Using the Fedora 9 KDE Live CD on unsupported video hardware

Rance Hall ranceh at gmail.com
Sun Jul 6 19:16:27 UTC 2008


Hey gang,

I hope this question has a lot more meat on its bones as Ive learned a
great deal about altering the video parameters that are being fed to
the kernel.

Problem:  On my mobo the integrated video card (a via chrome9 based
card) and monitor (an old Samsung SyncMaster 955DF) Fedora 9 cant
figure out what video combination to use and when it screws up, it
locks up the system tight.  Only a hard boot will fix it.

On an install cd anaconda will accept the xdriver=vesa option and
graphical install works fine, The only real issue is that in my
experience Anaconda notoriously uses low resolution so as to hide
problems with a video setup till the actual system is installed.

So taking what I know and applying that to a LIVE CD (specifically the
KDE one, as Im a KDE guy and dont have much use for Gnome, etc (please
no flames, is a personal preference, I didnt - and wont - say gnome
sucks - it doesnt, just that I dont like it.)

OK, the Live CD doesnt have anaconda on it (nor should it) but I need
a way to apply what Ive learned about telling the system to use VESA
till I can figure out the details of why my hardware is not working
corectly.

First, the kernel will accept a vga=xxx code that affects the terminal
consoles, but that doesnt seem to have any affect on X.

The kernel command line can be altered by adding something like
"video=vesafb:mode:1280x1024-75"

This seems to really help my situation, but not enough.

without this alteration the LiveCD will crash and lockup hard within 5
seconds or so after udev starts.
with this alteration the LiveCD boots successfully and displays a
login prompt (which is further than I ever got before) but the
keyboard is still locked and about 5 seconds or so later I get a funny
horizontal image on the screen that is indicative of overstating the
capability of the video hardware at some level.

I know I'm on the right track here, but I cant seem to finish the job,
any help much appreciated.

I need a hint or a pointer to let me know what Im missing please.

Thanks all




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