Trisquel 8 install didn't detect my monitor, gave wrong resolution.

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BuckO'Bryan
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Is there a program that will re-check installed hardware, or another way to fix this? Its an Acer G246HYL

Magic Banana

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What is your video card? You can try to install a more recent kernel. Trisquel's repository has some 4.8 kernels but you can install an even more recent kernel from jxself's APT repository for Linux-libre (instructions on the page): https://jxself.org/linux-libre/

BuckO'Bryan
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Hi again Magic Banana.

THE PROBLEM I MENTIONED ABOVE MIGHT NOT MATTER NOW BECAUSE:

1. Yesterday Sept.11, I bought an older & smaller monitor, and Trisquel's default resolution setting (1024x768 & 76 Hz) - which I still can't change - DOES work alright, as far as I can tell at this point.
2. There may or may not be some problem with by motherboard's built in video.

Hmm... just realized, so many Trisquel users have tried to help with this that I
I should put this as a reply to my own original request for help... there will be more info there if you're interested.

BuckO'Bryan
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Double hmmm... just discovered I can't Reply to my own 1st entry! SO...

Thank you EVERYBODY WHO HAS HELPED & TRIED TO HELP! As just stated to Magic B...
THE PROBLEM I MENTIONED ABOVE MIGHT NOT MATTER NOW BECAUSE:

- I'm Now using a smaller/older monitor that seems to work fine
- there may or may not be a problem with my motherboard's built-in video, But...
- I'll at least read offered help, & if I can apply it easily, will give it a try. - I won't attempt complex solutions that are way over my head, but thank you anyway to those who offered some!

HOWEVER..I'm still wanting to know:

1. IS there a program which one can run, or re-run, after installing Trisquel (or probably any GNU/Linux distro) that will re-check one's computer system to detect something that is either newly added, or perhaps not detected - for whatever reason - during the installation? __________
2. Does the installation process create a LOG file of its own complete process?__
IF so, what is its filename?______ and where can one find it?______ and, if its not a plain text file, what program does one use to read it?______
The answers to those questions might help a LOT of us less skilled users to maybe answer some questions for ourselves, or at least help us provide YOU more skilled users with more useful info.

- I'll add a few comments to Replies below that are specific to those replies, &/or just to update or correct any info I've stated below. BUT I'll do so more for respect, and "interest", than any need for continued "Help" with this.

I really AM grateful that so many of YOU have HELPED, or at least tried to. Some of the more techy stuff that I can't use may still be helpful for someone with similar problems who reads replies here.

chaosmonk

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> Trisquel's
> default resolution setting (1024x768 & 76 Hz) - which I still can't change -

What is the output of

$ xrandr

BuckO'Bryan
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Thanks for the suggestion Magic Banana, but I don't need a newer kernel. My computer is 12 yr. old, built-in video on motherboard; monitor about 2 1/2 yr. Monitor has been recognized by previous GNU/Linux installs, even brand and model # were detected, by Debian actually. DO you know name of program, or a verbatim cmd, that will re-check my system? I used Trisquel 5 & 6, really liked them, had problems with 7, switched to Debian, now back to Trisquel. Seems I'll really like Trisquel 8, IF I can get it to recognize my monitor. Hmm, I'm seeing another problem though even as I slowly type... I have to keep waiting for words to catch up. I'm not good at all using the cmd line, so I still can't use it much..had to use "Guided Installation" and I seee it created small (388 MB) SWAP,though Deb had created 1.2 on a previous install. I have 512 Ram.

Magic Banana

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I doubt the problem is with the monitor but rather with the video card. The kernel is responsible for the abstraction of the hardware. Trying a newer kernel is easy and may solve your problem. After all, it could be related to a change in Trisquel's configuration of the kernel, a change that the Linux-libre project may have not made.

512 MB of RAM is really little, nowadays. You basically cannot browse the modern Web with that little. Don't you have US$ 30 (or so) to put on one or two additional GB? If not (and if you do not want to browse the modern Web), then you can consider http://connochaetos.org which is 100% free software, according to its author who recommends a Pentium IV class processor and 256 GB of RAM for a full "user experience".

