FC3 display problem on Intel 810e
 

Hi. I installed FC3 for the first time yesterday on a Dimension L700cx (700 MHz Celeron) with Win ME, 20 GB hard drive, integrated Intel 810e graphics, and a Samsung Syncmaster 957MB CRT.

After using the initial boot screen to check my 4 CDs, the Fedora install screen came up. Nothing seemed to be wrong until I tried to scroll down the text box on the left-hand side of the screen. Even though I was pulling the scroll bar down, the text stayed the same except for 3 or 4 lines at the bottom that got garbled. I discovered that, for some reason, pushing the tab key after scrolling in most cases forced the text to display properly. I found this inconvenient, but I decided to push ahead with the install anyway. Using the tab key to read the text boxes, I was able to get all the way to the final step, choosing the packages to install (I was attempting to do a custom "everything" install), with everything but the text boxes apparently working fine. When I got to the package installation choice screen, nothing happened. I waited a few moments, and then I happened to move my mouse, and a few boxes appeared, but not all of them, and this time the text that was not in boxes didn't show up at all. I restarted, and the same thing happened. I tried typing "linux nofb" and then "linux lowres" at the boot screen, but the same thing happened at the last screen.

I then tried the "linux text" install, which seemed to work fine. After installation, the login screen appeared. I logged in, and the Setup Agent appeared, with the same bizarre text problems. I got through that and got to the desktop, which didn't seem to have any problems, but double-clicking anything made the screen scramble with alternating stripes of colored dots and plain black.

Hoping the problems were gnome-related, I tried KDE and XFCE, but they wouldn't even load the desktop. As a last resort, a tried logging in as root at the command line after pressing CTRL+ALT+F2 at the login screen, and running system-config-display, but I had the same problem where the graphical window came up, most things were missing from it. Moving my mouse, I could see a few options, but clicking made the screen freeze.

To make it clear the login screen as well as the gnome desktop almost always display without problems, but when I click anything the screen scrambles. The installer correctly identified my monitor on Intel 810 graphics.

Does anyone know what I could do to solve this problem? Thanks a lot for the help.

I posted my problem at the Dell Forum, and someone (thanks again, micmaxe!) directed me to a post they had seen at Fedora Forum.
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...ght=810+worked

Which finally led me to this bugzilla report from Red Hat.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=132267

The upshot is that apparently X.org and/or the kernel had a problem with 810/815 graphics, causing problems like I described.

I'm going to try the recommended solutions (different screen resolutions and refresh rates, and if that doesn't work, adding the "noaccel" option to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and then updating x.org and the kernel) now.

How,

I'm not alone, that's great!

I have the same problem with my intel 815 card.

But What is your solution?

Where do you add 'noaccel'? as an option?

Does it works?

thank for your help!

Dear eriol88,
Thank you for posting! You've forced me to finally describe the solution to our strange problem.
Like I said in my previous post, it turns out that the problem is related to a buggy driver or something like that in X.org, the software that is the foundation for desktop environments like GNOME and KDE.

Unfortunately, the solution could be hard to understand depending on your proficiency with bash, the command line interface for Fedora, and vi, a bash text editor, so I need to know how much you've worked with Linux and bash before. Don't be too worried if you haven't used it before, though. I had never even seen Linux running on a computer before I installed it and had this difficulty. Thankfully, I used a great book, Fedora Linux 3 Bible by Christopher Negus, to help me work with bash, vi, and Fedora in general. Also, as far as I can tell, you need to have FC3 installed already to fix the problem. If you haven't been able to install it graphically, you can do what I did and type "linux text" (without the quotes of course), at the first screen that comes up when you boot your computer with the install disc in the drive. This installation method is identical to the graphical install, but without the snazzy GUI.

From reading the Fedora Forum post http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...ght=810+worked ,
it looks like your procedure will probably be similar to mine. After you finish the install, you should see the graphical login screen for Fedora. Logging in here tries to load GNOME, and the screen garbles. That's why you have to make these changes from the command line.

To get to the command line from the login screen, I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F2. Then I logged in as root. (To do this, you literally type root as the username, and then the root password you created during installation.

