Description of problem: 2 problems seen. After burning live DVD and doing bootup.... memtest works ok. 1) run mageia live (use non-free display drivers) - stops at black screen with"_" and mouse runs as text-block. <ALT><F12> enables text screen. 2) run mageia (free display driver) - popup choice for selecting 2-monitors reached and can choose something but when reaches mageia welcome message plasma runs at the problematic choppy triangles and unable to go further. 3) run mageia install (non-free display drivers) - stops at black screen with "_" and mouse runs as text block. 4) run mageia install (free drivers) - ran default 800x600 mode, all menus ok, and continued until done, plus adding all updates. Results - mageia7 install appears ok. Seems to be similar problems seen before with mageia6 installer for 64bit and 32bit versions. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Mageia 7 Beta - DVD How reproducible: follow menus during bootup. All appears ok up to the 5 menu choices (menu screen with memtest). After this point run into menu problems. Running on Dell Precision 390. Steps to Reproduce: 1.bootup DVD upto screen that has 5 choices (memtest last choice) 2.choose to run mageia-live, or mageia install (with non-free drivers).
CC: (none) => marja11Assignee: bugsquad => isobuild
You don't mention what graphics hardware you have. Non-free drivers are only available for NVIDIA cards (and the nvidia304 driver is no longer supported, so not for all cards). Selecting non-free drivers adds the 'nokmsboot' kernel boot option, which is needed for the non-free drivers, but causes problems with some of the free drivers. The problems you see with Plasma and the free video driver is a Plasma/driver issue - nothing I can do about that when building ISOs.
CC: (none) => mageia
Hi Martin, too bad the plasma thing can't be resolved at the iso level. Running a live DVD looking like this is a bit of a turn-off and makes potential users think the full install may be bad too. Anything that gets the iso to the same patch level as the install will certainly help the live distro iso look better. okay... Running mageia6 now, think I had issues with install of 6.0 earlier too. ...Mageia Control Centre, have it directed to use nvidia GeForce 6100 to 7950. ...googling 6100...circa 2007...I guess this PC got a good run :-) reading bug 23876, I'm guessing you want varlog. I'll attach a mageia6 (32bit) log since it has the non-free driver - reading the log looks like it's an nvidia304.
Created attachment 10578 [details] /var/log/Xorg.0.log (mageia6-32bit)
Hi Joe, I'm afraid many users of old NVIDIA cards are going to have trouble with Mageia 7 because the nvidia304 driver is no longer available, and the nouveau driver doesn't work perfectly with all cards. There's not a lot we can do about this. NVIDIA no longer support the nvidia304 driver, so it doesn't work with the latest version of the X server. The nouveau driver developers are handicapped because NVIDIA don't release any information about their hardware. IIRC one of the QA team saw the same problem with Plasma as you do, and got round it by selecting the vesa driver instead of nouveau. Just edit the first boot menu entry and change "xdriver=free" to "xdriver=vesa" to see if this works for you.
One can also try the modesetting driver, meaning: xdriver=modesetting
CC: (none) => tmb
Created attachment 10583 [details] Mageia7 plasma on Xorg vesa I followed your recommendation and used Xorg->vesa. To get to this state... Not able to use live DVD. Had to go directly to Mageia 7 install to SSD. On bootup, plasma login failed and reverted to choppy triangles. Reboot, login to IceWM tried a couple of apps, some ok, some failed to launch. taskbar MCC lacked icons and also failed to launch. Started terminal to use su (note "su -" below) su - password: mcc changed display mode to Xorg->vesa save also loaded all mageia7 updates for extra assurance. reboot start login plasma, appeared ok and stable running on Xorg->vesa mcc, change display to nvidia default choice GeForce 600... reboot login plasma - screen back to black, and choppy triangles. logout login to IceWM and once again rn terminal, su -, and mcc to revert to Xorg->vesa reboot login to plasma again. stable as Xorg->vesa Seems solution is to run Xorg->vesa like in the past. I'll need to relearn setting monitor2 again. Attachment is screenshot of plasma on Xorg->vesa. taskbar seems to have a bug, but that's a different issue.
I also tried adding xdriver=modesetting during the live DVD phase, but that seemed not to help. Appears this PC is limited to only install and vesa.
Hello Joe, When having some triangles in Plasma (but Mageia 6), I had to change the compositer to Xrender instead of OpenGL. Thus, in IceWM, launch systemsettings5, Hardware-Display and monitor -> Compositer Nvidia card using nvidia304.
CC: (none) => yves.brungard_mageia
For the live boot, try adding the nokmsboot option as well as xdriver=vesa.