BuckO'Bryan
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I bought 2 1GB RAM modules yesterday, along with that new/used smaller monitor. Also belated realized that probably of the previous modules (a 512 & 1 !GB), only the 512 had been working! Bought them at a store that sells recycled computers etc.

jxself
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Like Magic says it's probably not the monitor itself. lspci should say something about the graphics hardware on the motherboard. This is important information to know.

BuckO'Bryan
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Thank you both, Magic B and jxself! I didn't just take heed the first time, because I "thought" points I mentioned lead to "other"solutions. Now that you have both commented, I just remembered seeing some Warning info about some "SIS" hardware or driver NOT being detected during the install process. My motherboard is 760GX-M, and under "Chipset" it says:
-SOS760GX (NB) & SIS964 (SB)
& Under "Graphics" the User Guide says:
-Built-in 32-bit bit floating point format VLIW triangle setup engine
-Built-in 1T pipelined 128-bit BITBLT graphics engine
-Built-in high quality 3D engine
-Supports up to 4 textures.

I've had older kernels in Debian deal with this same system (comp & monitor) well in the past. Yesterday I updated via Trisquels recommended site. SO, in view of my new, and previous info... DO either or both of you recommend another approach to resolving the problem? i'm somewhere in the "intermediate" range as far as IT knowledge & experience... but I just can't remember a bunch of "commands", so as much as possible have to work with menus.

IF Triquel's default Settings will have saved a log file with that installation Warning?____:
1.if I can find & copy relevant portions, would that help you (either) identify the resolution problem?
2. IF either of you are OK with helping me further, what info could I provide that is most likely to be useful?
3. I don't know what "Ispci" is, or where to find it. I'll Search web for "ispci" in mean time... see if I can figure out more for myself
Thank YOU BOTH, very much! Your prompt replies remind me of previous helpful feedback in this Forum afew years ago, when I used earlier ver of Trisquel.

loldier
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'lspci' is a terminal command. Type it in terminal and hit enter. It'll tell you what the PCI cards are.

BuckO'Bryan
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Thank you too! Right after writing my previous reply, checked Wikepedia & found that out. I hadn't suspected it was just a simple cmd! Anyway, tried it. And a screenshot of the result is attached. Hope all above info enables someone to tell me how to get that monitor recognized & resolution fixed.

Scrn,Lspci results.png
Magic Banana

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The last line of lspci's output confirms what you wrote: your computer has a rather uncommon SiS video card. It would therefore not be surprising if Trisquel's kernel configuration mistakenly does not fully support the card and that you are the first one to face the problem. Again, I would try a kernel on https://jxself.org/linux-libre/ and see.

jxself
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That screenshot was very helpful. This helps to confirm that it is indeed not a kernel problem but with X.

BuckO'Bryan: I'm going to do some speculation here which, if true, will help to confirm what I am thinking. You said before that things worked fine with Debian. Am I correct in thinking that you were using Debian 7 (Wheezy) or older? This will help to confirm something.

Also, can you please try this and provide the output?

lsmod | grep sis | sed -re 's#^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]*) *.*#\1#g' | xargs modinfo | grep 'filename:'

BuckO'Bryan
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Thanks again jxself. I copied that cmd verbatim, pasted it in a terminal, and the result, just 2 lines, is:
filename:/lib/modules/4.4.0-134-generic/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-sis630.ko
filename:/lib/modules/4.4.0-134-generic/kernel/drivers/ata/sata_sis.ko

That's interesting because:
1. when I re-ran Trisquel from DVD, I saw a Warning "Sis 630 bus not detected, module not inserted"
2.In my motherboard (ECS Elitegroup 760GX-M) User Manual, list of mothebrd components "SiS 630" is not even mentioned.
SO, I don't know if that indicates that some of built-in SiS stuff insn't working, or not. If you'd care to comment on that, I'd be interested to know...

HOWEVER, THIS PROBLEM MIGHT NOT MATTER BECAUSE: Please see the Reply I'll enter to Magic Banana's 1st Reply to me...I don't want to be wasting anybody's time.

jxself
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You're not wasting anyone's time. aloniv already posted the solution in #19.

