SiS 771/671display Ubuntu 10.04 does not load driver
 

Yet again I am having a problem with this diabolical piece of kit on a laptop with Ubuntu 10.04. It never did work very well (max 800x600) was as good as it got. It is now not working at all except in safe mode.

jana@jana-laptop:~$ lspci |grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter (rev 10)


/var/log/Xorg.0.log says:
(II) LoadModule: "sisimedia"
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisimedia_drv.so
dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisimedia_drv.so: undefined
symbol: resVgaIoShared
(EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisimedia_drv.so
(II) UnloadModule: "sisimedia"
(EE) Failed to load module "sisimedia" (loader failed, 7)
(EE) No drivers available.
Fatal server error:
no screens found

Th drivers appear to be there but not loaded.
jana@jana-laptop:~$ ls -l /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 573036 2010-03-26 03:54
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 952 2009-07-11 17:27
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisimedia_drv.la
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 657492 2009-07-11 17:27
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisimedia_drv.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 71952 2009-12-07 22:01
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sisusb_drv.so

So I downloaded a driver and tried to install it (sorry about the Portuguese but it is fairly easy to work out that it is a conflict with xserver-xorg-video-5):
jana@jana-laptop:~$ sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-sis671_0.9_i386.deb
dpkg: sobre xorg-driver-sis671_0.9_i386.deb contendo xorg-driver-sis671:
xserver-xorg-core conflita com xserver-xorg-video-5
xorg-driver-sis671 fornece xserver-xorg-video-5 e está para ser instalado.
dpkg: erro processando xorg-driver-sis671_0.9_i386.deb (--install):
pacotes conflitantes - não instalando xorg-driver-sis671
Erros foram encontrados durante o processamento de:
xorg-driver-sis671_0.9_i386.deb

There appear to be proprietary drivers written by a SiS employee but they are not distributed except to manufacturers
http://barroslee.blogspot.com/search/label/sis671

Where do I go from here? I really would like better than 800X600, 3D would be a very nice bonus.

ZB

I have done this, it works.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=958967&page=38
Also, look for "SisCtrl" (I use Suse, there is probably an Ubuntu package)
It is tedious, you should print the instructions as part of the process is on console. My current resolution on the Sis 660 is 1024x768.