[K12OSN] Re: video cards

[Dave Prentice]

>Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 10:45:00 -0500
>From: "Burt Carter" <bcarter at jchs.com>
>Subject: [K12OSN] video cards
>Message-ID: <200502211045.AA1140523040 at mail.jchs.com>
>Hello Everyone,
>I have just setup LTSP on RedHat ES 3.  Everthing appears to run
fine.  However, I have about 100 really old machines that use the
Cirrus 5446 Video Chip on their video cards.  If I install FC 2 on one
of these boxes (They don't meet minimum requirements to run ES 3) it
recognizes the card and all run wells.  When I boot one to the LTSP
server everyting goes fine until X starts and I get an errror message
saying "xserver failed".  Is this card not supported in ES 3?  I took
the xorg.conf file in the /etc/X11 directory and copied the video
Device Section over to the XF86Config file on the ES 3 Server.  Still
no luck. Any help would be appreciated.
>PS. I can change out the video card and everything works fine, but
was hoping to not have to spend any money.
>Burt Carter
>Technology Coordinator
>Jenkins County School System

Burt,
Last September I was having what sounds like a similar problem with
old Compaqs with Cirrus cards. Chris Thomas had the solution, which
follows.
Dave Prentice
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Thomas [mailto:cwt137 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tue 9/21/2004 11:18 AM
To: Support list for opensource software in schools.
Subject: RE: [K12OSN] X & cirrus cards
<snip>
First, go to the lts.conf file and put in the [default] section
'SCREEN_02   = shell' (without the
quotes). and save it.
Second, start one of the troubled cirrus PCs and when X fails, press
Alt-Ctrl-F2 (or F1, I don't remember)
to get to the prompt. At the prompt, type 'cat /proc/bus/pci/devices'
This will give you a whole bunch of numbers. The numbers in the second
column are pci ids. Copy the 8-digit number that starts with 1013.
This is the cirrus card.
Next, open up the vidlist file, its in the same directory as the
lts.conf file. Go down to the cirrus
section. Find the number you wrote down. Change the driver from whatev
er it says to 'cirrus'. Save it.
Make sure your lts.conf file has 'XSERVER = auto' so the other 75% of
the computers will work. Restart the
troubled terminal and it should work.
<snip>
Chris