BuckO'Bryan
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jxself...Sorry I forgot to answer your ?
"Am I correct in thinking that you were using Debian 7 (Wheezy) or older? This will help to confirm something."
YES! Correct!
Also, earlier today I discovered that the same Trisquel 8 DVD used in my main computer (slightly newer, better & more powerful CPU) but with that same monitor - had no trouble correctly identifying Brand, model, and its preferred resolution!

SO, in case it would improve picture quality, or at least options for this other monitor... Is there some relatively easy way to get Trisquel 8 to be able to identify it/work with my old Sis built-in?
If that solution might/would cause other problems with software, then I'm OK with leaving this as is.

aloniv

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The issue might be that the package xserver-xorg-video-sis is missing in the Ubuntu release on which Trisquel 8 is based (16.04) but appears in the Ubuntu release on which Trisquel 7 is based (14.04) as you can see here:

https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=xserver-xorg-video-sis

Have you tried Trisquel 7 to see if this package is the cause of your issues? If so, you might need to compile it manually in Trisquel 8.

P.S. I compiled a free driver that was removed in a newer version of Trisquel in the past and reported how to do it here.

https://trisquel.info/en/issues/10050

You might need to do something similar as well.

jxself
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It's not just missing from Ubuntu but from Debian too starting with Debian 8 (Jessie.)

aloniv

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It's not just missing from Ubuntu but from Debian too starting with Debian 8 (Jessie.)

And that is why people using SIS graphics cannot upgrade to Debian Jessie, as reported for instance in this post:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=133773

BuckO'Bryan
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I had other problems with Trisquel 7 - only thing I recall now is that Synaptic didn't work for me, and I didn't want to do without it - SO I switched back to Debian till Trisquel 8 was released.

I don't know how to "compile" anything. I have no programming experience at all, and can't even remember or keep track of enough cmds to make much use of a terminal, except when someone tells me the verbatim cmd(s) and I can just paste them in.

As I've mentioned in today's replies to others... I'm now using a different monitor, for which Trisquel's default setting works, though it (the monitor) can't be identified so far.

Thanks for the offered help, but if I get in over my head it might cause more serious problems than I have now.

aloniv

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The last post in this thread will probably solve the issue for the OP (these are instructions regarding compilation of SIS driver from source):

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2371684
sudo apt-get install build-essential xorg-dev xutils-dev automake libtool
cd ~/ #or whatever directory you want to use for this build
wget http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2
tar -xjf xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2
cd xf86-video-sis-0.10.9/
autoconf
automake
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Instead of "sudo make install" you can run "sudo checkinstall" to create a Debian package which can be easily removed later - you will need to install the checkinstall package first for this method to work.

BuckO'Bryan
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Hmmm... pardon me for asking a few more questions:

1. If I paste everything in that yellow box above into a terminal, would that compile some driver (and/or whatever) that could probably identify my current monitor?_____
2. Is there much risk of it messing up other stuff?____
3. IF the answer to ?#1 is YES, and answer to ?#2 is NO, THEN...
4. IF I use "cd ~/" would that work with Trisquel's basic response to the installation selection of "install along with existing OS"?____

Regarding the comment "#or whatever directory you want to use for this build"... I wouldn't know what to choose if I had to fill in any techy details myself. I do make specific choices where Menu options are offered; but have aborted or re-done MANY installations of various versions of: Ubuntu, Debian, and Trisquel - and 1 try at GNU-Sense...

loldier
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You can choose whichever directory/folder you wish. Cd means 'change directory'. ~/ is your home directory.

The yellow box has multiple commands which must be executed line by line.

#edit#
Spelling

Magic Banana

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  1. As loldier wrote: paste every line, one by one, in the terminal and press [Enter] after each line to execute it; in that way, if an error is printed, we can know what command failed (show us the error!).
  2. No, only the last command affects the system, installing the SiS driver that the previous commands build.
  3. Those are the answers, indeed.
  4. That 'cd' (which means "Change Directory") does not matter much: it is the folder where the 'wget' command will download http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2 , where the 'tar' command will uncompress it and where the subsequent commands (but the last) will build the driver that 'sudo make install' will finally install.

