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I'm trying to get Mageia 7.1 working on one of our servers. The initial problem is that Gnome will not start. In at least one instance debugging, I specifically saw a Segmentation Fault. I have the system working booting to the command line and have attempted to debug using Grub options and drakx11 settings (which is how I blocked dm startup).

More details:

The system was running successfully for some time on Mandriva 2011.0 with the same hardware.

lspci for my video device reports:

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05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Graphics Ltd. 86c375 [ViRGE/DX] or 86c385 [ViRGE/GX] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: S3 Graphics Ltd. ViRGE/DX
   Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 16
   Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
   Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
   Kernel modules: s3fb


As I said, this graphics card and monitor were both working under Mandriva 2011.0, so I assumed they would work under Mageia.

I tried the nowayland and noxorgconf options in grub (together and separately) as described in https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_7_Err ... g_graphics.

I tried using drakx11 to change my display driver to a generic XOrg VESA. I used # chvt 2 and # startx to try different combinations, so I could return to the console (vt1) using <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<F5> and rebooted after changes using drakx11. I believe this is where I saw the Segmentation Fault, but I don't recall what specific options I was using. I was not very systematic about the combinations and options I used, but I can repeat and provide output if it is useful.

The system is working for its most basic backup function, but everything would be easier with the display manager working.

Any help would be appreciated. Let me know what you need me to provide.

Thanks
Phil

For a regular boot without any other options, can you please show the output as root of

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systemctl status display-manager.service -al -n150

On a related note, you mention that GNOME is not starting, but what about the display / login manager? Does it start, and at least allow you to select a desktop environment ? Also do you know what display manager you're using currently, GDM ?
Maybe you need to try a different display manager? See e.g. https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Display_Managers for some alternatives.

From what I can tell, the problem is that some display managers require OpenGL nowadays, and if initialisation fails for whatever reason, then the display manager does not start.
Also, instead of startx please use either systemctl restart display-manager.service if it's already running or systemctl isolate graphical.target if you're in runlevel 3.

Hi doktor5000,

Thanks for responding so quickly.

From boot with option "Automatically start the graphical interface (Xorg) upon booting" in drakx11 NOT selected:

systemctl status display-manager.service -al -n150 outputs:

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● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)


After chvt 2, login, startx (giving segmentaion fault), running same command appears to give same output, but it's short so I'll repeat it:

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● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

I'll post the exact output of startx shortly, after I verify the exact drakx11 settings.

On the original startup, the system console became unresponsive when starting Gnome and I ended up powering off and on. So I never made it to the login manager. I did not try <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<F5>, but I think I tried <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del>, so I believe the entire system was hard hung.

I have not tried other display managers. I did try to boot from several versions of Mageia Live USB's with different desktops and all seemed to hang, so I assumed something was up with the hardware on this system. With the hard hang and resulting long fsck on boot, I did not want to deal with trying other display managers and thought they were unlikely to work. Specifically, I tried to install from an old Magei 5 Live USB and it froze with partially displayed graphics apparently starting KDE. I also created a new Mageia 6 Live USB and tried installing and it froze at the console with the last message saying something about IPv6 and broadcasts, I assume when trying to start the GUI.

I am willing to try other display managers if I can avoid the hard hang by using chvt and startx, so I'll take a look at your link.

Phil

More testing using drakx11.

In reviewing my settings, I realized that I had never gotten my settings to pass the Test selection in drakx11. Specifically, with almost any options I chose I would get the following message when I clicked Test:

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An error occurred
      (EE)
      (EE) Backtrace:
      Try to change some parameters

Note the above is transcribed since I was not able to capture it, so I may have missed spaces, etc.

That message was displayed for almost all combinations I chose and for all combinations I tried when selecting Graphic Card <S3 Virge based cards...>.

But finally Test showed a color panel when selecting the following options:
Graphic Card: <VESA driver (generic ...>
Monitor: <Dell E196FP>
Resolution: <1280x1024 15bpp>
Options: (turned off all options)

Then it told me I must reboot to save options. After reboot, login, chvt 2, startx, I first tried to run as root and got an error saying something like startx should not be run as root. Logging in as a user, I get authorization errors saying the desktop can only be run as the console user. I was encouraged that both these gave a normal message and not a segmentation fault, so I tried all the marbles by using drakx11 to set the option to automatically start upon boot. On boot it hung after saying it had started Gnome display manager. Specifically it showed the Starting msg, then Started msg, then I waited over 15 minutes and tried <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<F5> and <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> once then twice with no response, then a single press of the power button successfully shut down the system.

Booting to recovery mode and giving root password when prompted took me to a corrupted graphical screen with white vertical bars and hard hung the system. I had to press and hold the power button to turn the system off. I'm currently waiting for fsck to complete and see if I can find a way to get to the console to get to drakx11.

Is there a way to disable display manager after booting from a Live USB to console? i.e. a config file I can edit to apply the same changes made by drakx11?

Phil

Sorry seems you confuse some things here. If you run startx, you directly run an X session without a display manager, so adding the output of gdm.service in both cases does not mean anything, if you want to get the display manager working.
Also, why do you run chvt at all ? I'd also recommend not using startx11 as that is deprecated.

Also, on a related note, depending what graphics driver you try out, the "Test" functionality in drakx11 may not work as it cannot load a given driver if another driver is already blocking the graphics card, so I'd recommend to not use it.

I admit to some ignorance of the distinctions between display manager vs X session vs gdm.service, so maybe I have chosen the wrong subject line. Basically, I am trying to get the graphical interface working so I can use those graphical tools like control panel, package manager, etc, etc. My initial experience at boot was that the system hung and I had to power off and on, then wait for fsck to complete and figure out how to boot to command line. So I used startx to try to start the gui and used chvt in case that vt hung, so I could recover to the console in a different vt.