Hi Martin, on the DVD, I chose non-free, and it already listed nokmsboot, so I added xdriver=vesa after this. Bootup was fine and ran solid. No choice of extended or second display, but for the new user this is probably the choice giving no frustration. Hi papaoteur, There were more updates, therefore added those too incase something improved. I tried your suggestion. My impression is, there seems to be some hardware register or variable not getting initialized in the nvidia, so sometimes it comes out ok, other times not (get Mageia welcome screen, plus other windows that were remembered, but desktop is black, and taskbar is missing). I also had similar working and not working with OpenGL3.1. When I get a full desktop, I start getting the triangles, with one lucky time where it seemed everything worked ok. Seemed to behave slightly better than OpenGL2.0, but maybe just a matter of thinking it was. Again, I think there is something not setup or initialized correctly in the 304 driver. Occasionally, it also seemed like I could log out, and login better, or login into IceWM and then into plasma, but also displayed some random works, or not works. I thought trying something lesser than GeForce 600 would have a possibility, but it behaved similarly. Attempting to run an intel 810 driver failed (I think I had that work one time in the past with an older mageia...may have been another motherboard). Further checks on google, and there was mention of trying lightdm, so I began giving this a try, and turned-off sddm in "manage services", this brought up the text-mode with the text-box mouse. At this point pressed <ALT><F2>, login as root, then enter lightdm, which brought me to the login screen. IceWM worked ok, but plasma crashed at the point where we expect to see the Mageia welcome menu. vesa lacks eye candy, but it works.
this process reminds me of Mageia6.0. Initial 6.0 DVD was similarly buggy, but with later download patching, it was working...wonder if something in 6.1+patches needs to be imported.
It seems likely that Plasma is using some feature that the nouveau driver doesn't support properly. The QA team reported no problems when using Xfce. This may just have to go in the errata, with the xdriver=vesa workaround, but reassigning to the KDE team in case they can think of some settings to tweak to make Plasma work with the nouveau driver. We also need to make sure that the EOL of the nvidia304 driver is well publicised when we release Mageia 7. I think it should be in a blog post as well as in the errata.
Flags: (none) => in_errata7-Summary: Mageia7beta Live isos display problems on bootup => Plasma display problems when using nouveau driver on old NVIDIA GPUsAssignee: isobuild => kdeComponent: Installer => RPM Packages
Adding further plasma reference - in this case LXDM. https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12522 googling with Xrender I found earlier some suggestions to try with Kubuntu, but these did not help either. Seemed suggestions were to use other desktops, plus mention of sddm vs lightdm, maybe other alternatives. If you have room on the install DVD to enable another desktop it may provide an alternative (to sddm and the willingness to stay with the nvidia driver). If not, the vesa driver will probably give you the least grief. The errata and warnings are good ideas.
Is this problem still present?
CC: (none) => fri
Yes, it is. I tried cauldron on this box. SDDM is not working well, it is flashing continuously. I installed lightDM. Plasma is unusable with a quick freeze. I use now LXQt. Even if it is quite usable, there is error reported in the journal. And also with some freezes. I reported it to nouveau with trace, but without reply.
Problem continues for Mageia 8beta1. Appears the best solution seems to continue using X11-vesa driver for this sort of video-card. Wish-list, improvement: It may be worth fixing Mageia Control Center to change to using the X11-vesa driver if it wants to choose the 304 driver, otherwise you may have several users perplexed or frustrated during install, or at times when software gets updated and then Mageia automatically tries to re-choose the 304 driver again, leading to video problems again (Not everyone knows about how to change drivers using the drakX tools during bootup).
Changing the drakx tools to propose vesa instead of nouveau might disadvantage users of other DEs that do work with nouveau.
Reporters, how does it work today?
As per Mageia9 Beta1 it was still a problem. Had to resort to using the simpler rendered desktops like winICE and think it was rendered LXDE. XFCE was also failing too, while I still had managed to get it working with Mageia8 classic install. I suspect it may be due to being a businesss-class Nvidia card vs the personal-PC class cards, and I'm tempted to look into following up on the nouveau website. I will have to delay testing whatever improvements have happened (Mageia9_beta2+) until I get back, mid July - but if there were no changes since Beta1 (classic or Live), then it is still limited to the more classic desktops like WinICE and the rendered non-wayland drivers.
Have you tried Xorg modesetting driver? For me it have mostly worked better.
Tried and failed. Had a beta1 iso, but updated it to the latest everything today, and no success. At the moment, I now have it set to "Intel 810 or later", and having some success (actual card is NV42GL Quadro FX 3450). I'm guessing the Intel driver is a subset of the NVidea card, and therefore why I'm getting some success (32bit classical ISO install). Summary of desktops: LXDE: As long as I avoid the "Mageia Welcome", I seem to have a working desktop and can access MCC or even Mozilla youtube. XFCE: Freezes when "Mageia Welcome" window opens. Requires hard shutdown to exit. Openbox: mouse moves, but screen remains black, requires hard shutdown to exit. IceWM: Thought this would run, but it freezes on "Mageia Welcome" empty Window frame. Requires hard shutdown to exit. MATE: "Mageia Welcome" screen appears, but text appears wrong, clicking the window also freezes the screen. Requires hard reboot to exit. gnome classic with Xorg (wayland): freezes at "Mageia Welcome" empty frame. Requires hard reboot to exit. plasma (wayland): Welcome music, then comes "Mageia Welcome" which gets some triangles inside starting from top left corner. Touching window requires a hard reboot to exit. I suspect that I'd have better luck running this PC in 64bit mode, but in 32bit, seems I need to avoid the "Mageia Welcome" window (whatever code seems not stable), and run as LXDE. I'll try the Xorg driver next: