Bad video card selection on LiveCD boot when there is more than one to choose from
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| xorg (Ubuntu) |
Triaged
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
My PC has both an AGP and a PCI video card so that I can run three monitors. I have a 17" CRT and a 17" LCD connected to the AGP card, and an ancient 12" VGA CRT connected to the PCI card.
When booting the edgy kubuntu LiveCD, it intially correctly selects the AGP card for its primary display, cloning the image on both the 17" monitors and leaving the PCI card deactivated. However, once it attempts to start X, the PCI card is not only initialized (I see the VGA BIOS string on the 12" monitor, something I am most unused to), but used exclusively.
This is a problem for several reasons:
1. As I mentioned, the 12" monitor is a VGA unit, and therefore supports at most 640x480 at 60Hz. No matter what I select as a video mode at the boot screen, a bad refresh rate is selected and I get garbage across the tiny display. I am puzzled as to why I am unable to specify a refresh rate.
2. The AGP card is set in my BIOS as the primary display device. Leaving it unused (if not deactivated) is a puzzling choice on behalf of the software.
3. As I am unable to get a usable GUI, I can't even play with kubuntu to see if I will like it, much less install it.
I suspect that the hardware detection scripts are giving preference to the PCI card because it has been discovered second. I have not had this problem with other LiveCD-based distributions (e.g., KNOPPIX).
I am willing to provide anything further that is requsted (for example, the output of an lspci command); please contact me for that information.
| Eric G Rothoff (erothoff) wrote | #1 |
| Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in xorg: | |
| status: | New → Triaged |
I have a simular problem with installing Xubuntu and Ubuntu on a system with an internal Video card, and a PCI video card. It will only pick up and find the internal video card. I have been able to manually configure X to use the PCI card rather than the internal, but it would be nice to have X reconize both cards, and to give options on how we want them set up. (I don't use the internal video card, so for me, I would disable it. The original poster of this thread would perfer to have both active. (I think it would use extra RAM and CPU, so I wouldn't want that as a default, just an option.
If I can give any further assistance, please let me know.