Problems with my Ubuntu Box

[Andrew Vaughan]

On Tuesday 01 August 2006 22:54, David Whyte wrote:
> On 8/1/06, Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > Do you see a pattern here ? All of this is connected with the display, 
is
> > it not? You don't specifically mention what graphics card you have - I
> > guess it is some kind of on-board thing. If so your motherboard may be 
on
> > the way out. If not, it could be that the video/graphics drivers are at
> > fault - I know this kind of thing often happens to people who use the
> > proprietary ATI drivers, for example.
> >
> 
> Would you believe it but I think Peter has it.
> 
> I have an nVidia TNT2 plugged into my AGP port, but there is VIA s3
> graphics on board (disabled with the presence of the AGP card).

I've had similar problems with an old p2 with an AGP TNT2 card and the 
nvidia drivers on debian sarge.

IIRC the nvidia readme (probably installed under /usr/share/doc/nvidia... ) 
contains a few options for enabling disabling various features of the AGP 
bus, changing AGP drivers etc.  It also talks about some buggy hardware 
implementations of AGP.

[...]
> 3) Removed the TNT2 video card and plugged my monitor into the onboard
> VGA port.  I couldn't even boot the PC.
>  - First time, the monitor didn't turn on.  No HDD activity, restarted
> the box manually.
>  - This time the monitor turned on but didn't boot past the listing of
> the PCI devices. No HDD activity, restarted the box manually
>  - Next time, got a little further iinto te listing of PCI devices
> (probably the end from what I remember, but no further).
>  - Next time, got a CMOS bad checksum error or similar.
>  - Next time, booted into BIOS, started to use the cursor to move
> around and it lockedup.
>  - Next time, didn't even complete the POST.

That p2 I mentioned earlier, recently died with a BIOS checksum error.

[...]
> 
> So, it looks to me like the mobo is well and truly goosed.  What are
> your thoughts?
>
Sounds like it. 

[...] 
> Would it be easy to replace the mobo and just boot from the same
> installation of Ubuntu, or would a full reinstall be required?
> 
You shouldn't need to reinstall.  Moving the hard disk from one i386 pc to 
another i386 pc should just work.  I've done it several times.

The main gotcha is BIOS harddisk geometry detection.  Sometimes different 
BIOSes report the report the harddisk geometry differently and grub won't 
boot.  Sometimes you can fix this by changing disk mode in the bios (eg 
normal, large or lba).

If you use LILO instad of grub, it probably has similar issues.
 
You'll also have problems booting if the disk has changed device eg from hda 
to hdb etc.  

Have a grub floppy disk, or linux rescue floppydisk/CD, or a linux live CD  
ready.  If you have problems, boot from a rescue disk, mount the root 
filesystem, chroot into it, and run grub-install to re-install grub to the 
harddisk.  (If the harddisk has changed kernel device, you'll also need to 
edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and run update-grub).   

Ask if you need more detailed instructions.

> Cheers,
> Whytey
> 
HTH
Andrew V.