[Not] Solving "The system is running in low graphic mode" on boot...

Followed the directions at http://askubuntu.com/questions/141606/how-to-fix-the-system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode-error:

1. Used Control-Alt-F1 to get an alternate terminal and log in.
2. sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
3. sudo reboot

Update: Well, this didn't work. Next time I booted, I had the same problem...

Ubuntu 11.10 install: Hanging at "Checking Battery Status"

I started by doing an upgrade of my 10.04 system to 11.10, but ran into the dreaded hang on boot at "Checking for battery Status".

Turns out this has nothing to do with a battery (mine is a desktop system), this is just where boot hangs if you have video driver problems.

After trying many, many, many, many, many, many, things, including a fresh install, here's what finally got it working for me...

It was the combination of this post:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm xorg

And this post:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-* 
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r' 
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current   
sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo apt-get update
echo options nouveau modeset=0 | sudo tee --append /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf
echo RUN+="/sbin/modprobe nvidia" | sudo tee --append /etc/udev/rules.d/90-modprobe.rules
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot

What I actually ended up doing was the gdm and xorg reinstall from the first post, then the second post and then the first post again.

I suspect I could have just done second post followed by first post, but haven't done a clear re-install to try it.

Disabling Monitor Power Saver

Update October 25, 2008: I've made improvements on what I describe in this post - please see this later post.

So after upgraded to Hardy Heron I'm having an annoying problem that the system keeps putting the monitor into power save mode after a couple hours. This is a problem because I turn on the monitor with my remote but I still have to go hit a key on the keyboard to then use MythTV. Not ideal. It's definitely power saving (as opposed to a screen saver) since the monitor goes into a power-off mode with the power LED blinking.

First thing I did was check System/Preferences/Power Management. But both "Put computer to sleep when inactive for:" and "Put display to sleep when inactive for:" were set to Never.

So, I tried the directions here for installing bum. A couple of notes:

• After installing the Bootup Manager, you'll find it under System Administration
• The Gnome-Power-Manager is just called Power Manager.

Then I rebooted and still no luck, after a couple of hours the monitor is asleep again.

Poking around on the web, I found this useful page on screen blanking under X. I verified that I can reproduce the screen blanking I'm experiencing with the following command:

% sleep 1; xset dpms force off

So, I poked a little deeper at my settings. I believe the "0" values indicate that X shouldn't be turning the monitor off:

% xset q
...
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standyby: 0 Suspend: 0 Off: 0
DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is On
...

But I pushed ahead and next I tried turning off dpms:

% xset -dpms

That seemed to do the trick! Several hours have passed and the screen is still awake.

Ok, now how do I make it permanent. I launched System/Preferences/Sessions. Then I clicked on "Add". For Name I put "Disable DPMS", for Command "xset -dpms" and left Comment blank. Clicked on OK and then Close and then I rebooted the system (I probably could have just logged out and back in, but I like to make sure things work from a boot).

And that seems to have worked, at least 'xset q' now shows DPMS as disabled. Hopefully that ends this tale.

Outputting MythTV to my AV System

My next step was getting my PC hooked up to my AV system (a Denon AVR-3805 connected to a Dell 2300MP projector). I ordered a Sewell VGA to component adaptor, which is working fairly well, with a few caveats, the main one being I've only got it working at 1024x768@75 Hz and normal windows from the PC look like crap honestly, but MythTV looks fine. This is good enough for my purposes but I don't expect to be web browsing through my home entertainment system. Supposedly the adaptor should take 1280x1024@60Hz, but I can't seem to get my PC to output @60Hz no matter what I try, including adding the following to the Monitor section of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

# V-freq: 60.00 Hz // h-freq: 63.73 KHz
Modeline "1280x1024" 109.62 1280 1336 1472 1720 1024 1024 1026 1062

One nice plus of the adaptor is that it comes with a cable with a built in VGA splitter so it can drive both my regular LCD monitor and my AV system.

It also comes with a remote, I guess so that if you have to mount it near a projector or some place hard to reach.

But all-in-all I'm very happy and I'm now watching MythTV on my 8-ft projection screen.

The remote is still not working the way I'd like, but that's "to be continued..."

Ubuntu Video Performance Woes

I had been noticing poor video performance since I first installed Ubuntu (very similar to what clinto describes here), but with MythTV it was really annoying. So it was time to address that.

Looking at the specs for my PC, I saw that I had a Integrated NVIDIA Quadro^® NVS 210S Graphics card. But looking at the video card configuration in at /etc/X11/xorig.conf, I saw that my configuration was for a generic video card:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "vesa"
BusID "PCI:0:5:0"
EndSection

So I poked around for how to install NVIDIA drivers and came across the appropriate section in the Ubuntu Guide. I followed the steps to install and configure the drivers:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-common

sudo nvidia-xconfig

I tried to restart gdm using /etc/init.d/gdm restart, but then I had no mouse pointer, so I rebooted the system and all seemed fine. Video at this point seemed very smooth and MythTV looked great.

Subsequent directions in the Ubuntu guide talked about configuring XvMC. They seemed to assume that /etc/X11/XvMCConfig didn't exist, but I already had such a file with the following line in it:

libXvMC.so.1

I went ahead and replaced with it with the following (after making sure such a library existed in /usr/lib):

libXvMCNVIDIA_dynamic.so.1

But then:

# xine -V xxmc filename.ts
bash: xine: command not found

So at this point I put XvMC on the back burner.

Next thing was get get the X configuration for my monitor right. I found the specification for my Dell E193FP LCD and then ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg entering the values from the monitor specification.

# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then I rebooted.

At this point all looked great. 1280x1024 resolution (ok, not great but as good as this LCD display was going to get) and video was nice and smooth.