[K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)

Previous Ubuntu alternate install disks have successively recognized the video devices.

Reassigning to xorg, which is responsible for video detection.

Please try Hardy alpha6 livecd which was released yesterday.

I am downloading Hardy Alpha6 tonight and will try it this weekend.

I tried Hardy alpha6 last night, using the live/desktop version. After I booted, and got a splash screen, the screen for choosing running live, installing, etc, came up, superimposed with a request for which language I wanted to use. After choosing English, the system went into a restricted debug shell. I had no idea as to what to do at that point, so I shut down.

- Peter

To fill in what's happened in the last few months: After failing to install Hardy alpha6, I gave up and installed Debian 4.0 on my Averatec laptop, so I failed to follow this up on the laptop.

However I did eventually install 8.04.1 on four desktop systems. This went well, until I replaced a tube monitor shared between two of those systems with a Samsung SyncMaster 570S TFT monitor. That worked, but the installer or X configurator failed to recognize the allowable scan parameters of the monitor, and set xorg.conf up with some default settings, allowing a maximum of 600x800 resolution. This was resolved with a workaround involving booting a 7.04 live CD and saving the resulting xorg.conf file.

See bugs: #255561 #254708 #217004 #212510 for details.

In retrospect, I think this bug may have the same cause.

I just tried booting an Intrepid 8.10 desktop disk as a live CD on this laptop. Again, I am unable to get the display to work even in low res mode, and am unable to get to a console to copy the xorg.conf file. I added some comments about this to bug report # 212510. Note that this laptop and the gBox computer mentioned in # 212510 both have S3 adapters, which may be relevant.

The behavior when trying to boot intrepid on this Averatec laptop is quite similar to the behavior described in bug #294899 and 212510 when trying to boot on a gBox computer with a ProSavage8 display controller and Samsung SyncMaster 570S display, except that the laptop's display does not have the facility to display a message when the wrong type of signal is fed to it from the display controller. Instead, the system just appears to hang, after possibly trying various screen modes - that's hard to tell.

Here is an excerpt from the xorg.conf generated by Debian 4.0 on this system:

 Section "Device"
        Identifier "VIA Technologies, Inc. S3 Unichrome Pro VGA Adapter"
        Driver "via"
        BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "Generic Monitor"
        Option "DPMS"
        HorizSync 28-51
        VertRefresh 43-60
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Default Screen"
        Device "VIA Technologies, Inc. S3 Unichrome Pro VGA Adapter"
        Monitor "Generic Monitor"
        DefaultDepth 24
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 1
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 4
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 8
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 15
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 16
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth 24
                Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "Default Layout"
        Screen "Default Screen"
        InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Mode 0666
EndSection

It's not clear what driver the intrepid 8.10 live CD is trying to load. It's possible it's trying a different driver than the one 7.04 was using.

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xorg 1:7.4~5ubuntu18
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686
UserGroups:

Xrandr:

glxinfo:

setxkbmap:

xdpyinfo:

xkbcomp:

Please apply this patch to the latest openchrome driver according to:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Is it works for you?
Please attach Xorg.0.log file.

What is corect resolution of your monitor?

For the Averatec laptop, it's 1024x768. When fed at a higher resolution, the
image is cropped to 1024x768.

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Bartosz <email address hidden> wrote:

> What is corect resolution of your monitor?
>
> --
> [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Karmic Koala 9.10 live CD:

I have just tried the 9.10 Karmic alpha 4 live/desktop cd on this Averatec laptop. As before, it boots properly and starts the X server, but with too high a screen resolution. The maximum resolution of the screen is 1024x768.

It is necessary to put an xorg.conf file into /etc/X11/ which lists screen resolutions.

Without doing this, one may change the resolution manually using the System>Preferences>Display menu from Gnome. I haven't tried this with the new Kubuntu, but the problem with Kubuntu is that the panel with such tools is off the screen at the bottom, and it's necessary to create a new panel at the top, and add the system menu to it, in order to change the resolution.

