, hd3xxx and hd4xxx radion cards and hiw AMD/ATI dropped their support by Catalyst and frglx.

The short of it is you need to use the xorg radeon driver. If you create a short xorg.conf file with the device section, driver line pointing to "radeon"...

Until then, you might have to boot with a "nomodeset" boot param. Then at the graphical login, select the Icon next to your username and select Unity 2D, then continue logging in.

[RideABike]

I read up on bug reports last night on this. What a mess. They had to do with hd2xxx, hd3xxx and hd4xxx radion cards and hiw AMD/ATI dropped their support by Catalyst and frglx.

The short of it is you need to use the xorg radeon driver. If you create a short xorg.conf file with the device section, driver line pointing to "radeon"...

Until then, you might have to boot with a "nomodeset" boot param. Then at the graphical login, select the Icon next to your username and select Unity 2D, then continue logging in.

Thanks for the info.. that's kind of what I came up with in my search as well. I tried changing the driver= line to radeon, but that didn't do anything at all. I don't have time to worry about this any more.. I can get a newere nvidia card that's way better than what I have now for less than $40. Think I'm going to try that route.

[MAFoElffen]

Yes... I was surprised how inexpensive nVidia cards are recently... I upgraded my sister-in-law's with a card for around $40 that was better than the 2 nVidia's I bought 3 years ago for $800 each. Made me think I should really upgrade mine.