SiS671 Video Broken on update after installing latest respin

[windy_miller]

Sorry if this is a repeat of a couple of earlier posts but I really want to be sure of what I'm doing before I proceed with this issue.

Yesterday I decided to install the latest re-spin of LMDE in an effort to get rid of a couple of awkward errors that have started to creep in with all the recent LMDE updates such as poor wireless management or boot errors.

Anyway, having installed the re-spin this morning I immediately moved to install the updates without changing anything else. I immediately received the "fix broken packages" error message. In the past when i received this I used the command I found on the forums which was:

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

My question here is "Is this the right way to progress the issue? Does this install "everything" or just want Mint Update would install.

Thanks

[amina]

If you upgrade everything, you will get the same updates that broke your system again.
If you know, which are the updates you would like to avoid, you should only update MintUpdate first to get rid of the broken packages message.
Then you can use it to install the rest, but you should change the default settings so that it shows level 4 and 5 updates as well.

[windy_miller]

Thanks amina

If I understand correctly what you are saying is that I should only update MintUpdate and that will get rid of the Broken Packages message? After that I can use Mint Update to select the right levels and packages to install.

Thanks

[amina]

Yes, that should work.

[windy_miller]

OK I have taken this one step further and think I now realise what is going on.

My laptop uses an SiS671 chipset. The driver has never been bundled into Linux and over the years has always relied on 3rd party contributors to manage the video.

When I transitioned from "Linux Mint" to LMDE I continued successfully with the solution at the post here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=54129.

I now appears that if I install the respin and then update it the solution no longer works and xserver / gdm doesn't appear to work and LMDE drops to a command prompt at the point it would usually run xserver.

The only solution is to remove xorg.conf provided as a part of the solution which allows x to run but only in 800x600 resolution.

Can anybody suggest anyway to get around this? It's not really an option to say don't update as I guess I will have to at some point. Or maybe I have to go back to Linux Mint

Thanks all

[ukbrian]

Can anybody suggest anyway to get around this? It's not really an option to say don't update as I guess I will have to at some point. Or maybe I have to go back to Linux Mint

If you feel like giving it another go, follow amina's help with the mint updates but don't turn on levels 4-5, you might well crack it, good luck

[windy_miller]

Thanks ukbrian but I did indeed follow aminas advice and update levels 1-3 last night. It was that update that broke the graphics

Giving this some further thought. Tonight I will remove the driver references from xorg.conf so it is pretty much blank for all intents and purposes.

I want to know if it is just the presence of the xorg.conf that is the problem or maybe the drivers are no longer compatible.

[ukbrian]

I'd give http://smxi.org/site/install.htm#sgfxi a try, I use it on my Nvidia machine but I think it does most of the proprietary video chips.