I'll try to create a minimal xorg.conf file for setting the resolution.

I created a minimal xorg.conf file (attached), and placed it in the livecd's /etc/X11/ directory (in RAM). I then ran 'sudo gdm restart'. When gdm had restarted, and Gnome stuff appeared, the resolution was then 1024x768. You can see the various resolution settings which I could select, in the Xorg.0.log file. (This is essentially the xorg.conf file I use with Jaunty).

Here is the Xorg.0.log file generated when restarting gdm with the above xorg.conf file in place.

Xorg.0.log generated starting gdm without the xorg.conf in place.

Note the several allowed screen resolutions greater than 1024x768, which this display cannot handle (except by cropping the display to 1024x768.

Either:

1) the system has to determine the maximum screen resolution automatically, or
2) the system has to provide a boot-time method of specifying the maximum screen res., or
3) a runtime tool is needed to provide this facility (this assumes the tool is reachable even if a bad resolution is chosen automatically, and it is user-friendly)

Please apply patch "panel_pm800_new2.patch" to the latest openchrome driver according to:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Is it works for you?
Please attach Xorg.0.log file.

If it works for you I will commit this patch to openchrome.

If it easier for you please replace the "/src/via_driver.c" file to file which I attached

Thank you - since I'm away today, I may not get to this until tomorrow.

I assume this means I'll have to download the rest of the source and
build and install the driver .

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Bartosz<email address hidden> wrote:
> If it easier for you please replace the "/src/via_driver.c" file to file
> which I attached
>
> ** Attachment added: "via_driver.c"
>   http://launchpadlibrarian.net/30427401/via_driver.c
>
> --
> [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Actually, I have no idea where to get the rest of the sources
(configuration and makefiles etc) to build this.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Peter Belew<email address hidden> wrote:
> Thank you - since I'm away today, I may not get to this until tomorrow.
>
> I assume this means I'll have to download the rest of the source and
> build and install the driver .
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Bartosz<email address hidden> wrote:
>> If it easier for you please replace the "/src/via_driver.c" file to file
>> which I attached
>>
>> ** Attachment added: "via_driver.c"
>>   http://launchpadlibrarian.net/30427401/via_driver.c
>>
>> --
>> [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>

The detail build instruction for Ubuntu/Debian is available at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Build according this instruction. Do not omit any step.

I think you missed command:
   ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

Do not forget about commands:
    sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion autoconf automake1.9 libtool
and
   sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-openchrome

It turns out I had actually built an openchrome driver some time ago
(I have to look at my Launchpad email to determine the date) in order
to deal with this or a related problem.

At any rate, I downloaded the current sources from the OpenChrome
server, copied in the patched via_driver.c file, and built and
installed the driver. On restarting the system, it hung while getting
to the login screen, with the top half of the screen overwritten.

Fortunately, I also have Debian Lenny on this system - to which I had
built and installed the same driver - and was able to access my Ubuntu
/etc/rc2.d directory and disable the Snngdm symlink, and restart
Ubuntu into a shell, so I could reverse the patch and rebuild and
install the driver.

So that's where I stand now. Perhaps there was some necessary
modification to xorg.conf that I omitted? At any rate, I already had
been using an openchrome driver.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:17 PM, Bartosz<email address hidden> wrote:
> I think you missed command:
>   ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
>
> Do not forget about commands:
>    sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion autoconf automake1.9 libtool
> and
>   sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
>
> --
> [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Please see my comments in bug #296142 regarding my earlier installation of the openchrome driver (in both ubuntu and debian).

Also, I tried the live CD for Karmic Koala 9.10, and the only real problem with display is that it also chooses a too-high resolution for the screen, so that only the upper left 1024x768 corner of the screen shows. This is the same as in 9.04

For Ubuntu and Xubuntu, the menu for changing the screen resolution is accessible. For Kubuntu, the KDE menus are off the screen. It's possible by right-clicking the background to create a panel at the top of the screen, then to add a system menu to that, but that's not too convenient! Also it's possible to switch to a text console, then create or edit an xorg.conf file, for all 3 Ubuntu versions. But for the average user, those solutions are increasingly difficult.

