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ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktop fresh install hangs on boot from disk

It is disappointing that the Installation program found working video drivers in best resolution, but the installed product cannot operate the video adapter it appears.

hardware is Dell poweredge T410, 64GB ram, 2 x Xeon E5620. graphics is Matrox G200EW (which is the integrated video adapter).

Previously the same machine was successfully running Centos 7.7 and other linux distros (fedora, RHEL etc) without issues. So the Redhat and derivative distros currently include a driver for 1024x768x24 video.

Ubuntu desktop 20.04 Installed successfully and easily from DVD, but on the first boot from SAS disk, after displaying the ubuntu logo, the screen goes to the default ubuntu purple colour, shows a mouse pointer (which does not move), and then hangs. Control-Alt-F1 etc does not react. There are no visible error messages on screen.

Only a cold boot can exit this. At installation I tried with and without 'include proprietary drivers', makes no difference to hang symptom.

From the grub recovery options I can get a root shell.

UPDATE, in a root shell in recovery mode:

In the /var/log/Xorg.*.log file I found:

(EE) Failed to load module "mga"

I don't know why the installation program did not install an MGA driver so I tried to manually install it:

apt install xserver-xorg-video-mga

X -configure

(noticed that this configure action autodetected the correct monitor, per the /root/xorg.conf.new).

cp /root/xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

On reboot, the same symptom , but this time the /var/log/Xorg.log.* had a new message:

EE MGA(0) : [drm] Direct rendering only supported with G200/G400/G450/G550.

But lspci | grep MGA shows G200ew so the driver is not recognizing the card it seems.

I tried also editing the xorg.conf to use driver "vesa" instead of "mga" as suggested elsewhere but this did not change the symptom, although I am unsure if my steps were correct.

Looks like I cannot use 20.04 on this box as support for this old video adapter in the Xorg drivers has been dropped or crippled, although a functional driver is present in other current distros that work on this hardware.

Any suggestions?

mao
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3 Answers3

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Make sure the xorg mga driver is uninstalled, boot in recovery and modify /etc/gdm3/custom.conf. You need to uncomment the line near de beginning that disable Wayland. The mgag200 driver is included in the kernel and works with xserver-xorg-video-modesetting (included core xorg driver.

The xorg mga driver is not meant to be used with those integrated chipset.

Exos
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Normally, you should use de mgag200 kernel modestting driver with the xorg modeset driver.

However there seems to be a problem with this configuration in 20.04. It does freeze when loading up gdm3. Keyboard and mouse goes totally unresponsive with a blank screen. But if you have ssh active and go
service stop gdm3, after some seconds, the cursor should appear and you can Ctrl+Alt+F2 and get a working console so I do not think the kernel driver is to blame.

Kevin Bowen
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Exos
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I have two workarounds:
1) You can set nomodeset in the kernel boot options, which will allow your system to boot, but will force you to low resolutions. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

2) You can use recovery mode to install SSH. Then you can manually restart gdm3 on every bootup with the following command:

sudo service gdm3 restart

This is because, at least for me on my Dell Poweredge R420, gdm3 starts on every other startup. Your graphics adapter is slightly different than mine, so it may or may not work.

See the bugreport against Ubuntu for this issue that I filed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/1878252

FYI, for me, the steps you provided to install the mga driver resolve all of the boot time errors in Xorg.0.log, but still don't make the graphics driver work.

When I ran those steps, I did get errors from the X -configure job:

Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices. Configuration failed.

However, these errors didn't prevent the display from working. It also doesn't seem to matter if I have an xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 at all.

Here's the output from Xorg.0.log on a successful startup:

[   551.616] (II) MGA: driver for Matrox chipsets: mga2064w, mga1064sg, mga2164w,
        mga2164w AGP, mgag100, mgag100 PCI, mgag200, mgag200 PCI,
        mgag200 SE A PCI, mgag200 SE B PCI, mgag200 EV Maxim,
        mgag200 ER SH7757, mgag200 eW Nuvoton, mgag200 eW3 Nuvoton,
        mgag200eH, mgag200eH3, mgag400, mgag550
[   551.617] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms
[   551.617] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev
[   551.617] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
[   551.698] (++) Using config file: "/root/xorg.conf.new"
[   551.698] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
[   551.711] (==) ServerLayout "X.org Configured"
[   551.711] (**) |-->Screen "Screen0" (0)
[   551.711] (**) |   |-->Monitor "Monitor0"
[   551.711] (**) |   |-->Device "Card0"
[   551.711] (**) |-->Input Device "Mouse0"
[   551.711] (**) |-->Input Device "Keyboard0"
[   551.711] (==) Automatically adding devices
[   551.711] (==) Automatically enabling devices
[   551.711] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices
[   551.711] (==) Automatically binding GPU devices
[   551.712] (==) Max clients allowed: 256, resource mask: 0x1fffff
Kyle Tinker
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