[SOLVED] Swapped out Motherboard+CPU now desktop gone... ish

wikapuki · 09-17-2013, 10:15 AM

Debian Wheezy, gnome3

This weekend a friend swapped out a motherboard and CPU, used the same Graphics card (Sapphire HDMI, DVI, VGA) of which I use only the VGA.

When system now boots, all I get is a black blank screen but the mouse moves.
However if I VNC into the machine I get the desktop background.

If I do a ps ax | grep gnome-shell and do a kill -HUP <process-id> while VNC'd into it, the original desktop appears but there is no keybaord or mouse control.

Unfortuantely I cannot remove the card to force it to use the onboard VGA as I am disabled and can only do that when competent IT people are visiting.

Is there some files I can hand modify or remove that will for the system to use the monitor and old desktop?

cynwulf · 09-17-2013, 10:48 AM

Strange... Do you have an xorg.conf defined? Perhaps there is some configuration there specific to the other machine (bus ID?)?

Post your full /var/log/Xorg.0.log

wikapuki · 09-17-2013, 11:58 AM

Yes I have /etc/X11/xorg.conf

here are both files.

cynwulf · 09-18-2013, 03:00 AM

Code:

# mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old

And try to startx?

You had refresh/sync values defined but commented them out, do you have an old CRT monitor?

wikapuki · 09-18-2013, 04:41 AM

Same result, will try moving the monitors.xml file to monitors.xml.old from home? I presume it should recreate it ?

gradinaruvasile · 09-23-2013, 03:54 AM

The log shows that your monitor is detected and the EDID is read from it, so that should not be an issue. What mobo did you have previously and what do you have now?

wikapuki · 09-23-2013, 08:10 AM

The replacement MOBO is an ASROCK p4vm890 HAL says: 'K7VT4 motherboard' with a 2.5GHz Celeron CPU :-(
The Old MOBO is an MSI with a 3GHz CPU :-) (I've attached the last messages boot log as I cant remember full spec)

Video card used on both systems: HAL says: 'Redwood PRO [Radeon HD 5500 Series]' (DVI VGA & HDMI)

In the old Mobo BIOS I could DISABLE the onboard graphics, in the ASROCK BIOS I can only set which one is primary, it's set to PCIe (The Saphhire Radeon).

During boot which ever you have set as primary we see the Boot, Grub, Boot until X starts, then the screen goes blank but the mouse moves.

VNC shows the desktop background but nothing else until I ssh into it and do a -HUP on the gnome-shell which then displays everything but the mouse and keyboard don't work via VNC. However the real VGA screen remains Blank with a mouse that can move.

hwinfo (HAL) states: fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device

Also attached: Jill MK6 hwinfo-snip.log

It's all a complete nightmare as it will be weeks before anyone can swap the motherboard/CPU back. Thank goodness for ssh -X, X11 & nfs so I can get to the stuff I need!!

Note: The following is not written for answers, just background.

It appears the random crashing of previous board may have been the SATA card, not sure, cos since in new MOBO a drive attached started giving off lots of errors and went read only... YET when I made an image of the said drive with ddrescue it found no errors. So its either a loose/bad cable or bad port on the SATA card. smartctrl says the drive is fine... go figure. Anyway I have an image so happy to leave that problem aside.

Then Samba will not start it's smdb either (seg fault core dumps) which was not happening before the swapout, hence Phew for NFS.

gradinaruvasile · 09-23-2013, 01:26 PM

You should use a newer kernel, you have there the one compiled for 486. Use i686, it should work with what you have. Also you should run a memtest.

Shadow_7 · 09-23-2013, 06:52 PM

You may need to modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Code:

      Driver "vesa"
      BusID "PCI:0:13:0"

Those values probably differ on the new motherboard. Namely the BusID location. lspci will help find out what applies. If you're on a relatively new-ish distro with distro supplied kernel, you might be able to just remove / rename the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and X might run. Otherwise adjust the settings accordingly.

wikapuki · 09-24-2013, 05:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

You should use a newer kernel, you have there the one compiled for 486. Use i686, it should work with what you have. Also you should run a memtest.

