video-card battle

Issues related to hardware problems
volumetricsteve
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video-card battle

Post by volumetricsteve » 2015/02/16 13:56:12

I have a system with an ATI rage/pro 8MB on-board and then a Matrox Parhelia I'm trying to use. When I went to install CentOS 5.2, the system had booted and was treating the Parhelia as the primary display adapter, and I went through the whole install process with no video interruption on the Parhelia, however when it started probing for displays, it immediately found the ATI rage/pro and couldn't make any determinations because nothing was plugged into it. Text-only mode on the Parhelia continued to work though the rest of the install, but the display probe never found my monitor which I'm sure is because the Parhelia driver wasn't installed. What I'm wondering is....is there a way to tell the system to completely ignore the ATI rage/pro? I don't think I can disable it in the bios.

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TrevorH
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Re: video-card battle

Post by TrevorH » 2015/02/16 13:58:56

Start again and use CentOS 5.11 and see if you have the same problem. 5.2 is deprecated, unsupported and has been *2008*!
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
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volumetricsteve
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Re: video-card battle

Post by volumetricsteve » 2015/02/16 14:18:28

Hmmm, I thought I had to start with 5.2 because it was the only ISO available for the 5-series. I must have missed something, though I'm looking at the CentOS vault now and I don't see ISOs for 5.11, am I in the wrong place?

http://vault.centos.org/5.11/

Edit:

I am not a clever man.

http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/i386/

volumetricsteve
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Re: video-card battle

Post by volumetricsteve » 2015/02/24 23:13:37

ok, so I installed from 5.11 isos and the same thing happened. Admittedly, I don't really care what happens during the install, I really just want to know if I can stop the system from seeing a video card so it only sees one of the two that I have.

chemal
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Re: video-card battle

Post by chemal » 2015/02/25 02:01:48

Remove this Parhelia from your computer. It's a piece of completely obsolete hardware. C5 has no support for it. IIRC, there never even was a linux driver for the Parhelia. But perhaps you can find some proprietary, long forgotten and happily rotting stuff on Matrox's website.

volumetricsteve
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Re: video-card battle

Post by volumetricsteve » 2015/02/25 03:00:09

nope and nope.

The parhelia is my targeted gpu, and I've tested it in CentOS 5.11 after I compiled the driver for it - it works fine once the driver is installed.

My issue, still, I think is video-card independent. I really just need to know how to get CentOS to ignore a certain video card. Ignoring entirely which ones i'm using (unless for some reason that's relevant to the configuration), how do I just blacklist a video card? (keeping in mind I can't disable the on-board video card in the BIOS, or I would have done that first)

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AlanBartlett
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Re: video-card battle

Post by AlanBartlett » 2015/02/25 16:03:48

Normally I would say "blacklist the driver for the card" but I suspect that will not be appropriate in your case. :?
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volumetricsteve
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Re: video-card battle

Post by volumetricsteve » 2015/02/25 23:44:43

Actually, it might be, I mean...I haven't fully wrapped my head around exactly what blacklisting does, except that I know it stops a driver from being loaded - which may be exactly what I want. What I don't yet understand is the impact that could have on the X configuration.

Supposing that I have two screens, one on each dvi port of my parhelia, configured and working correctly, would blacklisting alone be sufficient to stop the ati rage from being accidentally included in my configuration? Would blacklisting be enough to stop the ati rage from showing up in...say...lspci's output? Would blacklisting be enough to stop opengl accelerated programs from trying to render on it?

chemal
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Re: video-card battle

Post by chemal » 2015/02/26 00:31:59

So you have compiled an old rotting driver from source and forced it into C5, and then told us your Parhelia works fine now. What really is your problem with the onboard ATI chip now? What does it do you don't like?

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TrevorH
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Re: video-card battle

Post by TrevorH » 2015/02/26 00:58:12

chemal I don't think this is helpful. The poster wants to use his video card and he's entitled to pick which one he wants to use.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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