Re: [Gnumed-devel] bootstrap error on Mandriva 2010

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 07:55:58PM -0300, Rogerio Luz Coelho wrote:

> My SUPER ISSUE is this:
> 
> I just got a new LapTop, it is a brasilian shop box and it has some nasty
> SiS video card, and a Realteck wireless
> 
> My wife gave it to me as a present for our new baby girl (so I can't give it
> back or I would hurt her feelings) she shopped around and found someone who
> made a Linux box, so she bought it for me (she is a Mac convert, so we don't
> use M$ anymoe for some time) thinking that all linuxes should work if one
> does - actually I thought that too :)

Ay, I feel your pain !!

Let's see whether we can get this to work.

> The damn thing came with a Mandriva 2008.01 semi-proprietary system (splash
> screen and logo from the vendor, you know the type) and of course I didn't
> even look at it twice, I made a quick download of Debian Squeeze _64 bits
> and started to install it in about 30minutes after I took it out of the box
> (hey I never used a 64bit before wanted to know the difference)

Go back to 32 bit. 64 ain't worth it in your situation. Go with Squeeze.

> I installed Debian_64 and the damn video card didn't work , got a 640x480
> screen and that was it....

I've got good results using the generic vesa framebuffer:

        $> dmesg | grep sis

[    0.057724] PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0fb0, last bus=1
[    0.616073] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xf0000000, mapped to 0xdc880000, using 
1536k, total 1536k
[    0.616086] vesafb: mode is 1024x768x16, linelength=2048, pages=0
[    0.616094] vesafb: scrolling: redraw
[    0.616104] vesafb: Truecolor: size=0:5:6:5, shift=0:11:5:0
[    0.848398] fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
[  124.468397] sisfb: Video ROM found
[  124.468505] sisfb: Fatal error: Unable to reserve 64MB framebuffer memory
[  124.468508] sisfb: Is there another framebuffer driver active?

and then a SIS xserver:

        $> dmesg | grep sis

[    3.049788] sis900.c: v1.08.10 Apr. 2 2006
[    3.099410] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: SiS chipset [1039/0730]
[    3.257099] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xec000000
[    3.944201] sis5513 0000:00:00.1: SiS730 ATA 100 (1st gen) controller
[    3.995736] sis5513 0000:00:00.1: IDE controller (0x1039:0x5513 rev 0xd0)
[    4.048998] sis5513 0000:00:00.1: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
[    7.523901] sis900 0000:00:01.1: PCI INT C -> Link[LNKC] -> GSI 5 (level, 
low) -> IRQ 5
[   52.547313] ACPI: I/O resource sis630_smbus [0xe480-0xe493] conflicts with 
ACPI region SM00 [0xe480-0xe489]
[   52.707193] sis630_smbus 0000:00:01.0: SIS630 comp. bus not detected, module 
not inserted.
[  124.468397] sisfb: Video ROM found
[  124.468505] sisfb: Fatal error: Unable to reserve 64MB framebuffer memory
[  124.468508] sisfb: Is there another framebuffer driver active?
[  124.552747] [drm] Initialized sis 1.3.0 20070626 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
[  124.555018] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: AGP 2.0 bridge
[  124.555075] agpgart-sis 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 2x mode

        $> grep sis /var/log/Xorg.0.log

(II) LoadModule: "sis"
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so
(II) Module sis: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
(WW) Falling back to old probe method for sis
(II) SIS(0): *** See http://www.winischhofer.at/linuxsisvga.shtml
(--) SIS(0): sisfb not found
                http://www.winischhofer.at/linuxsispart1.shtml#sisctrl
(II) [drm] loaded kernel module for "sis" driver.
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/lib/dri/sis_dri.so

> Did some looking around and found out that the driver for SiS video is a
> nightmare ...

It is not great but it works well enough.

> oh well I thought, the Mandriva should get it right then I' ll
> just find a way to make the Debian default back to VESA.

Yep, in that case use the framebuffer X server.

Karsten
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