RADEON -- Logon and monitors are useless

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SLED Hardware
1

I’ve read another thread where someone was having problems with their system using a radeon adapter (possibly 2, but I’m only using 1).

I had this system working, and some strangeness took place and so I booted and selected other than the default boot, just to see what would happen.

After this, I had two monitors displaying the same (mirrored?). And no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get any configuration to recognize that I had two monitors. :confused:

History. This system was running SLED 12 SP3. And it always had to have the CD in the tray because of the UEFI bios deciding to NOT use legacy.

Got tired of this and upgraded to SLED 15. This worked and it would boot without the CD. :cool:

Tried to get the desktop configured for my wife and that’s when this went sideways. :frowning:

So I tried to do an update of SLED 15 and it won’t do that because I’m running SLED15 so there is nothing to update.

Back to SLED 13, and update. This worked until booting from disk and mirrored displays again.

Ok, so SLED 13 INSTALL, and FORMAT the “grub” partition. This kinda worked. But it wouldn’t go back to having a systray. (??)

Upgrade to SLED13 SP4. Same problems. Install SLED SP4, and now the monitors show rectangular blocks shortly after attempting to logon in user or root (have to reboot between attempts).

Install SLED15 and FORMAT all swap, and the “GRUB” partition (which is supposed to be a UEFI partition, but EFI is the only choice I have). Now it does this rectangular blocks upon a logon.

So I can’t get into the system to run some commands.

What I did was fire up my Knoppix Live DVD and issued the command and the results follow:

[QUOTE]knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ lspci -nnk | egrep -A3 "VGA|3D"
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G72 [GeForce 7200 GS / 7300 SE] [10de:01d3] (rev a1)
Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. G72 [GeForce 7200 GS / 7300 SE] [3842:c711]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Kernel modules: nouveau [/QUOTE]

Shouldn’t any of these SLEDs on an Install, detect and load the correct video driver(s) just like Knoppix did and SLED 15 used to?

What options do I need to specify in edit of grub2 to get this to boot up and display a Gnome (3?) Desktop with SLED15?

[This is starting to remind me of the days of punching loaders on cards and then hand writing the disk loader on cards to boot a mainframe!!]

2

Hi
So the above Knopix output indicates a Nvidia card, by default the
nvidia repository is added, so you might be running the nvidia driver
rather than nouveau…

At the grub menu you can select the ‘recovery’ option which should
skip all of the drivers and run nomodeset so you can get to your
system?

Else you can press the e command on the normal grub login entry and
then on the linuxefi line (has the word quiet on it) and add a 3 then
boot this will get you to the console login, no X or Wayland running
and can then look at which driver is running via the lspci command,
hopefully it’s nouveau since that graphics card is a legacy one.

When you see the blocks, is this after you login on Gnome Display
manager? If so enter or select your name and select the cog and ensure
you use Gnome on Xorg, then enter password and see how that goes. By
default it runs wayland so that may be your issue and the legacy
graphics card.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-25.25-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

3

Wayland is a significant problem.

I did a re-install (SLED15) and installed GNOME w/o wayland and now I get output to both monitors, but they are duplicates and the system doesn’t recognize them individually so that I can get into extended mode. Or set them to a better resolution.

Here are some diagnostics I ran. I do not know if they will mean anything, but I was trying to figure out why I have this situation.

[QUOTE] lspci -nnk| egrep -A3 "VGA|3D"
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G72 [GeForce 7200 GS / 7300 SE] [10de:01d3] (rev a1)
Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device [3842:c711]
Kernel modules: nouveau
07:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:145a]

Selected dmesg output:

Linux version 4.12.14-25.25-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 7.3.1 20180323 [gcc-7-branch revision 258812] (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP Thu Oct 25 16:07:27 UTC 2018 (d2d8b17)
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.12.14-25.25-default root=UUID=1d80f419-3c47-4526-ab0c-8207c84027fa resume=/dev/disk/by-uuid/70704f1e-f0e3-43d8-a4bb-381245191e01 splash=silent quiet showopts crashkernel=166M,high crashkernel=72M,low