As you can see, my knowledge is cobbled together from past experience with old systems and web browsing for solutions without really knowing the evolution of the tools. So any recommendations are welcome for the best way to attempt to start the GUI and recover to the console if that fails.

I found drakx11 web browsing and it let me boot to command line, then later test different display options. I also later learned about using grub to replace "splash quiet" with "text" to boot into command line, but drakx11 saved the boot configuration. So recommendations are welcome for the current tool to use in place of drakx11.

But the point of all this is to get the gui working, so these tools are really only relevant for recovery and testing.

Phil

Well, you should probably first try to get X running with some safe driver, like vesa or whatever else works with your GPU. Also to get to runlevel 3, the easiest way is to just add a "3" (without the quotes) to grub command line, then run drakx11, choose the driver and save, don't run a test. Then either systemctl start display-manager.service or systemctl isolate graphical.target to start X. Then check the logs in case it works so you have a known good configuration to compare with.

Then try the same with this s3fb driver, although that driver is for some pretty old cards and might be unmaintained, so you're probably better off just keeping vesa driver as it might be more stable.

With VESA driver selected:
systemctl start display-manager.service shows Oh No splash screen. Pressing Enter closes splash screen and shows black screen with blinking cursor in upper left corner. <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<F2> opens console at login prompt and able to login. I saved the Xorg.0.log file, but it does not show anything other than (II) messages (no (EE) messages). systemctl isolate graphical.target behaves the same.

Switched to S3 Virge driver using drakx11. Note in drakx11 after selecting S3 Virge, it prompts for memory and I select 64MB or more. No Test:
systemctl start display-manager.service goes straight to black screen with blinking cursor in upper left. <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<F2> opens console login prompt and able to login. Xorg.0.log file shows a series of (EE) messages. Here is the last set of messages at the end of Xorg.0.log:

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[   909.903] (II) Module int10: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   909.903]    compiled for 1.20.5, module version = 1.0.0
[   909.903]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0
[   909.903] (II) S3VIRGE(0): initializing int10
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): Primary V_BIOS segment is: 0xc000
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA BIOS detected
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE Version 2.0
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE Total Mem: 2048 kB
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE OEM: S3 Incorporated. 86C375/86C385
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Software Rev: 2.0
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Vendor: Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc.
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Product: Stealth 3D 2000 Pro
[   909.904] (II) S3VIRGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Product Rev: V1.0
[   909.904] (--) S3VIRGE(0): Chipset: "virge dx"
[   909.904] (==) S3VIRGE(0): XVideo supported.
[   909.904] (EE)
[   909.904] (EE) Backtrace:
[   909.906] (EE) 0: /usr/libexec/Xorg (OsLookupColor+0x139) [0x58b9b9]
[   909.906] (EE) 1: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (funlockfile+0x50) [0x7ffb6f5565af]
[   909.906] (EE) unw_get_proc_name failed: no unwind info found [-10]
[   909.906] (EE) 2: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/s3virge_drv.so (?+0x0) [0x7ffb6ecf5e70]
[   909.906] (EE) 3: /usr/libexec/Xorg (InitOutput+0xa18) [0x47ab18]
[   909.906] (EE) 4: /usr/libexec/Xorg (InitFonts+0x1bf) [0x43f24f]
[   909.923] (EE) 5: /lib64/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xeb) [0x7ffb6f39fb0b]
[   909.923] (EE) 6: /usr/libexec/Xorg (_start+0x2a) [0x42a03a]
[   909.923] (EE)
[   909.923] (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x8004
[   909.923] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[   909.923] (EE) Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[   909.923] (EE)
[   909.923] (EE)
Please consult the Mageia support
    at https://bugs.mageia.org
 for help.
[   909.923] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[   909.923] (EE)
[   909.983] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.


systemctl isolate graphical.target behaves the same.

Phil

From what I remember, since Mageia 3 or 4 or so there was an issue with the driver for some older S3 models.
Keep in mind, this graphics card is 20 years old. I'd say you should try a different graphics chip that has a driver that is still maintained.

Although the log excerpt you added could be put into a Mageia bug report, although I'd say there's not much to expect.
I'd also add a note that vesa driver was also not working.

Could you please post the output from lspcidrake -v or lsnpi -nnk as the vendor/product IDs are nowhere to be seen.

I noticed this graphics card was 20 years old a few days ago and realized it would likely not get solved without getting a new graphics card. But this system is only used as an internal backup server, so the GUI is not strictly required and I've spent too much time on this already. I now have all the server functions working, so I'll probably leave this system as-is and always run from command-line.

But since you asked:

Output of lspcidrake -v | grep VGA:

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Card:S3 ViRGE-based cards: S3 Graphics Ltd.|86c375 [ViRGE/DX] or 86c385 [ViRGE/GX] [DISPLAY_VGA] (vendor:5333 device:8a01) (rev: 01)

Output of lspci -nnk -s 05:00.0:

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05:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: S3 Graphics Ltd. 86c375 [ViRGE/DX] or 86c385 [ViRGE/GX] [5333:8a01] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: S3 Graphics Ltd. ViRGE/DX [5333:8a01]
        Kernel modules: s3fb

The history is that this system has been working fine for a very long time in its limited role, but the boot hard drive is also very old and started having trouble. The system would not boot a live DVD or USB also because of graphics issues. I eventually got a small command-line only distro of linux to boot so I could ddrescue the boot drive. But it would not boot off that drive, so I chose to install an up to date OS thinking it would be more likely to handle everything and I that I could get help if it didn't. Mostly true, but has taken more of my time.

Thanks for all the help. Unless you have any bright ideas I'll drop this one.

Phil