No openchrome drivers included on live cd (for via processors)

[yoshiki2]

If you try to install ubuntu in any Via based notebook, it won't work. You'll get just a black screen. It would not happen if openchrome drivers were included on the live cd. Openchrome drivers are free drivers.
You have to work with the alternate cd to install ubuntu. But for people new to linux, that"s a no go.. this is needed to ma
ke it work:
When you try to run the Ubuntu Karmic live cd the graphical login will not work. The screen starts cycling through primary colors, plus white and grey. Wait until it's finished booting, then drop to a console using 'Ctrl+Alt+F1'.

An easy workaround is as to download the the 2 .deb packages here from

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/drivers-only/+build/1307486

and put them in a USB key. In the terminal of the Ubuntu Karmic live cd mount the usb stick and install the drivers with the following commands:

sudo mkdir /media/disk
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/disk
sudo dpkg -i /media/disk/xserver-xorg-video-via_0.2.904~svn814-0ubuntu0tormod_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i /media/disk/xserver-xorg-video-openchrome_0.2.904~svn814-0ubuntu0tormod_i386.deb
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

This steps will install the drivers only for the installation process. You should be able now to use the graphical installer. Once the system is installed, you will need to go through these steps again to install the updated drivers on your hard drive. You can also build an updated driver from SVN.

Build from SVN

Before starting this tutorial, notice that the openchrome implementation of the driver is far from complete. Check at this website what has been implemented and what not for the VX800 chipset:

http://www.openchrome.org/trac/wiki/SupportedHardware

In particular, DRI has not been implemented and this will result in a very slow 2D graphics experience and slow playback of videos on the screen.

The following instructions are taken from the OpenChrome wiki entry.

* Firstly get the required build tools

sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion autoconf automake1.9 libtool

* Next you need to get the build dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-openchrome

* Get the driver's sourcecode

svn checkout http://svn.openchrome.org/svn/trunk openchrome

* Change into the newly created directory

cd openchrome

* Run autogen to set up the driver build

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

* Compile openChrome

make

* Install openChrome

sudo make install

* Edit the Xorg configuration

You can use the nano editor or any command line editor that you are comfortable with to make the changes

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This is my configuration which is minimal but gives the full 1280*800 resolution with 32-bit colour. The key settings are specifying the openchrome driver and the activedevice option.

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        Driver "openchrome"
        Option "ActiveDevice" "LCD,CRT"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Default Screen"
        Monitor "Configured Monitor"
        Device "Configured Video Device"
        DefaultDepth 16
EndSection

* Restart GDM and install Ubuntu.

You will need to restart GDM so that you can install Ubuntu. After installing the driver will need to be installed in the same way again or else you could try copying the openchrome directory to removable media and run make install on it after the reboot. [Update: for Karmic Koala this latter step is now unnecessary - the computer boots perfectly after installation.]

To restart GDM and begin installation run this command

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

[Vish (vish)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue, in the default Ubuntu install, that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.

For further information about papercuts criteria, please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut.

Don't worry though, this bug has been marked as "Invalid" only in the papercuts project.

[Peter Belew (peterbe)]

I have a Averatec 3280 laptop with a VIA chipset and a VIA K8M800/K8N800/K8N800A S3 Unichrome Pro display controller. I installed Jaunty, Karmic, and Lucid (beta-1) on it from alternate install disks. Also for a test I tried booting the Lucid beta-1 live/desktop CD. I did have some trouble booting the live CD, but it did successfully boot about half the time. Sometimes it would freeze up with a black screen and no disk activity; other times it would boot successfully (though the screen resolution needed fixing by installing an xorg.conf file).

After upgrading the night after the Lucid beta-1 release screen problems developed, described in Bug #495553 - another issue.

At any rate, it appears that the Lucid beta-1 live CD does indeed have an openchrome driver which works initially.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi yoshiki2,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` and `dmesg`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you're using a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.