This problem also occurs with the live CDs for Karmic Alpha 4 and Alpha 6. I am continuing to use an xorg.conf file, as above, in my Karmic installation on this laptop, in order to restrict screen resolution to 1024x768 and lower. Again, refer to #296142 for some details.

This computer works best with live CDs which allow selection of screen resolution at boot time. The latest such OS I've tried is the NetBSD CD "NetBSD-live-2007"

My current version information running Karmic is

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu karmic (development branch)"
Linux cupid 2.6.31-10-generic #35-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 22 17:33:42 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

That includes updates to today, 23 Sept 2009

Please check if this patch works for you.

The detail build instruction for Ubuntu/Debian is available at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Is this patch and the one in bug report # 296142, comment #31, still appropriate? I never built the driver with either patch, sorry! Right now I have

# dpkg -s xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
Package: xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 580
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <email address hidden>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1:0.2.904~svn814-0ubuntu0tormod

Ubuntu version and kernel version
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.10"
Linux cupid 2.6.31-14-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 16 14:04:26 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
model name : Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+

Starting with yesterday's Lucid alpha-1 release, there has been both improvement and then regression regarding the driver for this hardware. See bug #495553 "Screen origin shifted to center, screen wraps".

The driver is setting the right screen resolution, but the left and right halves of the screen are swapped. See the above bug report.

Hi Peter.
What happened when you apply patch from comment #18 ?

Does resolution is correct or system locks up?

I don't have Karmic 9.10 on this system anymore, only the Lucid 10.04 alpha-1.
The initial release of the latter worked well, except that the login screen resolution was something like 1600x1200 - but once logging in, the correct 1024x768 resolution was set. Then overnight the bug #495553 showed up.

Just installed Lucid Lynx. Bug on startup ( improper display settings ) is still here on the Averatec 3280.

" Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it " - Santayana

I hold to the FATALIST PORCINE philosophy of life:

 " I PINK, therefore I HAM "

--- On Mon, 12/14/09, Peter Belew <email address hidden> wrote:

From: Peter Belew <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 186103] Re: [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
To: <email address hidden>
Date: Monday, December 14, 2009, 8:37 AM

I don't have Karmic 9.10 on this system anymore, only the Lucid 10.04 alpha-1.
The initial release of the latter worked well, except that the login screen resolution was something like 1600x1200 - but once logging in, the correct 1024x768 resolution was set. Then overnight the bug #495553 showed up.

--
[K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of a duplicate bug.

FYI: I've tried 10.4 Kubuntu on the Averatec 3280. The bug is still there. You can CHEAT by using UBUNTU and the GUI it has.

" Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it " - Santayana

I hold to the FATALIST PORCINE philosophy of life:

 " I PINK, therefore I HAM "

--- On Sat, 7/10/10, Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> wrote:

From: Bryce Harrington <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 186103] Re: [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
To: <email address hidden>
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010, 8:55 AM

** Tags added: karmic

--
[K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of a duplicate bug.

Note for upstream: The screen resolution is not properly recognized either on Fedora 13 and on CentOS 5.5 - in all cases the system tries to start up in 1600x1200 mode, but in a Gnome system it's possible to set the res. manually, then later install an xorg.conf file. On KDE systems it's much more difficult due to the controls being off the screen at the bottom.

The problem still exists for the Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat alpha-2 live CD.

I now have Fedora 13 installed on this Averatec 3280 laptop.

See bug #495553 and bug #196142. Also Fedora bug 518907 for the current status on this computer.

I would suggest defaulting to 800x600 when the res. isn't properly detected by this driver. That is done with some other drivers when a panel's res. isn't detected possibly - then at least installing an xorg.conf file can change to the proper res.

This still applies up through Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 alpha-2: The initial screen resolution is set to 1600x1200, so that only the upper-left 1024x768 corner of the screen is visible. It's necessary to use the System>Preferences>Monitors dialog to set the resolution.

