Video troubles during kernel load; non-driver related

[StefanJ]

I've set up two "myth boxes" with nVIDIA cards, and a general purpose linux box with Via Chrome integrated graphics. I'm familiar with video driver problems. This is something else.

The box in question has a MSI K9VGM-V motherboard with a Via Chrome 9 integrated graphics set. Fedora 8 installed.

EVerything was working fine, but I wasn't pleased with the graphics. So I bought a MSI NX8400GS PCI Express card.

Popped the card in, connected my monitor (Dell flatscreen, E172FPt), turned it on. The text-mode BIOS stuff appeared. I entered Setup. Turned off the video memory share and changed the default video card to PCI-E. Restarted.

The Linux kernel selection screen came up. I let it choose the default kernel.

A few hardware screens appeared. Just before the graphic-mode screen where the various services are shown loading there were a few brief warnings about the graphics card.

At this point, the screen went blank except for a "Cannot Display This Video Mode" message generated by the monitor.

Booting continued; I could hear the HD churn. I also so a text-mode "Login" screen for a brief moment. As I recall, this always appears between the point where the service load screen disappears and the Fedora login screen comes up.

I believe that the boot succeeded, I just can't see anything. I was able to log in blind.

I could not do some of the tricks I did in the past, like hitting Shift-backspace to get to a text screen. Also, Alt-Fn didn't switch to alternate consoles.

I'm at a loss as to how to continue. I figure my best bet is to somehow configure the kernel load to be entirely in text mode, so I can at least see those warnings about the video card. I assume this is done from the kernel command line edit screen or maybe the grub loader.

Any thoughts?

[ppesci]

Add the parameter "single" when grub appear, in order to start in text mode level 1, that is in console. You can view/edit whatever you want.

HTH

[StefanJ]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

(Clickity Clickity)

Hmmm. OK. I was able to get into interactive service mode, which primarily allowed me to see the errors which presumably are coming from the card:

Error Severity: Uncorrected (Non-fatal)
PCIE Bus Error type: Transaction Layer
Flow Control Protocol: First
Receiver Protocol: First
VendorID=1106h, DeviceID=a238h, Bus=00h, Device=02h, Functio=00h

This same error repeats three times.

Any thoughts out there?

[StefanJ]

I thought I'd update this for the benefit of others.

I swapped the MSI Nvidia card into my Dell PC, which is packing Windows XP.

As far as I can tell, it worked fine. It would be nice if there were diagnostics so I could be sure.

I put the ATI Radeon card that was in the Dell into my Linux box. There were no problems on kernel load, so the problem wasn't a bum PCI bus. I enabled desktop effects and a high screen resolution. I'm happy enough using this card in this machine.

So, I'm guessing there's some intractable problem with a particular video card and motherboard and Linux.

If anyone has any insights into this, add them to this thread.

[dave843]

The last time I had video issues, I did the following:

1. Boot up like normal (resulted in "mode not supported" message on monitor)
2. SSH in from another machine
3. Run "system-config-display", and choosing appropriate display, video card, screen resolution, and color depth.
4. reboot