[PLUG] video issues

[King Beowulf]

On 03/14/2015 05:07 PM, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> I have had lock-up issues with my desk-top four times in the last week.  My
> son was here when it last happened.  He used my laptop to log onto the
> desktop.  He concluded that the video was the issue, and thought that it
> was either a nvidia driver issue or the display hardware (on MB Nvidia
> GeForce 8200 (rev a2). 

If you can log in from another computer, then your desktop is not
"locked up."  Linux does not "lock up"  just because the graphical GUI
you are using fails.  Since you can log into it, then you can perform a
couple of keyboard tricks:

1.  SHIFT-CTRL-BACKSPACE - kills X.org and either drops you to the CLI,
or restarts your login mananger.
2.  SHIFT-ALT-F1 - On Ubuntu and derivatives, drops you into a virtal
CLI mode from where you can kill/restart services and X, and do all
sorts if stuff.  In particular, if your monitor works in the non
graphical CLI mode, then its not your monitor that has issues.

Once logged in via CLI, check the following logs to for clues:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/messages
/var/log/syslog
/var/log/dmesg

Be aware that your 8200 needs legacy nvidia-340.76 or 304.125 since
newer drivers will not work (GPU is no longer supported).

> So the driver was changed to the OS drive,
> supposedly nouveau.  But it appears that the driver used is VESA, the only
> displays it thinks I have is laptop; it detects no other displays, and the
> resolution options are very limited.

Check 'lsmod' as you need ONLY ONE of nouveau, nv, or nvidia.  They all
conflict with each other.  Look in /etc/X11/ or /etc/X11/xord.conf.d and
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ for any files that may be specifying a
driver.  This can screw up autodetection. Since you were running nvidia
before, check to make sure nouveau is not still blacklisted in
/etc/modprobe.d/

> I have had for some time issues with the display, a Samsung
> SyncMaster216bw.  The issues seem to be related to power supply warm-up.

Did you plug this monitor into a known good system as a second monitor
to see if it acts goofy in the same way.?  All Linux distros can be
easily set up in dual monitor modes so that if one monitor dies, you can
still tell if the DE or WM or X is still up and running, or not.

> My question: is it possible that the monitor ps issues are causing the
> video problems I describe above, preventing detection of the monitor? 

Not likely.  If you can get the monitor to turn on and display anything
at all (most have some logo or something that flashes by), it will be
detected.

> I can find out by replacing the display, as planned.  Wayne suggested a ASUS
> VE228H,  If I know the monitor issues are the cause of the video problems I
> can stop the video problem search.

I have a solid 24" Viewsonic VA2448 (new) and 24" LG E2360 (Free Geek
sale) that have been solid.  The LG is the the nicer of the 2, with 3
ports: HDMI, DVI and VGA.

Final thought: Are you using a distro that is set up to do automatic
updates?  Does the monitor problem occur right after the updates?  After
kernel updates?  Ubuntu especially like to patch the kernel constantly
which ends up crashing any proprietary hardware drivers - the
proprietary driver kernel interfaces do not get recompiled automatically.

Good Luck
Ed