In addition, the text console problem described in bug #495553 still occurs up through the 10.10 alpha-2 live CD.

The resolution detection problem occurs for Fedora 13 and CentOS 5.5, but the text console problem does not occur for those distros.

The screen resolution detection problem on my laptop has been reported to Fedora Bugzilla as bug #518907.

I now have Fedora 13 installed on the laptop.

Also see Bug# 296142.

What has gotten really obnoxious in the latest revisions of Kbuntu is that the HARDWARE MODIFICATIONS panel in the main menu is gone. I used to be able to force the proper display driver and monitor ( yes, it gave you a warning ) and reboot X/the system.

That is an example of  forcing something that was easy to be much more harder to do.

I have had to drop back to the GNOME display. I prefer it to KDE4 anyway. The other way to fix this Kubutu issue has been to use my older distro CDs and upgrade.

--- On Sat, 7/10/10, Peter Belew <email address hidden> wrote:

From: Peter Belew <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 186103] Re: [K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
To: <email address hidden>
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010, 10:18 AM

This still applies up through Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 alpha-2: The
initial screen resolution is set to 1600x1200, so that only the upper-
left 1024x768 corner of the screen is visible. It's necessary to use the
System>Preferences>Monitors dialog to set the resolution.

In addition, the text console problem described in bug #495553 still
occurs up through the 10.10 alpha-2 live CD.

The resolution detection problem occurs for Fedora 13 and CentOS 5.5,
but the text console problem does not occur for those distros.

The screen resolution detection problem on my laptop has been reported
to Fedora Bugzilla as bug #518907.

I now have Fedora 13 installed on the laptop.

Also see Bug# 296142.

--
[K8M800] Panel on K8M800 is not supported (Averatec 3280)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186103
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of a duplicate bug.

Aeb1barfo - What I was able to do with KDE (a few months ago) was to right-click on the screen to get a menu which enabled me to create a new panel at the top of the screen. Once that was done, I could right-click on the panel to add a main menu to it. From that it was possible to set the screen resolution. (What a pain!)

And again - to the Openchrome project - it's best to make the resolution too low, like 800x600, when a monitor doesn't give good information about its capabilities.

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

As of 11.04 "Natty" Ubuntu, the remaining problem is that the initial display is set at 1600x1200. For Ubuntu with Gnome, the System/Preference/Monitors dialog is accessible, and the screen res can be changed to 1024x768 (see last few comments in bug #495553).

For the unichrome display, only Gnome works for Ubuntu Natty, as this hardware doesn't support 3d acceleration.

This would be a more serious problem with kubuntu, where settings are accessible from a lower panel, which is off the screen.

What is really needed for this kind of hardware problem is manual setting of the initial X screen resolution, such as 'fb1024x76' in the boot command line in some distros.

The detail build instruction for Ubuntu/Debian is available at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Replace the via_driver.c and via_mode.c with attached files.

I built and installed the driver, and rebooted a couple of times. I've added an archive containing Xorg.0.log and Xorg.0.log.old. There was no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11.

The main change was that the login screen was no longer at 1600x1200. The grub2 screen and the final Gnome screen appeared to be at 1024x768.

However, note that the Gnome screen res was previously set with the System>Preferences>Monitors dialog to 1024x768 - how do I undo the setting from that dialog, so that the resolution is determined entirely by the driver?

I built and installed the driver, and rebooted a couple of times. I've added an archive containing Xorg.0.log and Xorg.0.log.old. There was no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11.

The main change was that the login screen was no longer at 1600x1200. The grub2 screen and the final Gnome screen appeared to be at 1024x768.

However, note that the Gnome screen res was previously set with the System>Preferences>Monitors dialog to 1024x768 - how do I undo the setting from that dialog, so that the resolution is determined entirely by the driver?

Comment #53 is an accidental duplicate of #52. Oops!
This bug report contains the remaining issue in Bug #495553.

Please look at this Xorg.0.log file.

