[GeForce 7600 GS] (Dell 2007FP) no display when using kubuntu [live] cd

[ronny]

I just tried both the Ubuntu-8.10 and Kubuntu-8.10 desktop installation CDs. Ubuntu started up fine but with a wrong resolution (My display is a Dell 2007FP with a native resolution of 1600x1200 but Ubuntu chose 1024x768) but Kubuntu produced just some garbage on the screen when starting up (see attached picture). From the color patellte of the garbage it looks like there are some remaining (brown :-)) bits and bytes from Ubuntu left in the graphics card

Here is the output of lspci on my system:
-------------------
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G73 [GeForce 7600 GS] (rev a2)
02:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev 80)
02:04.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20376 (FastTrak 376) (rev 02)
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5702X Gigabit Ethernet (rev 02)
02:0c.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
-------------------

If I switch to a text console and back, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Alt+F7, the garbage is gone and I see the KDE desktop. But this is something I really found out by try-and-error and is nothing a "normal" user would do.

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

Thank you for filing this bug, however we will require more information from you to help fix your problem.

Did this occur during the live cd session while you were "trying out kubuntu" or was it during the attempt to install kubuntu or was it after a complete and successful install?

Thanks

[ronny (ronny-standtke)]

This occured while "trying out kubuntu" with a live cd session.

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

I'm changing the title of this bug to reflect your hardware.
Is it reproducible? does it happen every time you use the live cd?

If its reproducible could you attach your xorg.conf file produced by the live cd, like you did with your screen shot, it can be found in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Thanks

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

changed to casper as the bugg appears during use of live cd

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

Sorry also attach the output of lsmod from the terminal. while in the livecd kubuntu session.
Thanks

[ronny (ronny-standtke)]

Yes, this bug is reproducible always. It happens always but always in a slightly different manner. I did a short test run today:
1) booted Ubuntu, everything ok
2) rebooted with Kubuntu, after the bootsplash progress bar was filled up I saw... nothing! The monitor just switched to energy saving mode. As always, pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Alt+F7 gave me back my desktop.
3) rebooted Kubuntu again to see if the problem is reproducible, I saw... huge pixels! (please see attached screenshot)
4) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... a night sky!
5) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... a night sky again! OK, this started to become boring. So I continued with:
6) complete shutdown and boot Kubuntu again, I saw... a snow storm! Maybe the inverse of the night sky?
7) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... the energy saving mode of my monitor!
8) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... black and gray lines!
9) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... the energy saving mode of my monitor!
10) rebooted Kubuntu again, I saw... the energy saving mode of my monitor! OK, now it really gets boring...

I will attach some of the more interesting screenshots and the config files you asked for.
Kubuntu is really a hot candidate for an electronic arts exhibition. But I am not so sure about using it as an operating system... :-)

[ronny (ronny-standtke)]

PS: Whaterver I tried, I could not reproduce the problem with Ubuntu. This is really a bug specific to Kubuntu/KDE.

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

Thank you for the information you have given me. by the looks of the xorg.log the kubuntu live cd is not finding your video card in "/usr/share/xserver-xorg/pci" and falling to vesa as a back up. could you confirm this by posting the xorg.0.log from ubuntu live cd session... And trying the latest 9.04 jaunty kubuntu livecd to see if it will be an issue in the upcoming release? And ill check if this is enough information to get confirmed.
Thank you ronny for helping make ubuntu and kubuntu better.

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

ok Ronny, could you also give me "lspci -nn | grep VGA" from inside kubuntu.

Im working from this
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/OnlyLoadsVesa
Thanks.

[Eric Hickman (enhickman)]

Ronny i think im having you do too much just give me output of "lspci -vvnn" and ill set to confirmed, if you already got the other information great, if not im not sure we will need it so don't worry about it for now.
Thanks.

[ronny (ronny-standtke)]

I am writing this comment with the latest Kubuntu 9.04 Beta Live CD. I can not reproduce the display corruption but the resolution is still wrong: 1280x1024 instead of the native display resolution of 1600x1200.
I also attached the output of lspci -vvnn.
Thank you for your hard work on (K)ubuntu!

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

For Jaunty we've moved on to -180, and there are no plans to SRU a newer version for Intrepid (as per the SRU team policies, binary proprietary drivers cannot be updated in stable releases.) You can obtain newer versions of this driver from nvidia's site.