-SOLVED- Screen crashes: SiS671 / Mirage 3 graphics drivers

[.William.]

Hi.

My current ordeal is that I have NO screen working in Mint 9 KDE. Just static stripes.
I was facing problems with low screen resolution on a Packard Bell Easynote, Mirage 3 Graphics / SiS 671 and I have tried to apply some of the suggestions on this forum, but with no success.
It must be that I am not doing it right, but the info provided is not easy to understand for a Linux newby.
To me a lot of it is abacadabra and I can't even get the basics like a functioning internet connection.
My screen is stuck at 800x600 pixels. (and now I got no screen at all)

I installed the SiS drivers :

Installation finished

Package ' xorg-driver-sisimedia' was installed

Then I rebooted, and I only got a blinking screen with moving stripes....
It must be that I also need to enter commands in the Terminal, but I don't know which ones.
I really need something to start working in Mint, so I can start finding out why I also don't have a normal internet connection and therefor can't get updates either.
I am kinda desperate now.

Sincerely,

William

[.William.]

Update:

I used the Linux Mint live cd to try to see if I could do anything about my problem that way.
Only thing I could discover is the xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "sisimedia"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

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

As I don't know how to use the live cd in my advantage I left it by this hoping someone in here could come up with an idea how to get my Mint back up.
Again: If I boot into my Mint 9 KDE installation right now I get no screens, only blinking stripes (which would be awesome if I where on an acid trip but I don't do drugs drugs are bad)

So, anyone an idea ?

[richyrich]

Sounds like something got pooched during the driver install . . . where did you get the drivers, and how did you install 'em?

Might be easier and quicker to do a fresh install . . ?

[.William.]

Hi there, thanks for your reply.

I looked at this thread for answers : http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... rs#p308062
In that thread a poster (post : http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... rs#p303739)
referred to this site : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... omments/43
were there is a link to a sisimedia driver here : http://nacho.larrateguy.com.ar/2009/07/ ... unty-9-04/

Does this sound confusing and complicated to you ? Imagine if you are installing your first Linux.
I am not new to pc's at all, and actually in high school I have had courses of Basic, but this experience makes me feel like I'm hit by a tsunami of information.
But I'm not a quitter.

So I downloaded this sisimedia driver, a debian binary, to my usb thumbdrive, rebooted from vista to Mint, and placed it on my desktop folder.
Then I double clicked it, and voila, Mint said the drivers were installed.
Then I ran Terminal and typed:

sudo service kdm restart

This is when I lost my screen to the flashing stripes.
As nothing happened, I thought maybee I need to log in blind and I tried that (password > Enter)
Nothing changed, so I shut down my pc and restarted it.
But am still getting the flashing stripes.

[richyrich]

Well . . . . Jaunty is equivalent to Mint 7 . . . have you found out somewhere that it works in Lucid/Mint 9 ?

[richyrich]

You can look at these :
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-instal ... lucid.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/550003

[.William.]

This is just too confusing to me.
On my desk I now have a dozen different driver versions for sis671.
Some of them are probably only for 2D and one is supposed to be for 3D.
The ones you suggest are probably not 3D drivers, and also not the most recent ones.
For what should I go now ?
The most recent one ? The 3D one ? The most easy to install one ?
Should I try all of them ?

And this still doesn't solve the problem that I can not get into my Mint since the screen doesn't allow me.
How do I first fix that ?

[.William.]

Ok I can't get this fixed.
I have re-installed Mint six times today, twelve hours of work, each time trying an other approach on the driver.
The sisimedia driver was the cause of my screen going knock out, but I can't get the others to work either.
Either the howto's are incorrect or incomplete, or I misunderstand them.
Is it possible to install one driver over the other so that I don't need to reinstall Mint every time ?

Now what to do ?

[.William.]

Update:

This is the instructions I have to follow to install the driver:

This tutorial will explain How to install SiS 771/671 Mirage 3 Video Drivers in ubuntu 10.04
First you need to downlod the drivers from here .Once you downloaded you need to unzip them.

Open up a terminal and go to the path you’ve unzipped them in.(use the cd command to navigate to directory’s) f.e; cd /home/user/Downloads

sudo cp sis671_drv.* /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/

type in your password and press enter

then stop X server

We need to stop X or we won’t be able to auto-generate a xorg.conf.new

sudo service gdm stop

you’ll have to do next part blindly

Switch to tty1 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+f1

(f2 for tty2, f3 for tty3, etc.. (f7 should be X)

Even though you won’t be able to read it (yet) you can login

type in your username and press enter

type in your password and press enter

Now you’re logged in you want to become root; type;

sudo bash

type in your password

Now your root; type in

Xorg -configure

(this will create a xorg.conf.new in your home directory)

and start gdm again with

service gdm start

Once there; Open up a terminal again;

move the auto-generated xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

with

sudo mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and restart gdm by typing;

sudo service gdm restart

Fix the plymouth and the unreadable tty problem like this

Open up a terminal and type

sudo bash

enter your password

type;

echo blacklist vga16fb > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-vga16fb.conf

type;

update-initramfs -u

and reboot your system

I manage everything until the part: 'you'll have to do next part blindly'
I don't know what to do exactly here.
ctrl alt f1 or f2 or f3 or f4 ??? or ctrl alt f7 ? or all of them ?
I tried all of them, and nothing happened.
Then: Do I need to enter my user name ? Normally I don't need to I just enter my password. Is this a 'normal' login or not ?
Does it require both my user name and my password ?

[.William.]

Well... success finally ! I managed to get my screen resolution to 1280x768 pixels !!!
None of the howto's on this forum were either correct or complete, and some were plain wrong.
As wrong as writing sudo with a capital S.
I tried many different things and then got the feel for it and started applying my own.
As I kept a comprehensive journal of all my steps so it's possible to recreate them easily I think.
I will see if I can translate it to English so my experience may benefit others in the community.

[.William.]

Like I said I would do I am providing a full solution to the problem above which I solved.

It has taken a bit longer then planned but I have been extremely busy...

Please check out my solution on the Linux Mint Forums page :

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=57181


Sincerely,

William