linux useability

camorri · 05-21-2008, 12:12 PM

Quote:

When I run /sbin/lspci using a command prompt, I get Bad command or File name. Did you mean to run it on the Ubuntu command prompt? If so, the command prompt I get to wants a username and password.

Yes, I wanted you to run the command from a command prompt. It will list the devices associated with the PCI bus. "Bad command or File name" implies the command executable was not found. It may not be in /sbin on edubuntu. It should be there, somewhere. To find files, as root run the command 'updatedb'. That will build a file and directory data base. Then use the command 'locate filetobefound'. You do not need to be root to run locate, but you do need root privileges to run updatedb. sudo will work.

Once you know where lspci binary is, then you can run it from that directory.

What I am trying to determine is what graphics card, or chip set the GX110s have. If we knew that, then we need to find out what video driver needs to be loaded. I suspect, still, this is the problem.

Wim Sturkenboom · 05-21-2008, 12:28 PM

Intel 810E, see http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Dell-Optiplex-GX110-GX110

Further It might be necessary to increase the allocated memory for the internal video card in the BIOS. I seem to remember that it defaults to something like 1MB.

camorri · 05-22-2008, 04:03 PM

I found this on Dell's site, for the video.

Quote:

Graphics and Video
Graphics architecture Intel Dynamic Video Memory (DVM) technology
Graphics accelerator Intel Direct Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) 2D and 3D graphics accelerator
Display cache 4 MB, 133-MHz synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM)
Graphics memory Dynamically assigned from system memory
Video resolutions 800 x 600 pixels; 85 hertz (Hz) refresh rate with 16.7 million colors
1024 x 786 pixels; 85 Hz refresh rate with 64,000 colors
1280 x 1024 pixels; 85 Hz refresh rate with 256 colors
1600 x 1200 pixels; 75 Hz refresh rate with 256 colors

Now to figure out what driver we need.

Wim Sturkenboom · 05-22-2008, 10:54 PM

As I said, I seemed to remember. Just booted a GX110 and it indeed does not have that option. It however happily runs 1024x768@85Hz under Slackware (10.x).

Possible relevant BIOS settings:
primary video controller auto
video dac snoop off

The relevant xorg.conf info:
driver i810
defaultdepth 24
modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

Hope it helps

camorri · 05-29-2008, 09:23 AM

Quote:

It however happily runs 1024x768@85Hz under Slackware (10.x).

This is good. Could you boot it under slack, and open a konsole, and run the command '/sbin/lsmod' ( without the quotes ). That will list all the loaded modules, and the video driver working under slack should be there.

Next will be to modify the config file to load that driver for edubuntu.

Wim Sturkenboom · 05-29-2008, 11:53 PM

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
usb-storage            62336   1 
i810_rng                2528   0  (unused)
uhci                   24284   0  (unused)
usbcore                58860   1  [usb-storage uhci]
3c59x                  26544   1 
pcmcia_core            39172   0 
ide-scsi                9392   0 
agpgart                45092   0  (unused)

And as stated in my previous post, xorg.conf uses the i810 driver.

If you need more info, you'll have to wait till monday as this machine is standing at GMT+2 (so it's nearly weekend).

linuxteacher2008 · 05-30-2008, 12:06 PM

Thanks for not giving up.

Since y'all aren't giving up, I won't either.

I opened the xorg.conf using sudo "geedit /etc/x11/xorg.conf"

However, it is blank.

Thanks a bunch.

camorri · 05-30-2008, 12:16 PM

I have never given up on a linux project. I have set them aside until I knew enough to continue though.

Quote:

I opened the xorg.conf using sudo "geedit /etc/x11/xorg.conf"

However, it is blank.

Hmmmm, that file should not be blank. Are you sure? If you make any error on the path to the file, gedit will open a new "blank" file. Would you try again? It should be 'gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf'. If that file is blank, I'll have to look into why. Note, the path, usually the X11 is a capital X.