This is where the experience with bash and vi comes in. If you don't have experience with bash and vi, you should not proceed with editing you configuration files. It's too easy to mess something up that could hurt your installation and maybe even your computer. Tell me what you don't know yet, and I can try to help. If you have worked with all that before, this should be a breeze.

So now you bring up the configuration file by typing "vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf". Go down to the place that says this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "i810"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "Intel 810"
EndSection

Although yours will probably say i815 or something like it:). Add the line Option "noaccel" to the bottom, right before EndSection. Your Device Section should now look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "i810"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "Intel 810"
Option "noaccel"
EndSection

Then save your changes and exit, and your done! You should now be able to reboot and log in as normal. After that, you can update to the latest version of X.org using Up2date. Then you can remove the Option "noaccel" line from your file, and everything should work fine.:cool:

Remember don't edit your config files if you don't have experience! I hope this helps!

Goodness gracious - look at all those embarrassing typos! I've got to stop these late-night posts! Thankfully, LQ let me edit them out.

Thanks a lot! Your solution really helped. I was having exactly the same problem you had described.:D

That's great! ;) I appreciate your appreciation. It's nice to know when you help someone. I'm glad I was able to pass on the info from micmaxe at Dell Forum who helped me.
I believe that someone in the red hat post I used https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=132267 said that the bug resurfaced in a beta release of FC4. I really hope they get that fixed before the final release, especially considering how common integrated Intel graphics are. It's a little scary when you've never installed Linux before.

More Intel 810 problems in FC3
 

Hi; it is good to find others with similar issues!

Mine is a variant that I cannot see discussed, and I am keen to fix it - and others may be interested too.

My FC3 installation went pear-shaped with rainbow garbage all over the screen before much at all happened. I then tried the non-graphical installation which went through to completion.

But then booting up into FC showed the rainbow instead of a login screen! So, off I went into Rescue mode, only to find that /etc/X11 is absent, so there's no xorg.conf file to edit!

This seems like a deadly embrace: the GUI installation that should create /etc/X11 cannot work because of the X11 config problem, and the text installation doesn't create the library where the fix to the problem needs to go. Great.

Any ideas, anyone? The only one I can come up with is to return to FC2 which worked fine, but that's hardly a solution.

Wow. That's pretty rough. :( It seems to me that someone in the post I used https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=132267 had graphical problems similar to yours, but I believe they were fixed by editing the config file. Are you sure that /etc/X11/xorg.conf isn't there? I also had to resort the "linux text"-at-the-command-line method, but the file was there, and I was able to edit it and fix the problem. Maybe the driver for your video card wasn't included in the FC3 distribution; the driver for my integrated Intel 810 was included but was buggy.

What do I have to do to get better than 640x480 screen resolution?

I have a 17" Dell 770s monitor. I also have a 17" ProView Pro-720 monitor.

The video card is an on-board Intel 845.

When you click configure on either - there is nothing to configure! The OK button simply allows me to confirm - YEP, that's the right Monitor Type and Video Vard.

When I go to Resolution on the Settings tab I have 640x480 presented and I can not choose 1024x768 - that is the optimum for this monitor. I do have a color depth selection but that's it.

How do I get the system to allow use of the optimum screen size?

Gosh, Magnets, I really have no idea on this one. Sorry :(

The only thing I can recommend is to search Google and post in forums like Linux Questions (which you've obviously already done), maybe the Dell Linux Forum, and, if you're using Fedora Core, fedoraforum.org, using search terms like FC3, Intel 845, Dell 770s monitor, and ProView Pro-720 monitor. That's how I got the answer to my problem; I posted here and at the Dell Linux Forum and I was blessed enough that someone at the Dell forum saw a bug listed at the Red Hat bugzilla site and directed me to it. You might want to start your own thread here (at Linux Questions), so other people can check it out, and see if they know the answer.
I'll be hoping for you.:)

Wow, so the only problem was to turn off acceleration!! Worked for me. I appreciate ya takin the time to put this up. Maybe Later I can help you or something.

Thanks,
-Brent

I'm glad it helped, Brent! :D Thanks for posting. Nothing better than finding out you were able to help somebody else out of a tricky situation. Happy New Year!