Are you sure? I did a: apt-cache search linux-headers-

Code:

linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486 - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-4-486
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-all - All header files for Linux 3.2 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-all-i386 - All header files for Linux 3.2 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-amd64 - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common - Common header files for Linux 3.2.0-4
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common-rt - Common header files for Linux 3.2.0-4-rt
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-rt-686-pae - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-4-rt-686-pae
linux-headers-2.6-486 - Header files for Linux 486 configuration (dummy package)
linux-headers-2.6-686-pae - Header files for Linux 686-pae configuration (dummy package)
linux-headers-2.6-amd64 - Header files for Linux amd64 configuration (dummy package)
linux-headers-486 - Header files for Linux 486 configuration (meta-package)
linux-headers-686-pae - Header files for Linux 686-pae configuration (meta-package)
linux-headers-amd64 - Header files for Linux amd64 configuration (meta-package)
linux-headers-rt-686-pae - Header files for Linux rt-686-pae configuration (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-486 - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-486
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-686-pae - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-686-pae
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-all - All header files for Linux 3.2 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-all-i386 - All header files for Linux 3.2 (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-amd64
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-common - Common header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-common-rt - Common header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-rt
linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.4-rt-686-pae - Header files for Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-rt-686-pae

then did: apt-get install linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae

Code:

Preparing to replace linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486 3.2.46-1+deb7u1 (using .../linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486_3.2.51-1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486 ...
Preparing to replace linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common 3.2.46-1+deb7u1 (using .../linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common_3.2.51-1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common ...
Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae.
Unpacking linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae (from .../linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae_3.2.51-1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up tex-common (3.15) ...
Running mktexlsr. This may take some time... done.
Running updmap-sys. This may take some time... 
updmap-sys failed. Output has been stored in
/tmp/updmap.e2YsuK8L
Please include this file if you report a bug.

Sometimes, not accepting conffile updates in /etc/texmf/updmap.d
causes updmap-sys to fail.  Please check for files with extension
.dpkg-dist or .ucf-dist in this directory

dpkg: error processing tex-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common (3.2.51-1) ...
Setting up linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486 (3.2.51-1) ...
Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms 3.2.0-4-486
Error! Could not locate dkms.conf file.
File:  does not exist.
Setting up linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae (3.2.51-1) ...
Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms 3.2.0-4-686-pae
Error! Could not locate dkms.conf file.
File:  does not exist.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 tex-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Ignore the tex-common (3.15) error, that has been with me since gnome3 upgrade and keeps returning after all attempts to get rid off. Other stuff still upgrades/installs.

wikapuki · 09-24-2013, 05:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cynwulf

Code:

# mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old

And try to startx?

You had refresh/sync values defined but commented them out, do you have an old CRT monitor?

Its a VGA Flatscreen. I did do the move and start but did not check (Opps) that a new xorg.conf had been made. It had NOT.

so did Xorg -configure and copied the file from /root but that did not work (as expected since Xorg -configure exited with errors).

wikapuki · 09-24-2013, 08:44 AM

uname -ra:
Linux jilldando 3.2.0-4-486 #1 Debian 3.2.46-1+deb7u1 i686 GNU/Linux

Success!! Thank you all.

I recreated xorg.conf file by NOT ssh -X into the box and doing:
Xorg -configure

then edited (with your fav editor) :-) /root/xorg.conf.new
It had 3 device sections

Quote:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card2"
Driver "vesa"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

It is a radeon card but I remembered seeing during boot it stating

Quote:

fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device

So I changed all 3 Device sections to

Quote:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card2"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

and that worked!

Strangely all the gnome3 new stuff (Applications with sidebar and the Windows/Applications thing under the top bar) have gone!!! It Looks like a hybrid gnome2 gname3 desktop and it works faster!!!! Yes

The Monitor attached can no longer be detected but thats fine.

I am just concerned about being told to install the 686 kernel yet on this debian site it states:

Quote:

Upgrade issues

Linux: linux-image-686-bigmem kernel flavor renamed to linux-image-686-pae, 686 flavor dropped. 686-class systems not supporting Physical Address Extension - all 400 MHz-bus versions of the Intel Pentium M and Celeron M (i.e. all "Banias" and pre-Sonoma "Dothan"), VIA C3 "Nehemiah" and AMD Geode LX - should migrate to the 486 flavour (also more efficient due to optimisation for uniprocessor systems).

So off to software forum to work out the samba cores dumps.