Onoard video still causing problems when secondary video source is set to primary

[salemboot]

Using the same hardware the original author has. This is still a problem in udev and now policykit.
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Compaq Presario SR1033WM has onboard Intel 845G video and I can install Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix) onto the machine as is.
 BIOS only allows selection of primary video - ONBOARD or PCI - no disable and no BIOS update available
When I try PCI with nVidia or any other video card to install - I get errors installing Linux
Install with ONBOARD then tried to reconfigure xorg and then switching to PCI/nVidia - failed
Tried most boot options acpi=off noapic nolapic pci=noacpi irqpoll notsc no_timer_check clock=pmtmr
Always errors out with smp_apic_timer_interrupt

The problem is in the video card module being setup by /dev during boot - it sets up the Intel 845G even when PCI is selected
If I select ONBOARD with the nVidia card setup - I get the boot up till Login on the Intel then it goes to the nVidia but back to the Intel at Shutdown
Very not cool - can't tell when it is done and don't want seperate monitors hooked up
I had no problem with Windows setup on this machine.

I am willing to troubleshoot or test any options you might have.
I was hardware repairman for 12 years and know some programming stuff ( Visual Basic, PHP, etc...)

Feel free to suggest or point me in the right direction as I have several of these machines along with other video cards and PCs

[salemboot (salemboot)]

Maybe not policykit, typo

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello
is this problem present with the latest updated Karmic's or Lucid's packages?
Thanks in advance
Fabio

[Harold meneley (meneleyh)]

I was able to use the nvidia after loading with onboard video. I used sgfxi to automatically install nvidia driver module in single user mode. The important part is to blacklist the intel_agp & agpgart in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist before shutdown. Then reboot and change bios setup for secondary video (nvidia). This gave me complete nvidia for startup ,login, shutdown. You can email me if problems, <email address hidden>. Good lick, Harold

[salemboot (salemboot)]

Perhaps Ubuntu developers could go ahead and detect the two cards installed and blacklist the intel_agp kernel module by default.

It's a show stopper. It even exits in every distribution using the auto-module loading.

Slackware and Windows of all things will ignore it and only load the VGA driver by default. It's a good policy until we can get things installed.

There are a few ways to handle this.
1. Continue forcing people to press F6 then ESC and finally type in intel_agp.blacklist=yes
2. Put a notation in the boot menu's help text about the blacklist options
3. Default to VGA only giving then user a menu to choose the optimal driver where upon they log out and back into the live cd session. Next taking note of the selection and if it succeeded before the installation and utilizing the choice afterwards.

I think version 10.10 is black-listing older Intel graphics chipsets by default which will aid in resolving the issue. But don't quote me on it I just remember reading it somewhere.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello salemboot
can you please update me about this issue?
Thanks
Fabio

[salemboot (salemboot)]

Basically I have a Compaq brand computer.
It has an onboard Intel graphics chip.
I've added an Nvidia 6200 pci graphics card.
In the system bios I've set the computer to use the pci card by default.

When using an ubuntu livecd it attempts to load the driver for the Intel graphics chip which crashes the bootcd.

As I said before if indeed 10.10 is blacklisting the Intel card by default then this solves the issue. But going back to Ubuntu 8.04, 9.04, 9.10... You get the same behavior.

The only work around I've been able to implement is to use the alternate cd and during part of the installation blacklist the intel card myself.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-driver-nv (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[papukaija (papukaija)]

Thank you for reporting this issue about xserver-xorg-video-nv. Starting with Lucid, Ubuntu is transitioning to using the -nouveau video driver by default instead of -nv. The reason for this change is because upstream development for the -nv driver has been quite slow. We are quite pleased with the upstream development speed for -nouveau, and hope this will translate into swifter bug fixes as well.

Because of this, I'm closing this bug report at this time. I'm marking it Invalid (Won't fix would be a better status but I can't use that status) because what you describe is probably a valid issue, but we do not have further plans to work on it in Ubuntu. If you would still like to see this issue investigated, I would encourage you to file it upstream at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.