nVidia GeForce2 GTS/Pro Console Text Modes

Erik_FL · 07-28-2006, 04:39 PM

I'm having problems using the frame buffer support to provide higher resolution modes for displaying console text during boot.

The Linux distribution is Slackware 10.02 and the kernel version is 2.4.31
The video card is reported as " nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 GTS/Pro] (rev a3)".

I've tried a number of different kernel configurations, and I either get a blank screen when using "vga=" or the screen mode remains at the default, as if "vga=normal" was specified.

My question is whether it is possible to do this with the video card I have, and if so, what I need to make it work. I checked the nVidia site and they only seem to address X-Windows and not framebuffer support during boot. I was a bit reluctant to install the nVidia driver, since X-Windows is working fine and is able to display high resolution graphics.

I will appreciate any help in resolving this question.

Here are the sections of the configuration file dealing with the console. This is the configuration that results in a blank screen when using "vga=" to change the screen resolution.

Code:

#
# Character devices
#
CONFIG_VT=y
CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y

CONFIG_AGP=y
CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=y
CONFIG_AGP_I810=y
CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y
CONFIG_AGP_AMD=y
CONFIG_AGP_AMD_K8=y
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=y
CONFIG_AGP_ALI=y
# CONFIG_AGP_SWORKS is not set
CONFIG_AGP_NVIDIA=y
CONFIG_AGP_ATI=y

#
# Console drivers
#
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y

Removing "CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y" results in "vga=" being ignored completely.

Here is the output from "/sbin/lspci".

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-751 [Irongate] System Controller (rev 25)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-751 [Irongate] AGP Bridge (rev 01)
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 05)
00:04.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 05)
00:06.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc RTL8139 Ethernet (rev 10)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 14)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 06)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 06)
00:07.4 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 10)
00:09.0 Communication controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division USR 56k Internal WinModem
00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 IEEE-1394 Controller
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 GTS/Pro] (rev a3)

Here is the output of "dmesg" showing the boot messages.

Code:

Linux version 2.4.31 (root@eriklnxpc4) (gcc version 3.3.6) #1 SMP Thu Jul 27 20:41:49 EDT 2006
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000e8000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001fff0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000001fff0000 - 000000001ffffc00 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000001ffffc00 - 0000000020000000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
511MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 131056
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126960 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
ACPI disabled because your bios is from 2000 and too old
You can enable it with acpi=force
Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=301
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 848.392 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1690.82 BogoMIPS
Memory: 514580k/524224k available (2235k kernel code, 9256k reserved, 730k data, 144k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 512K (64 bytes/line)
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU:     After generic, caps: 0183f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 0183f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 512K (64 bytes/line)
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU:     After generic, caps: 0183f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 0183f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU0: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor stepping 01
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 1462.63 usecs.
SMP motherboard not detected.
Local APIC not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
Waiting on wait_init_idle (map = 0x0)
All processors have done init_idle
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd7ee, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0686] at 00:07.0
PCI: Disabling Via external APIC routing
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
NTFS driver v1.1.22 [Flags: R/O]
udf: registering filesystem
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: Detected AMD Irongate chipset
agpgart: AGP aperture is 128M @ 0xe8000000
[drm] Initialized tdfx 1.0.0 20010216 on minor 0
[drm] AGP 0.99 Aperture @ 0xe8000000 128MB
[drm] Initialized radeon 1.7.0 20020828 on minor 1
[drm] AGP 0.99 Aperture @ 0xe8000000 128MB
[drm] Initialized i810 1.2.1 20020211 on minor 2
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: Maxtor 54098U8, ATA DISK drive
hdc: SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-816B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: YAMAHA CRW2200E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 80041248 sectors (40981 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=4982/255/63
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdd: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 8192kB Cache
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
  options:  [pci] [cardbus]
usb.c: registered new driver hub
host/uhci.c: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v1.1
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:07.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:07.3
host/uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x1460, IRQ 11
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:07.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:07.2
host/uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x1480, IRQ 11
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
usb.c: registered new driver usblp
printer.c: v0.13: USB Printer Device Class driver
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 32768)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
ds: no socket drivers loaded!
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 144k freed
Adding Swap: 2097136k swap-space (priority -1)
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,6), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,7), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,8), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:04.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:0c.0
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,EPP]
parport_pc: Via 686A parallel port: io=0x378
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.26
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:06.0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xe0a5e800, 00:50:ba:60:6d:e5, IRQ 11
eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
lp0: using parport0 (polling).

Erik_FL · 07-29-2006, 01:08 PM

In the Slackware 10.2 configuration menu "make menuconfig" there is an option called "Code maturity level options". In that section I had to enable the option "Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers". That displayed additional options under the "Console drivers" section. One of the added options is called "Frame-buffer support".

Under "Frame-buffer support" I enabled "VESA VGA graphics console".
I also found out that "nVidia Riva support (EXPERIMENTAL) doesn't work with the card (the video mode is never changed). The generic VESA VGA driver works fine.