If the terminal scares you (it should not), you can do the first steps graphically:
#graphically: install the packages "build-essential", "xorg-dev", "xutils-dev", "automake" and "libtool", for instance using the "Synaptic Package Manager";
#graphically: download http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2 clicking on that link now;
#graphically: using your file browser, open the folder where the "xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2" archive was downloaded (a folder named "Download", I guess);
#graphically: right-click on that archive to open the contextual menu that should propose you to "uncompress" (or whatever it is called) the archive: do so;
#graphically: right-click on the newly created "xf86-video-sis-0.10.9" to open the contextual menu that should propose you to "open in a terminal" (or whatever it is called): do so and execute, one by one, the following commands in the terminal;
autoconf
automake
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
#graphically (optional): you can close the terminal and, using the [Del] key in your file browser (for instance), you can remove the "xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2" archive and the "xf86-video-sis-0.10.9" folder: you will not need them anymore (if everything went well above).

Do you see why commands are better instructions? They are shorter, they do not include words like "I guess", "should" and "or whatever it is called", which are kind of mandatory in instructions involving graphical interfaces: the exact instruction depend on the exact version of your desktop environment of choice.

chaosmonk

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I understand that the terminal is intimidating at first, especially if you don't understand what the commands are doing. Magic Banana already covered some of this, but here's an explanation of what each command does. I'm also adding in a few extra lines to help you understand what's happening. Hopefully that will make you feel more comfortable running them.

sudo apt-get install build-essential xorg-dev xutils-dev automake libtool

This installs the packages build-essential, xorg-dev, xutils-dev, automake, and libtool. The graphical equivalent would be to search for each package individually in Synaptic and installing them. Since installing software requires more privileges than a regular user, we need to begin the command with 'sudo', which means "superuser do" (do this as superuser). The use of 'sudo' is why you need to type your password.

cd ~/ #or whatever directory you want to use for this build

"cd" means "change directory." It is the graphical equivalent of double clicking on a directory in your file manager.

echo ~/

"echo" prints back your command to the terminal. In this case, it will print not '~/' but '/home/[user]', revealing that '~' is just a shorter way to refer to your home directory. Therefore 'cd ~/' takes you to your home directory. Your home directory is where you begin when you open a new terminal, so you only need this line if you want to build somewhere else.

echo #comment

There output is blank, because a '#' and everything following it is a comment and gets ignored, so you actually don't have to delete aloniv's comment when you paste that line into the terminal.

ls

'ls' lists the contents of the current directory. If you are in your home folder you should see Documents, Downloads, Music, etc.

wget http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2

"wget" followed by a URL downloads whatever is at that that URL. It is quite useful for large downloads or an unstable internet connection, because if your download is interrupted you can use 'wget -c [URL]' to continue the download where it left off. (The 'c' option means "continue.")

ls

This will print the contents of the current directory again. You'll see that the file we downloaded, xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2, is now listed.

tar -xjf xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2

A .tar.bz file is a compressed archive. The 'tar' command extracts it. the 'x' option means extract. The 'j' option means that the compression format is bzip2 (which we know from the .bz2 extension). The 'f' means that the next part of the command is the file we want to extract.

ls

This will list the contents of the current directory again. You'll see that the previous command create a directory called 'xf86-video-sis-0.10.9'

cd xf86-video-sis-0.10.9/

Change to the new directory.

autoconf
automake
./configure --prefix=/usr/local

These commands prepare to compile the program.

ls

Notice that the contents of this directory include a file called 'Makefile'

make

'make' compiles the program. 'make' gets its instructions for how to compile the program from the Makefile.

sudo make install

'make install' installs the program. 'make' also gets its instructions for how to install the program (which files go where?) from the Makefile. Since we are installing the program system-wide, we need to use 'sudo' again.

aloniv

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The instructions will compile and install the sis driver that is missing from Trisquel 8 (but appears in older versions of Trisquel), so once installed your monitor should be recognized. You can always blacklist the driver at boot if it causes problems and then you can use the vesa driver instead (which is probably what you are using now as the sis graphics package is missing from your system).

If you run "cd ~/" you will compile the driver in your home directory. If you want to compile it somewhere else then just cd (change directory) to that directory instead. To build in home directory just remove this text "#or whatever directory you want to use for this build".