[mythtv-users] Mythbuntu 8.04 "Low Graphics Mode" with nvidia 8600

[Christopher M. Jones]

Correction to my previous post: irqpoll, not irqprobe

OK, folks. Thanks for all your help. Especially for those of you who are
having similar problems, I found the solution was to use irqprobe in my
kernel options. This option worked for me by itself, but some of us may
also need noapic. In my case, I deduced from my bios settings that the
PATA interface was routed through the PCIE bus. The video card was
conflicting with the ATA devices on that bus. I noticed this when the
Gutsy installer failed to recognize my cdrom, which led me to turn off
splash and actually look at the boot process. I saw lots of errors to do
with USB and ata, like this:

ata1.00: failed to set xfer mode (err_mask=0x40)

So I tried the 8.04 install again, booting with the irqprobe option, and
sure enough those errors went away and my card started working again.

Hope this helps, and thanks again.


On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 10:26 +0100, Damian wrote:
> Christopher M. Jones wrote:
> > I tried to upgrade my 7.10 Mythbuntu to 8.04 last week. Since then I've
> > been around and around in circles over this problem. My googling hasn't
> > turned up any definitive answers. 
> > 
> > Using an nvidia 8600 card mythbuntu starts up in "Low Graphics Mode".
> > This card worked fine under the previous 7.10 version. In frustration I
> > tried installing etch, and had the same problems. It seems the card
> > simply isn't recognized.
> > 
> > Has anyone had this problem? I'm willing to post whatever message output
> > might be helpful, if there is anyone here who is willing to help.
> > Surely, someone on this list must be running a similar setup.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > mythtv-users mailing list
> > mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> > 
> 
> I'm having the same problem. I have a 5200 card and it's always worked 
> fine* in previous versions of ubuntu. Since upgrading to 8.04, I can't 
> get my resolution back. Using EnvyNG, it crashes if I try to install 
> 169.12. If I install the 96.43.05 driver, then it seems to install ok, 
> but doesn't give me my resolutions back.
> 
> I've seen one thread suggesting that the 171.04 works ok, and another 
> suggesting that installing the latest Ubuntu updates fixed things. I've 
> not had time to try either yet as I've just been away for the weekend.
> 
> Pressure's on to sort it this week though. My daughter is having a 
> cinema party. Myth's head may be for the chop if I don't get the system 
> back on track! :-)
> 
> Damian
> 
> * It took me months to get xorg to give me the resolution I wanted, but 
> been perfect since then. Even the 'wrong' resolutions I had in the past 
> were high, I just couldn't get wide screen working properly for a while. 
> Nothing much is available at the moment though,