[SOLVED] Display Issue and General Problems

[NanoSurfer]

Hey Guys

I am having a few issues with my old P4 at home which I have installed Salix on, first off I think its hardware related and definitely not a fault with Salix as I have Salix running on my works laptop in a VBox environment without any issues. Secondly I can't give you exact details as to the machine's specs (because I forgot to save that before I left this morning ) I can tell you that it is a Gigabyte (I think GA 645) motherboard without a graphics card and a gig of RAM. Sorry I know you need to know the specs, I will post that soon.

My problem is that I installed Salix LXDE (latest version) and for some bizarre reason, as soon as the OS boots up and I enter in my user name and password, the screen becomes all messed up (not always though I must add) with lines going across and you cant see any wallpaper, BUT the two default on screen icons are clear and the bottom task bar as well?? Then if I change my wallpaper to another wallpaper, that solves the problem and it looks beautiful again. BUT if I leave the computer to go to the screen saver (which is random by default) after 10 minutes the screen saver kicks in THEN if I move the mouse to take it out of the screen saver, the wallpaper is all messed up again and sometimes the whole screen as well this time? Then I have noticed that if I leave the system running for a few hours with the screen saver going it eventually crashes and the machine switches off? HOWEVER if I change the screen save to "Blank Screen" then it will run for days without a glitch BUT the desktop background is always messed up after leaving the screen saver until I choose a different wallpaper?

Then last night I installed the latest Salix KDE version with even worse results, I seems to freeze and is totally useless, only thing that works is the left click button. It boots up properly but the minute you start using it, it becomes unstable very quickly.

Saying all this, I do believe its a problem with xorg because when my system does all this funky stuff, I can always press CTRL + ALT + F2 to go to the command line and I am greeted with some normality again I was wondering if it is something to do with the Linux Kernel? I am using the latest of course.

Like I say, it could be a hardware issue

Please let me know if you need any further info and I will gladly provide it.

PS: Kudos to Thenktor and Gapan and all the other guys involved for producing a wonderful OS and for all the hard work you do!! We are very privileged you all do what you do. I hope to someday be blessed with the knowledge you guys have

[gapan]

By "using the latest kernel" do you mean the latest 3.0.x releases or the latest available packages in Salix? In any case this is most probably a xorg or kernel issue. Knowing what graphics card you have would have helped.

[NanoSurfer]

Hey Gapan

Thanks for the response! Sorry, I should have been more clearer

I don't have any graphics card, only using the onboard graphics and my cpu is 2.8 ghz (P4)

When I said "latest" kernel, I meant the default kernel it installs with, 2.6.(something)

Sorry for being so ignorant, I'm still very new with all this Linux stuff and still very much a noob

Kind regards
NanoSurfer

[gapan]

The onboard graphics card is still a graphics card. And is the "latest LXDE" release the 13.1 or the 13.37RC1?

[NanoSurfer]

Hey Gapan

Wow, lighting response! Thank you

I'm sorry, you are a 100% right. I will get the specs for you and post this later to this thread so that I don't waste any more of your time.

And the Salix release versions I downloaded were the Salix LXDE 13.37RC1 and Salix KDE 13.37 CD ISO

Thanks again kindly for your assistance and knowledge

Best regards
NanoSurfer

EDIT: Both versions I am using are the 32Bit versions

[thenktor]

lspci should give infos about your graphics card.

[NanoSurfer]

Hey Thenktor

Thank you for the advice! I learnt something new

Ok mate, here is the output from lspci on the problem machine.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-81845GV

Please let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks again

[thenktor]

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)

Searching the internet for this device reveals that there obviously are driver bugs. E.g. see this thread: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26345#c126

And here a quote from that thread you might want to try:

The following /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf worked for me in Fedora 15:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Option "DRI" "false"
Option "Shadow" "true"
EndSection

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE
Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

If it does not help you can try setting Shadow to false, too.

[NanoSurfer]

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)

Searching the internet for this device reveals that there obviously are driver bugs. E.g. see this thread: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26345#c126

And here a quote from that thread you might want to try:

The following /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf worked for me in Fedora 15:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Option "DRI" "false"
Option "Shadow" "true"
EndSection

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE
Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

If it does not help you can try setting Shadow to false, too.

Hey Thenktor

Thank you so much for the advice and for taking your time to find this for me!!! I will try this as soon as I get home tonight and let you know what the outcome is.

So excited! At least I have narrowed it down to crappy hardware and no fault of Salix

[NanoSurfer]

Thenktor, THANK YOU!!!!!!

Wow! It works perfectly now! No issues at all Running extremely smoothly!!

After your suggestion, I scouted the net a little more and added another 3 lines to your solution (not sure if it makes a heck of a difference?) by seeing another thread by somebody having exactly the same problem on Slackware 13.37

I created a file called i845G.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

And used the following parameters:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Driver "intel"
Option "Shadow" "true"
Option "DRI" "false"
BoardName "Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

I can safely say that this problem of mine is SOLVED.

Thanks again