Hello,

I've been recently having issues with my video and networking cards only working intermittently.

First of all, I'm running the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex beta. Unfortunately, all of these issues were also occurring when I was running Hardy Heron, which is why I thought I would upgrade to see if they were fixed. The Linux kernal is 2.6.27-7-generic, and when I try using 2.2.27-4 (I believe that's my other option at boot) the same issues happen.

The video card is an ATI Radeon 9550 (it says 01:00.1 under Display Controller from lspci). Sometimes, it will boot perfectly. The proper resolutions are available, and the native resolution of the monitor (1280x1024) is chosen. Lots of times, though, maybe a majority, it picks another resolution that makes everything bigger and a bit pixellated and seems to squeeze in the sides. When it boots, the monitor says "Please change the display resolution to 1280x1024," but of course this isn't an option.

When I look at Monitor Resolution Settings, it says "Unknown," and indicates that it is using 1024x768 and allows me to choose 1360x768, 1152x864, 800x600, and 640x480.

I've tried running dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, and this doesn't ask me for my desired resolution but it does seem to fix the problem for a couple of boots, but then it comes back.

The network card is an integrated Intel 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (it says 02:07.0 from lspci if that is relevant). Sometimes, it will also run properly on boot. However, many times it will indicate that it has no network connection, although the other computers in my apartment (a Windows PC and a Mac) have great connections.

In addition, this Linux box is a dual boot with Windows, which has no problem getting a connection.

Both of these issues have been happening for a few months. I believe they started while I was still running Gutsy Gibbon, if that helps any.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated. Let me know if I can provide further relevant information.

Thanks,
Jon

Upgrades can carry over bugs from one release to the next. For example, configuration files may be left in their current state, failing to register any improvements that would be available if you did a fresh install. AFAIK, neither of the devices you mention appears to pose a problem today so I would guess that it really is a matter of upgrade vs fresh install.

I would have thought that might be the case as well, but I did a fresh install apart from a separate /home partition. Do you think there are any files or preferences set in the /home directory that would cause this issue? If so, do I need to reinstall with a new /home partition?

Thanks,
Jonathan

You can always check by creating a new, additional user just for testing purposes. If it doesn' work, at least you won't have deleted your home directory for no reason. You can use System > Admin > Users and Groups to do so.

But really, it is quite unlikely that your nic or graphics card should get messed up by settings in your home directory. The relevant files for the nic are /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf and the /etc/udev/networking files. For graphics, the prime suspect - barring hardware issues - would your xorg.conf. I also wonder whether you are using the open source (radeon) or the proprietary (fglrx) video driver. A year or two ago, I was having similar with an ATI 1600. In fact, it was worse than that, I didn't get any display at all because xorg could't make any sense of my monitor - until I installed the fglrx driver.

Before tryinig anything else, I would check the output of dmesg and your system files for any error messages. To find out any graphics related issues, you can run the commands:
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE (=error messages)
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW (=warnings)

Thanks for your help with this. I had tried installing the proprietary fglrx graphics driver, but when I do that my monitor displays the "Out of Range" message on a blank screen, and I have to disable it through reconfiguring the xserver-xorg.

I tried the commands you mentioned. EE says
WW says
Any other things I might try? For what it's worth, I tried creating a new test user, and it didn't make a difference.

Thanks,
Jon

Ah, the graphics issue sounds familiar to me. From what I remember, I solved it by editing my xorg.conf file. Under monitor, you need to insert HorizSync and VertRefresh lines to indicate the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of your monitor. Without those, X may start making the wildest assumptions - and I guess that's exactly what is happening.
Alternatively, you can specify that you want to use the VESA driver for now while you are figuring out what to do next. The whole monitor thing appears to be ATI related because I have not seen it back since switching to Nvidia. By using VESA, you tell xorg.conf that you are using "any" videocard. That makes it more failsafe but it also translates to a certain performance loss.

Thanks muchly; that seems to indeed be the issue. I looked up these values for my monitor (a ViewSonic VX922, and they were 30-82, 50-85, in case that heps anyone). When I put them in, everything started working with the fglrx driver.

The network card is still having issues, but at least I can see to work on them now.

Thanks again.
Jon

That's good. I looked into the NIC issue some further. It could be acpi related. Try adding acpi=off to the kernel line in your /boot/grub/menu.lst and rebooting.

So far it seems to be fine without that, interestingly.

Anyway. Thanks so much for all of your help on this.

Jon