Bug 175571

Summary: X Crashes when Trying to run Monitor/Graphic Configuration in Yast2
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1 Reporter: Greg Langston <glangston83>
Component: SaX2Assignee: Stefan Dirsch <sndirsch>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P5 - None CC: nbenson, sndirsch, suse-beta
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Other   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Customer Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Greg Langston 2006-05-13 20:00:00 UTC
Hardware:
HP Desktop
Intel 2.5Ghz P4
NVIDIA Geforce FX5200 PCI
1gb Ram
Monitor: Sony SDM-HS93 19" LCD

Performance when booting into GUI interface has been sluggish and X server will crash when attempting to run Monitor/Graphics Card Configuration in YaST2.

Following error message appears when running sax2 from "init 3" command line.

Sax: initializing please wait...
Sax: your current Configuration will not be read in
Sax: no X-Server is running
Sax: will start own server if needed

   <X server attempts to start>

Sax: ups lost card during probing... abort at /usr/share/sax/init.pl line 619

I am able to boot into the GUI. NVIDIA graphics drivers are installed and configured in xorg.conf.
Comment 1 Stefan Dirsch 2006-05-14 12:25:01 UTC
Seems to be a Xserver configuration problem.
Comment 2 Nathan Benson 2006-05-15 19:40:40 UTC
I have the exact same problem on my machine:

  Dell Dimension 3000
  Intel 3.00Ghz P4 w/HT
  NVIDIA Geforce FX5500 PCI (256M)
  1G of system memory
  Dell 2005WFP LCD

I was unable to ever successfully configure my display during the install.  Once I was able to get to a command line, all attempts to use sax ended up with the same problem:

  Sax: ups lost card during probing... abort at /usr/share/sax/init.pl line 619

It would start the X server, I would see the grey background and the cursor, then it would crash and display the above error message.


I was able to successfully create a working xorg.conf file, and have it use the "nv" driver, and then later manually install the NVIDIA driver.  Now it is working fine with GLX and the whole bit.

That is unless I attempt to open up the configuration for my monitor/video card (Control panel -> Display, etc).  That will pretty much lock my entire system with a black screen.  I am unable to CTRL-ALT-BKSP, CTRL-ALT-F1, etc.

I haven't enabled sysrq yet, so I'm not sure if that will work or not.
Comment 3 Marcus Schaefer 2006-05-17 12:19:41 UTC
I'm pretty sure on your system there is more than one graphics device
installed. You can see this by calling

   sax2 -p

sax is trying to activate all devices and while doing this the X-Server
crashed which is a driver bug or incompatibility. To solve the problem
select one card from the output above and set the option

   sax2 -c <Chip-Number>
Comment 4 Nathan Benson 2006-05-18 01:44:41 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> I'm pretty sure on your system there is more than one graphics device
> installed. You can see this by calling
> 
>    sax2 -p
> 
> sax is trying to activate all devices and while doing this the X-Server
> crashed which is a driver bug or incompatibility. To solve the problem
> select one card from the output above and set the option
> 
>    sax2 -c <Chip-Number>
> 

Indeed, I do have two cards on this system.  One of them is the onboard Intel card and the other is my Nvidia card:


boost:/home/nbenson # sax2 -p
Chip: 0  is -> Intel 865 G                      00:02:0 0x8086 0x2572 PCI i810
Chip: 1  is -> NVidia GeForce FX 5500           01:00:0 0x10de 0x0326 AGP nv


By specifiying the chip 1, it SaX2 starts up fine.

Interestingly, it shows my Nvidia card as an AGP, but it is a PCI card.  I don't even have an AGP slot on the motherboard.

I also looked in the BIOS for a way to disable the onboard video, but it doesn't look like I can disable it.  I'm going to take another look.

Thanks!
Comment 5 Stefan Dirsch 2006-05-18 07:04:35 UTC
Indeed a dualhead configuration. Again an Intel onboard gfx GPU, which cannot be disabled in the BIOS. Setting up such a dual head configuration has always been problematic and/or simply impossible on such a system. I still think this is a corner case. I'm afraid you need to live with the workaround for the time being.