[Lucid Beta] after gdm, screen is backwards, upside down.

[komputes]

Binary package hint: xorg

I use Ubuntu on a USB stick with Lucid Beta which I plug into many systems to test them. One system has an NVIDIA graphics chipset which required the binary driver to get full resolution and hardware acceleration. After installing the driver (saving changes to xorg.conf) and bringing the USB stick back to my Dell Mini which has an INTEL Chipset, I found thet I would just get an endless flickering terminal. I thought, well bulletproof X will go over the xorg.conf file and see that it is rubbish and overide it with automatic settings. Since I was wrong I renamed the xorg.conf file and rebooted. This time I started normally, but once I entered my gnome-session, everything was fliped backwards and letters were upside down, as seen in the screenshot attached.

Booting happens normally, even GDM shows up correctly, but once gnome-session starts the background ang gnome panel items and letters are reversed upside-down.

see https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/544774 for more info

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
CurrentDmesg:
 [ 17.618332] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
 [ 23.194113] Bluetooth: HIDP (Human Interface Emulation) ver 1.2
Date: Tue Mar 23 00:26:37 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
DkmsStatus: nvidia-current, 195.36.15, 2.6.32-16-generic, i686: installed
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100318)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron 910
Package: xorg 1:7.5+3ubuntu1
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-16-generic root=UUID=bd5a916f-a0fa-4a4d-ac70-a36713567a13 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-16.25-generic
SourcePackage: xorg
Tags: lucid lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-16-generic i686
dmi.bios.date: 08/05/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A00
dmi.board.name: CN0J14
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.version: A00
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA00:bd08/05/2008:svnDellInc.:pnInspiron910:pvrA00:rvnDellInc.:rnCN0J14:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvrA00:
dmi.product.name: Inspiron 910
dmi.product.version: A00
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 codename: lucid
 architecture: i686
 kernel: 2.6.32-16-generic

[komputes (komputes)]

Alberto Milone has helped me understand what is going on. It seems the wrong libGL is being loaded because I activated the nvidia driver but did not disable it before bringing my drive to the computer with the Intel chipset. I am still not sure why this would only affect gnome-session and not affect GDM. It seems that X will not automatically deactivate the nvidia driver when I boot my drive in my machine with the Intel 945GME Chipset. The expected behavior is that X will automatically detect that it is not the same chipset and change the to the correct libGL alternative for that particular chipset.

There are two ways to correct this issue if you are experiencing the same thing:

1) Boot the drive in the computer with the nvidia card and disable the nvidia driver in jockey-gtk (Hardware Drivers)

2) On the computer which flips the screen. Run the following command from a TTY

$ sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf
#Asks which alternative to select:
#0 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 auto mode
#1 /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf 9700 manual mode
#2 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 manual mode
#Chose MESA (option 2)

$ sudo ldconfig
$ sudo update-initramfs -u
$ sudo reboot

[komputes (komputes)]

Correction:
#Chose MESA (option 1)

[Anton Blanchard (anton-samba)]

I hit this on a box with Intel graphics that was installed with Karmic and upgraded to Lucid.

  Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 auto mode
  1 /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf 500 manual mode
  2 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 manual mode

No idea why the Nvidia version was selected (this disk has never seen an Nvidia card).