[Workaround] Trident video on Mga3

[djennings]

Not many people will have computers with Trident video cards nowdays, but if like me you have an old laptop you want to put Mageia on, then you may find this post useful.

There are two issues with the Trident video driver as shipped with Mageia 3.

1/ A bug in the driver will cause loading of the Trident driver to fail with a message in the log of "Undefined Symbol"
2/ Because the XAA module is no longer provided by X.org, the Mageia Configuration must be configured to use the EXA module instead.

There are two workarounds. Which you use depends on whether you read this post before you installed/upgraded Mageia, or read it after you did the install/upgrade and was presented with a blank screen on the next boot.

Workaround 1 - Configuration during Installation
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If installing using the Classical DVD installer, then near the end of the install you will be presented with a summary screen where you can modify settings. Select the button for the Graphics, select Trident as the video driver, then select 'Options'. Enable the checkbox for 'EXA'. Later on in the install you will be invited to download updates to the distribution. Select 'Yes' and go through the procedure to bring up the interface and install updates. Use a fixed Ethernet connection it is more reliable than wireless. Some wireless cards will work during the install, but others will not. Do not worry too much if the network test fails. That is a 'feature'.
If all goes well an updated trident driver will be downloaded that fixes issue 1/ above. If it fails then proceed to workaround 2.

Workaround 2 - Using the vesa driver and then fixing the Trident driver
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If you upgraded by mgaapplet or installed from the DVD before reading this post then you will have to use the vesa driver temporarily.
Boot Mageia in 'Safe Mode' from the boot menu. At the text prompt enter

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XFdrake

You will see a text based GUI. Navigate around the options using the TAB key and up/down arrows. Select the X.org|vesa driver and then reboot with

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shutdown -r now

You should now boot up in graphic mode.
Now check you have a full set of online repositories defined https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management and do your updates to get the latest trident driver

In Mageia ControlCentre>Hardware>GraphicalServer select the Trident driver and set the EXA option as described above.
Reboot and you are done.