Change of videocard

[technossomy]

I have a machine with Ubuntu 5.10 installed. Because of a change in display monitor (from CRT to TFT), I decided to change the videocard as well: from an ATI card to a Matrox 64 bit. One would hazard a guess that Ubuntu would swimmingly change from one card to the other without complaint, but no such thing. The OS asks if I want to diagnose the problem for not showing X graphical interface, but when I do login, no diagnostic screen comes up. So I went for a reinstall, but instead of reading from CD (which by the way I can hear occassionally spinning) it will just start the existing OS. What can I do to remedy this problem?

Thanks in advance


Tech

[deltaflyer]

might sound silly,but,have you checked that the option to boot from cd is selected in your bios ?

andy

[techieMoe]

Is your computer set to boot from the CDROM? Also, unless you're using the generic VESA driver for your X Windows, you will definitely have to reconfigure it after changing out your video card, since there are different X drivers for different brands.

One way to do this without reinstalling is to log in as root (since you can't in Ubuntu by default, use sudo instead) and run "xorgconfig":

sudo xorgconfig
Password: <Your regular user password>

You'll get a series of prompts asking you things like what your monitor's top resolution is, what type of display card you have, what default color depth you want (usually 24), etc.

[technossomy]

Thanks for your responses. I suppose that I should be editing xorg.conf, as xorgconfig is an unknown command in Ubuntu? The applicable entries there are Monitor and Device which now list the name and card for the former monitor. How exactly do I change these as I suspect the setting must be matching exactly?

Colordepth was at 24 already, by the way.

Thanks in advance


EDITED: I am just running through http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man5/xorg.conf.5x.php for more background information and will delete this line if problems persist.

[techieMoe]

Thanks for your responses. I suppose that I should be editing xorg.conf, as xorgconfig is an unknown command in Ubuntu?

Ah yes, Ubuntu. How do I loathe thee. Let me count the coasters. *ahem* Are you sure there isn't any type of configuration program? Perhaps spelled differently? xorgcfg, xorgconf, or even xf86config? You can of course just edit your existing xorg.conf by hand... it's just a lot easier for a new user to run one of the utilities that generates it for you.

The applicable entries there are Monitor and Device which now list the name and card for the former monitor. How exactly do I change these as I suspect the setting must be matching exactly?

There should be a line in your "Device" section (where your video card is described) called Driver. It should look something like this:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Some Card"
    Driver      "radeon"
#    Vendorname  "Unknown"
#    Boardname   "Unknown"
EndSection

Change "radeon" (or whatever it says) to something else. For basic 2D stuff, "vesa" should work. If you want one specific to matrox, I know there's a driver but I don't know what it's called, perhaps just "matrox".

[technossomy]

Thanks for your response, techieMoe. I have tried to sudo each of those commands and none seem to exist. I will continue to search for it, but any help from you or those in the know is much appreciated.


Tech

[techieMoe]

Thanks for your response, techieMoe. I have tried to sudo each of those commands and none seem to exist. I will continue to search for it, but any help from you or those in the know is much appreciated.


Tech

According to the searches I've done, xorgconfig should exist on your system. Are you typing it correctly? Is "sudo" messing it up? Have you tried running xorgconfig without sudo in front of it? (You won't be able to save your results but at least it will determine whether or not the command exists.)

[technossomy]

Thanks again. I have tried various combinations and the command does not appear to exist, as also 'man' indicates. Various other threads in this forum suggest that a manual edit of the xorg.conf file is the way to go, even though very un-Ubuntu. I'll give that a try and report back if any problems.

Tech

[technossomy]

That didn't do a iota for me. I still have a backup of the original xorg.conf, although it is unlikely that it will make a difference at this point. I must be trying to achieve something unlikely simple here, as there is almost no information as to what changes I should make. Does anyone know what to change in the xorg.conf file when just having a new videocard and new monitor?

Tech

[lestoil]

To change xorg.conf try gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Try help.ubuntu.com/starterguide at ubuntu forums for more details. Good luck.