Graphics problem

Support & Help Requests
#1

I have an Nvidia [GEForce 6200] NV44A graphics card. I do not do any gaming, so I would be perfectly content to use the nouveau drivers if I can resolve the following problems.

My system normally boots up in nomodeset using the Gallium drivers. This mode causes me the least problems, but I have no flexibility in screen resolution which is 1280x1024 @ 77 hz.

If I remove nomodeset from grub, then the nouveau drivers load, and I have a choice of all the resolutions my card is capable of. However, my choice of refresh rates is either 60 or 75 hz. I suspect that this refresh rate may be the source of the conflict.

What happens with the nouveau drivers is that my screen locks up and no input from the keyboard is accepted. By this I mean that

  1. Ctrl + Alt + Delete does not work
  2. Ctrl + Alt + Backspace does not work
  3. Alt + SysRq + REISUB does not work

The only thing that works is pressing the power button, and then cleaning up the file system.

I suspect that what I need to do is to determine the resolution and refresh rates my card is capable of, and then to add these to what nouveau sees when it loads. How do I go about doing this, or does anyone have another suggestion?

Thanks, Jim

#2

@Jim007 Graphics issues have always seemed to be where a lot of us have problems so please take my advice with a bit of caution. For instance, I could not seem to boot into MATE 17.04 without setting the i915.modeset=1 in GRUB to get the resolution this old Dell laptop (and I) like. With the progression of the beta over the weeks, I no longer must use a custom grub, but it was nice to know at the time.

The first two links are just background but good to know -

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia#Ubuntu_14.04_and_up

and the Arch wiki has a lot of information. Much of this appears to be a bit above my pay grade.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA

The linuxmint forums contain a topic that looks helpful.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=122257&start=60

Add “nomodeset xforcevesa” to GRUB. If that doesn’t work, you could try adding a nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to GRUB. This is just a wild *ss guess on my part.

1st edit: One more -

2nd edit: And another, just in case -

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Read the warning here and pay attention. Good luck Jim.

#3

Thanks! That's the most helpful thing I've been told. It helps me to realize that I'm not crazy.

My frustration is that the nvidia drivers from Additional Drivers did, at one time, work for me. That was a number of years ago. I think I was running Mint at the time (although I don't think Mint had anything to do with the drivers working). And there were two different drivers offered - a 304.??? version and a (I think) 179.??? version.

Now only the 304 version is offered. It's hard for me to believe that a driver offered by nvidia would loose compatibility with the card it's designed for..!? I tend to believe it's some step in the install script that has been changed.

What happens is that after I install the driver from Additional Drivers and reboot, the screen locks up at the nvidia logo. I never get to the sign-in screen.

I have read somewhere that you have to reboot in nomodeset.? I think the point being made was that the nvidia drivers do not load correctly from grub, and you have to get past the sign-in screen for them to load. If this were true, I would think the install script would be set up this way. But, I have to confess, I have not checked this grub setting during reboot - I get the frozen screen and go back and remove the nvidia drivers.

Anyway, I'm going to read all the links you sent, but my suspicion is that the problem is in some configuration setting during reboot and not in the drivers themselves.

Thanks, Jim

Edit from ouroumov:
In order to close this thread, I'm linking the solution posted by @Jim007 in the following thread and then marking this last post as solution.

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