Re: Installer does not detect video card (not an X issue)

From: E. Charters (echarters_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 00:11:19 -0500

What I would do is use a rescue disk to reconfigure X with the command
xf86config instead of using RH's Xconfigurator. Now I don't know if
RH even has that tool, or the handy-dandy XF86Setup anymore --
a TCl/TK program available from http://www.slackware.com which will do
it graphically using the always usable VGA-16 driver.

RH is supposed to have both XF86Setup and xf86config. Try the latter
first and answer the questions. It is a command line tool. Late tune
the card with XF86Steup, which is graphical but will run from the
command line, setting up its own display. Really Xconfigurator should
work from the command line too, so go ahead and try that.

You could use a rescue disk with at least a text editor on it. But even
without you can still run xf86config. You have to get root status and be
in a read write mode to run it, which is sometimes tricky. You might
want to try booting from a floppy made for that system with the boot
option -ro. There finding the video modes that are appropriate and the
drivers can be done "by hand". It is not that hard.

The diamond fire GL 2 is not listed in the card database. Its driver is
unkown. IT could be the same as other diamond fire models, or you may
have to try the generic SVGA driver and possibly generic VGA.

This is the great weakness of the RH system which presumes that it can
auto install everything and detect everything. It cannot, and there are
not always solutions if it fails.

There are other lilo boot options. "rescue" allows you to fix things in
RH usually. "single" might work too. You could play with the "vga=80x25
" option as well after entering "linux" at boot time, to change video modes.

EC<:-}

Phony Account wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am installing Fedora Core 3 on a Dell Precision 330.
> Video card is a Diamond Fire GL2 with a rather old BIOS.
>
> (The PC was rebooted with the distribution CD, and I was prompted for
> the type of installation. However, no partitioning yet, language
> selection, ...)
>
> So, just before the actual installation, I see a message that the video
> card was not detected (the monitor, kbd and mouse are) and that the
> installation is going ``headless''. It then proceeds without incident
> to partition, install packages.
>
> When the system reboots for the first time (this is when I'll set up the
> users, etc), I briefly see a Fedora splash screen, then the usual kernel
> boot messages, and _then_ the screen goes wild: on a blue background
> reddish diagonal stripes march across the screen.
>
> I am not in X at that point. X has not been configured yet. I can
> ctrl-alt-del to reboot. But ctrl-alt-backspace, ctrl-alt-F2 don't work.
>
> I tried booting to run-level three to go to a text mode only by
> specifying init 3 at the end of the boot kernel command. The os loader
> is GRUB. But the same thing happened again.
>
> Not knowing a thing about hardware, (and just slightly more about Linux)
> I am wondering if the video card bios is too old and cannot respond to
> the probing by the installer.
>
> Also, according to the same conspiracy theory, during the boot process,
> the video card gets wierd signals because its bios is out of date and
> throws garbage to the monitor.
>
> And it is not a monitor issue. I have tried two.
>
> But I seriously hope that it will not come to installing a new bios,
> because I currently don't have a usable system, and using the rescue
> mode from the install media to reach across the network to grab the
> drivers which I downloaded to a windows machine seems like a great
> project for my retirement. Right now, I need a working machine.
>
> Thanks for any suggestion,
>
> Mirko
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Installer does not detect video card (not an X issue)
> From:
> Phony Account <phaccount@nycap.rr.com>
> Date:
> Thu, 03 Feb 2005 00:52:39 GMT
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am installing Fedora Core 3 on a Dell Precision 330.
> Video card is a Diamond Fire GL2 with a rather old BIOS.
>
> (The PC was rebooted with the distribution CD, and I was prompted for
> the type of installation. However, no partitioning yet, language
> selection, ...)
>
> So, just before the actual installation, I see a message that the video
> card was not detected (the monitor, kbd and mouse are) and that the
> installation is going ``headless''. It then proceeds without incident
> to partition, install packages.
>
> When the system reboots for the first time (this is when I'll set up the
> users, etc), I briefly see a Fedora splash screen, then the usual kernel
> boot messages, and _then_ the screen goes wild: on a blue background
> reddish diagonal stripes march across the screen.
>
> I am not in X at that point. X has not been configured yet. I can
> ctrl-alt-del to reboot. But ctrl-alt-backspace, ctrl-alt-F2 don't work.
>
> I tried booting to run-level three to go to a text mode only by
> specifying init 3 at the end of the boot kernel command. The os loader
> is GRUB. But the same thing happened again.
>
> Not knowing a thing about hardware, (and just slightly more about Linux)
> I am wondering if the video card bios is too old and cannot respond to
> the probing by the installer.
>
> Also, according to the same conspiracy theory, during the boot process,
> the video card gets wierd signals because its bios is out of date and
> throws garbage to the monitor.
>
> And it is not a monitor issue. I have tried two.
>
> But I seriously hope that it will not come to installing a new bios,
> because I currently don't have a usable system, and using the rescue
> mode from the install media to reach across the network to grab the
> drivers which I downloaded to a windows machine seems like a great
> project for my retirement. Right now, I need a working machine.
>
> Thanks for any suggestion,
>
> Mirko

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