The screen resolution was autodetected and it was set correctly:
[ 21.833] (II) CHROME(0): ViaPanelGetNativeModeFromScratchPad
[ 21.833] (II) CHROME(0): Native Panel Resolution is 1024x768

Thanks for your help.

Please test it in work to check if it is works correctly for you.

Please check again if this patch works for you

Check also if the hibernation and switch to text console is working for you.

I haven't applied the patch (#56) yet, but switching to text console and back works fine, and hibernation seems to also.

Now I'll try the patch ...

I applied the patch. It went well with via_mode.c, but there were some errors with via_driver.c - here is via_driver.c.rej

--- via_driver.c (wersja 886)
+++ via_driver.c (kopia robocza)
@@ -725,7 +725,6 @@
             break;
         case VIA_K8M800:
             pVia->DRIIrqEnable = FALSE;
- pVia->UseLegacyModeSwitch = TRUE;
             break;
         case VIA_PM800:
             /* Use new mode switch to resolve many resolution and display bugs (switch to console) */
@@ -1616,16 +1615,6 @@
             ViaPanelPreInit(pScrn);
     }

- if (pBIOSInfo->Panel->IsActive &&
- ((pVia->Chipset == VIA_K8M800) ||
- (pVia->Chipset == VIA_VM800))) {
- xf86DrvMsg(pScrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING, "Panel on K8M800 and "
- "VM800 is currently not supported.\n");
- xf86DrvMsg(pScrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING,
- "Using VBE to set modes to work around this.\n");
- pVia->useVBEModes = TRUE;
- }
-
     pVia->pVbe = NULL;
     if (pVia->useVBEModes) {
         /* VBE doesn't properly initialise int10 itself. */

I'm attaching Xorg.0.log

Try to revert the changes, apply patch again and build again:

cd src
svn revert *
svn update

I tried doing that. Running svn update from the src dir did nothing. I then tried

svn update http://svn.openchrome.org/svn/trunk openchrome from /root (openchrome is in /root/openchrome).

Skipped 'http://svn.openchrome.org/svn/trunk'
U openchrome/ChangeLog
U openchrome/src/via_mode.c
U openchrome/src/via_driver.c
Updated to revision 887.
Summary of conflicts:
  Skipped paths: 1

Then

root@cupid:~/openchrome/src# patch < k8m800_vm800_panel_support.patch
patching file via_mode.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1741 with fuzz 2 (offset 7 lines).
patching file via_driver.c
Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected! Assume -R? [n] y
Hunk #2 FAILED at 735.
Hunk #3 succeeded at 1615 (offset -1 lines).
1 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file via_driver.c.rej

Then ...

~/openchrome/src# cat via_driver.c.rej
--- via_driver.c (kopia robocza)
+++ via_driver.c (wersja 886)
@@ -735,7 +736,7 @@
         case VIA_VM800:
             /* New mode switch resolve bug with gamma set #282 */
             /* and with Xv after hibernate #240 */
- /* TODO Check if panel autodetection is working correctly */
+ /* FIXME Add panel support for this chipset */
             break;
         case VIA_CX700:
             pVia->VideoEngine = VIDEO_ENGINE_CME;

then 'make', and we have for the changed sources:

~/openchrome/src# ls -l *.lo | grep 12-15
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298 2010-12-15 13:24 via_driver.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 294 2010-12-15 13:24 via_mode.lo

After installing that and rebooting, the login screen appears in 1600x1200, so there was something wrong about the updates. Also, when I log in, Gnome appears - without a top panel - in 1600x1200. I don't know if there is a bottom panel, since it's off screen, and without a top panel, I can't change the res except by reinstalling xorg.conf and logging out and in again. In the login screen, I can't select safe mode because that's off-screen.

It seems to me that the login mod selections used to be in the login dialog, instead of being at the bottom of the whole screen - also one could drag the login dialog around. All that's changed in the last 2 or 3 releases of Ubuntu.

After restarting with xorg.conf in place, the screen comes up as 1024x768, with just the bottom panel (but that's another bug). I think I'll try checking out the sources again from scratch and rebuild, later today. Or perhaps there was some error in my use of svn.

