azruial

Hi, I just built a new system and installed Gentoo. I'm using the system as a personal file/backup server and I would also like to set it up as a htpc (since all my music and movies will be stored there anyway). I bought the Gigabyte S-series EG45M-DS2H MoBo with Intel's G45 graphics chipset because I like the onboard HDMI interface.

Before I purchased, I read that Intel's newest drivers were updated to include support for this chipset, so I downloaded and installed xf86-video-intel 2.4.2 from Intel Linux Graphics: Downloads. It took some fiddling, but I got 'make && make install' to run without any errors. However, when I put Driver "intel" into my xorg.conf, I get "
(WW) intel: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:2:1) found
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found"
as if the drivers don't support my chipset. Now I'm a bit confused, did the ones I downloaded need a different prefix set for make install? Do I need to get a newer version of X? (I have the latest unmasked x86 from gentoo portage) Do I need to remove something from my kernel in order to make way for the newer intel drivers?
I noticed in the Xorg.0.log that "Intel Corporation unknown chipset" shows up on both PCI:0:2:1 and :0, I have tried using both in the BusID option.

Thanks for any input. I have some experience around linux but I still consider myself a newbie.

My logs can be seen at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/brysons/logs/Xorg.0.log and http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/brysons/logs/xorg.conf

azruial

The intel driver package was not installing itself to the correct location. A more thorough look at the xorg log made this painfully clear x.x

Copied it over, and everything worked.

abandonow

Do you still have no problem with this setup? Because I got the same motherboard, and the same plan as you with a HTPC.

I cant run X with acceleration without it crashing after a short while.

Running xubuntu 8.10 beta, with kernel 2.6.27-5. Intel driver 2.4.2.

Afaik this is an bug/issue with the intel driver.

azruial

Same here, altho it is a completely separate issue from the one that I initially posted. Hard crash with no logs that I can find after a few minutes of running X. If you don't start X, then it'll run fine (had mine up for 10 days continuously. But within an hour of starting X it dies. I also assume it is a driver bug. I played with the kernel quite a bit and could not improve the situation, so I have sidelined this board until better support arrives.

I did not file a bug report because I could not find error logs or even come up with any solid method to repeat the issue, just start X... The only thing I noticed was that making the computer use the graphics chip seemed to make it crash faster, eg. playing a video fullscreen while you use the computer.

I also stress-tested without X running, doing ram tests, kernel re-compile loops etc. to try to make it die without the intel driver loaded, but again, I could not find any other cause than the driver. That is good news tho... support comes with time, and when it does this will be an awesome HTPC board!

abandonow

It's usually only my X that's crashing, I can't get up the commandline on my box, after an crash, but my system responds to ssh.

(I cant get commandline on my box if I quit X myself either, so that is another issue (seen other having the same too))

Anyways, I think a fix is on its way.

If you want to read more about it you can check out these threads:
[ubuntu] Intel GMA X4500HD woes (Intel G45 Chipset) - Ubuntu Forums
The Official Linux g45 chipset MoBo Thread - AVS Forum
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17460

I just hope the fix comes out sooner, rather than later.

azruial

Thanks for the update, good to know that it's out there.

My box responded to ssh with 'remote host is down' or something like that when I last tried the board, shortly after my first post. So it was alive to some extent, but sshd was not working and I couldn't get any response from the box itself.

I remember back when I used Ubuntu the screen would get garbled whenever I dropped out of X, but it was an easy fix from a little googling, good luck and hopefully we'll have a solution soon.