Strange monitor behaviour with Nouveau driver Pardus 2012.2

[airtight]

Did an install of Pardus 2012.2 on an old PC with a GeForce4 MX 440 video card installed. When the Nouveau driver is in use, the monitor (Iiyama CRT) flashes off (for about 2 seconds) and on again every 30 seconds. Can't find anything useful about this using google so just wondered if anyone has any idea what might cause this behaviour?

This doesn't occour when using the Nvidia driver, but whilst booting up there is a message:

Attention
Out of Range
H: 29.7 KHZ V: 36.9HZ

displayed until the logon screen is reached. The monitor works ok after that. Any ideas about this too?

Thanks.

[atolboo]

This one is new to me.
This gives me the suspicion that the computer has a problem fetching the properties from the monitor.
Do you get the same behavior when using another video card

[Anglo]

Yeah , I had that problem,
The flashing is due to X windowing trying to work in the " H: 29.7 KHZ V: 36.9HZ " range but the monitor actually works in a different range.
I was then using the integrated Nivdia " Quadro " chipset that comes with a dell Optiflex 740, I finally had to generate a basic "xorg.conf " file (using zorg ) then modified it using the proprietary driver's tools .

Then had to do this all over again when I went to a dual monitor setup, I HAD to switch to a add in video card ( the built in couldn't do this ) to a GeForce 8400 GS .
The original monitor/setup ran fine , the additional monitor ( a very different one ) gave a "out of range " message until I modified  xorg.conf  as well using nivdia's tools.
Thats what works for me........

[airtight]

Thanks for the replies, atolboo and Anglo.

Just to be clear, there was no "Out of Range" message with the Nouveau driver, just the periodic flashing.

I found another video card, a GeForce2 MX/MX 400 and tried that.

With the Nouveau driver there is still a flashing every 30 seconds, but instead of the screen going completely black some white horizontal lines flash at the bottom of the screen.

With the Nvidia driver there is now no "Out of Range" warning message whilst booting up. The only thing that's not quite right is a small oblong at the top left corner of the screen that does not draw, ie. it is always black.

dmesg returns the same output for both these cards:

Code:

dmesg |tail
[...]
[ 471.465731] nouveau 0000:03:00.0: VGA-1: EDID block 0 invalid.
[  471.465740] [drm] nouveau 0000:03:00.0: DDC responded, but no EDID for VGA-1
[  471.483319] [drm] nouveau 0000:03:00.0: Load detected on head A

There is no noticable performance difference between these two cards so I'll leave this GeForce2 MX/MX 400 in the machine. This is on my Mums machine because she wants to try Linux and she has a flat screen monitor that will be used when I take the machine back to her, so no big deal about this. I was just curious about why the Nouveau driver wasn't working properly with the video card.

[Anglo]

I was just curious about why the Nouveau driver wasn't working properly with the video card.

As to that , open source drivers are often not as full featured as the proprietary drivers ( a lack of full disclosure often ).

[atolboo]

"no EDID" explains

a problem fetching the properties from the monitor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data

[Anglo]

Nice article , does this apply to a CRT as well ?

[James T]

Did an install of Pardus 2012.2 on an old PC with a GeForce4 MX 440 video card installed. When the Nouveau driver is in use, the monitor (Iiyama CRT) flashes off (for about 2 seconds) and on again every 30 seconds. Can't find anything useful about this using google so just wondered if anyone has any idea what might cause this behaviour?

I'm not sure if this is useful, but you could try power cycling (or running the auto-sync option in the menu since it's an analogue output) the monitor after the system has come up (or not turning it on until the login screen has has time to appear). On one system I have to do that to prevent a similar flashing -- however the hardware is not comparable (Intel graphics, LCD monitor with DVI connection -- but it is Pardus 2012.2), but it might be worth trying.

If you're really not getting any EDID info, then you could try giving explicit resolutions in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (however the only time I've encountered a true no-EDID monitor is on an old G3 iBook where Apple presumably couldn't be bothered to connect the necessary wires since they have a table of the capabilites based on the laptop model number).

[atolboo]

...... does this apply to a CRT as well ?

This applies to every monitor because this is the only way a video card can detect what kind of device is connected to it's port.

[airtight]

Did an install of Pardus 2012.2 on an old PC with a GeForce4 MX 440 video card installed. When the Nouveau driver is in use, the monitor (Iiyama CRT) flashes off (for about 2 seconds) and on again every 30 seconds. Can't find anything useful about this using google so just wondered if anyone has any idea what might cause this behaviour?

I'm not sure if this is useful, but you could try power cycling (or running the auto-sync option in the menu since it's an analogue output) the monitor after the system has come up (or not turning it on until the login screen has has time to appear). On one system I have to do that to prevent a similar flashing -- however the hardware is not comparable (Intel graphics, LCD monitor with DVI connection -- but it is Pardus 2012.2), but it might be worth trying.

If you're really not getting any EDID info, then you could try giving explicit resolutions in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (however the only time I've encountered a true no-EDID monitor is on an old G3 iBook where Apple presumably couldn't be bothered to connect the necessary wires since they have a table of the capabilites based on the laptop model number).

Thanks for the suggestions James. Tried the auto-sync option and waiting for the login screen until turning the monitor on, but no difference. I'll just stick with the Nvidia driver.

Cheers.