Now -

svn checkout http://svn.openchrome.org/svn/trunk openchrome
...
Checked out revision 888.

I then tried to apply the patches. Again they seem to fail. I didn't try to build.

Please send me fully patched .c files - I don't seem to be doing the patches right, or the patch file is bad.

Try to build the pure revision 888 without patch.

Then remove xorg.conf file.

Check then what will happen.

This bug was fixed in openchrome revision r887 :
http://www.openchrome.org/trac/changeset/887

Ok - I re-checked-out and rebuilt the driver, with no patches, and the native resolution is now 1024x768!

Many thanks, Bartosz!

And thanks to the developers upstream!

There has been a severe regression TODAY in 11.04 - now the tty screens don't work. Ctrl-alt-F1 etc switch to a random screen which doesn't sync.

See bug #495553.

Checking out the driver sources (rev. 890 now) and rebuilding makes resolution detection work still, but switching to text screens does not work.

Reinstalling the openchrome driver from the repository makes text screens work, but the resolution fix isn't in that driver, so xorg.conf is necessary.

See http://www.openchrome.org/trac/ticket/366 - The initial screen res seems to be set at 1024x768, and switching to/from text screens works too, with r891 of the OpenChrome driver. This is with Ubuntu 11.04 updated as of today.

Note that ~/.config/monitors.xml has been removed - this contains the res set in the Monitors dialog. So the initial res is detected properly by the driver.

Thanks, Bartosz!

As of the last couple of days, after updating packages, it appears that the screen resolution of 1024x768 is set automatically when X starts. So this fix has been checked in to the repositories.

Also, switching to/from text modes seems to work. However:

There is an oddity about switching back from a text console to X: using Alt-F7 just switches to a blank screen with "[ OK ]" in the upper-right corner, while Alt-F8 switches back to X. This is new behavior (to me).

As of today, there has been a regression: in the absence of an xorg.conf file, the initial resolution is again set to 1600x1200. It's possible to use the Monitors dialog to set the res. to 1024x768, but before that is done, the login screen's bottom panel is inaccessible, so that the GUI mode can't be set. I am now using xorg.conf again, but this is not a good solution, as it requires an expert to create it.

I'm attaching a tar file with a list of current packages, xorg.conf, and various versions of Xorg.0.log, with and without xorg.conf. Note that by the time I saved the Xorg.0.* files, I had already set the screen res with the Monitors dialog.

Hi Peter.

Please make sure that you are using the latest openchrome version.
Try to build/install from openchrome.org website.

Please check if the XVideo is works with your LCD panel.

Hi Bartosz - Oops! I didn't see your last update until just now. However, the fix seems to have been checked in; when I updated this morning, the resolution seemed to be correct, 1024x768.

Thank you!

Finally set up Gnome in Lucid ( 10.4 LTS ) on the Averatec 3280.

It still has the improper log in display ( GDM ) with the wrong default screen size ( 1600x1200 ). However, there is enough screen showing to log in in the lower right side. Once inside as ROOT, I can force the 1024x768 for the default Gnome session in hardware ( Monitor to be exact ) and ONLY the session is repaired, the log in screen remain the same.

I also note that the MONITOR window indicates the monitor is UNKNOWN and detect cannot find the 1024x768 LCD display.

Recommendations to repair the GDM log in screen? I now have an extra Averatec 3280 to play with...

Aeb1barfo - so far the fixes that appear in 11.04 "natty" haven't been backported to 10.04 LTS - I think there is one more point release of the LTS, but don't know if this has enough priority for anyone to actually fix it. For now, post-installation repairs like installing an xorg.conf file may be the only way to get the login screen right.

I am now running Xubuntu 11.10 beta-2 on my Averatec laptop, and that works well. Previously it was working well with Ubuntu 11.04. So the repairs to the Openchrome driver are in those versions. Also I've run Ubuntu 11.10 (about alpha-2) from a live CD, but didn't install it, since I don't like Unity at all.