Linux version 4.12.14-25.25-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 7.3.1 20180323 [gcc-7-branch revision 258812] (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP Thu Oct 25 16:07:27 UTC 2018 (d2d8b17)
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.12.14-25.25-default root=UUID=1d80f419-3c47-4526-ab0c-8207c84027fa resume=/dev/disk/by-uuid/70704f1e-f0e3-43d8-a4bb-381245191e01 splash=silent quiet showopts crashkernel=166M,high crashkernel=72M,low

efifb: probing for efifb
[ 2.661819] efifb: framebuffer at 0xc0000000, using 3072k, total 3072k
[ 2.661820] efifb: mode is 1024x768x32, linelength=4096, pages=1
[ 2.661820] efifb: scrolling: redraw
[ 2.661822] efifb: Truecolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=24:16:8:0
[ 2.670179] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
[ 2.678406] fb0: EFI VGA frame buffer device
[/QUOTE]

What I would like to get to is:

[LIST=1]
[]Left monitor as primary, right monitor as secondary with the appropriate resolutions for each.
[]Primary with a systray/taskbar and the ability to minimize to it
[*]Behavior similar to “Windows 7” for a display so my wife is happy with this
[/LIST]

The more stuff I try the more my head hurts. I don’t want to do another install.
I tried xrandr, and it was telling me I only had one monitor, so trying to use it to config for better – I just was spinning my wheels as it were.

I know that SLED15 works and can work quite well as my temporary desktop system – SLED15 works GREAT once I added another GB of RAM (now at 5GB). 4GB was just not enough. And it is running with dual monitors, one on a KVM Switch so I share it with my employer’s laptop.

Anyone know what I am missing from the install that I can get Yast to load and apply, or any config stuff (and where is the doc for it so I can get it right)?

4

Hi
Just go in the Gnome Settings under Devices and Displays configure as
required?

Can you check your xorg file ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log.

So How are the displays connecting, all from the one card? What type of
connection to each monitor, vga,hdmi,dvi etc?

I only see the output from the Nvidia card, where is the radeon card,
on board? If so, can you check the BIOS and see if it’s available, my
HP desktop here is one or the other, onboard or PCIe.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-25.25-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

5

[QUOTE=malcolmlewis;55918]Hi
Just go in the Gnome Settings under Devices and Displays configure as
required?

Can you check your xorg file ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log.

So How are the displays connecting, all from the one card? What type of
connection to each monitor, vga,hdmi,dvi etc?

I only see the output from the Nvidia card, where is the radeon card,
on board? If so, can you check the BIOS and see if it’s available, my
HP desktop here is one or the other, onboard or PCIe.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-25.25-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks![/QUOTE]

I’ll get to the xorg file later.

The “Radeon” is a PCIe card and I think it has a sticker on it that says something similar to what the command reported (“GeForce 7200 GS / 7300 SE”).

Because of the way AMD is doing processors, the Ryzon CPU that I have doesn’t have a GPU in it, so I actually have to put in a video card. This card has two outputs, VGA and DVI. And up until this latest problem (upgrading from SLED 13 SP3), it worked just fine with the two monitors and the right monitor was being primarily used by VBox for a W7 guest.

I’ll try to get you the specifics tomorrow (my time).

6

It turns out that the card I was using failed. I had another similar to it, and it is working. In fact, I am posting from the machine I’ve been trying to get to function.

It had initially worked and both monitors were recognized. Then I thought I had done something that caused a problem with the configuration. Turns out, not the case.

It is hard (at least for me) to tell when the card itself is bad, or when something is configured wrong for using that card. I have tried to diagnose a software problem more than once before it became obvious (to me) that this was either a firmware or hardware failure outside of the “control” of the O/S or driver code.

I now have this system running SLED 12 SP4 configured the way the old system ran with the two monitors using SP3. :cool:

OH, what I did was do an Install of SLED 12 SP4 and not an upgrade. Seems that the UEFI stuff didn’t upgrade so nicely. But with an INSTALL: the right video driver appears to be running and the monitors are “configurable” just as they had been on the original system, the raid /home is working such that all the applications that the user had been running are working as if nothing had ever failed (what backups are for, you take them you don’t need them – don’t take them and you wish you had).

So this should be the end of this thread. :slight_smile: