antiX Live – Nouveau driver not initializing any more… Please advise…

[Member olsztyn]

Being too confident of the fully updated antiX 19.2 Live USB setup I got into strange problem:
Until today all my Live USB antiX 19.2 instances were created on Thinkpad T410, resolution 1440×900 with nVidia NVS3100M video card, using Nouveau driver as nVidia driver was making these Live instances failing to initalize on some my other laptops. Nouveau driver was good enough for me as I am not running games…
This setup has been working great for me on variety of my laptops until I (being too confident in universality of Live USB antiX) made a stupid mistake:
Namely I started using Thinkpad T520 with resolution 1920×1200 with dual video card – nVidia NVS4200M and Intel HD 3000 for further work on antiX Live USB instances and after composition of these instances was just perfect, such as latest updates, software, etc., I promptly created final Live USB sticks,both encrypted and unencrypted for my subsequent use. Alas, not expecting a strange problem that resulted I did not leave any copies of sticks created on the old machine.

Now, the problem I am experiencing is that these new sticks no longer boot to correct resolution screen on the old T410/nVidia laptop. Instead of resolution 1440×900 they boot to resolution 1024×768. I have a feeling Nouveau driver is not initalizing as was before and resolution is defaulting to 1024×768.

Having tried various tricks to restore video resolution, so far nothing seems to work. So far I exhausted options and will appreciate advice. Rebuilding Live instance to include all composition of software and options is a long way to recover from this, so perhaps there is a better way to restore video…
Any advice will be greatly appreciated…
Thanks and Regards…

• This topic was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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If you have smxi installed you can use the video and graphical setup tools to set up and rebuild your X setup.

Smxi.org has the software if it isn’t installed.

Use a different stick for the older system and use the video and X setup in smxi to set the configuration so that it will run on the old computer.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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There is documentation on the smxi site to explain the various capabilities.

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Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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Thanks very much for the info. This is something new to me… It looks like I have smxi-inxi-antix installed. Is this what you are referring to? If so, how do I start the graphical setup tools?
Thanks and Regards…

Oops… I think this is not, looking at the smxi.org page… However, if I am reading message returned correctly after running smxi script in terminal, this tool seems for the installed systems only as it seems to look for grub entry… Thanks again…

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Yes. That’s it.

Open a terminal.

First type in sudo su –

(sudo is a program that allows you to switch the user’s environment.

su is the actual command that changes the “effective” user ID, that is, the set of commands and associated environment variables that makes the computer “believe” that you are running as that user (instead of brian or your own username).

To modify the graphical setup you have to have “root” (system administrator) rights.

The complete command with the dash at the end says set my environment to be another user until I exit from this environment and since I have added a dash give me the ability to act as the administrator. I am writing it this way so it’s understandable, even if that’s not 190% correct to the “purist”.

You could also login as root. That works too.

OK, now that you are root, type

smxi -piekj3

This starts up smxi with several colors to highlight specific commands for clarity. Since I don’t have smxi memorized, please read the document at smxi.org and look for stuff about setting up your video graphics card for the resolution you want and any other features. You can also use smxi as yet another system administrator tool. It’ll certainly do anything you want for antiX.

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Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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Thanks again Brian…
However as I mentioned before:

olsztyn wrote:

However, if I am reading message returned correctly after running smxi script in terminal, this tool seems for the installed systems only as it seems to look for grub entry…

The complete message returned is:
Error No: (7) smxi cannot locate any /boot/grub/ config files. Unable to continue.
smxi requires grub config files: /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.cfg
smxi does not support lilo or unmounted /boot partitions.
You can start smxi with option: -! 32 to override this at your own risk!!
smxi cannot continue. Exiting now.

Therefore I inferred from this message that this tool seems to be for installed systems, not Live.
Please let me know if I am misunderstanding…
I just tried to ‘start smxi with option: -! 32’, as suggested in the above message and smxi proceeded with the process… It reported that xorg conf file was missing or something to that effect. Completed upgrade process, re-installing Nouveau driver, etc., but so far does not result in working desktop…
Thanks and Regards…

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I’m sorry that I missed your point.

You are right. I have only used smxi on installed systems. I did use ii a couple of times in the past week on installed systems and in this capacity it’s a great tool.

A guy I know named Harold Hope, (h2) is a major author of the toolkit called smxi.

I wonder if it’s possible to discuss USB features potentially added to smxi (and by extension antiX). I’ll say that Harold doesn’t ever want to tie himself down to a specific distribution, but if he’s still updating the tools maybe he would consider doing something that works well with removable media.
It’s worth asking.

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Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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Thanks again Brian…
So far I have not found a way to recover the correctly working Live-USB and having no other option in sight I started rebuilding the entire composition of antiX from scratch. It is a long way to return to normal but antiX is worth it.
This experience just teaches me a lesson: Keep multiple copies of Live instance (This would apply to installed systems too) at different stages of making changes as you may lose your perfectly working system when you least expect for some mysterious reason…
Thanks and Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member Xecure]

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I am not sure if this is possible in a live system, or if this corresponds to your case, but after searching a bit, I believe you could try this solution.

First what I believe is happening. You have created the live USB system in a computer with a Nvidia graphic card that installed (or is using) a nvidia driver (not nouveau).
Now, when you move this live USB system to a computer that does not support that nvidia driver (and should load nouveau), nouveau doesn’t load. Probably nouveau is a module that has been blacklisted so that the kernel doesn’t load it by mistake when it should load the other nvidia driver. In this computer, the nvidia driver doesn’t work properly, so you would need to ask it NOT to load said driver and instead load nouveau.

First check what driver is controlling your video. One of the inxi commands should tell you. If nouveau is not loaded, then I believe it has been blacklisted. Pay attention to the driver (if it is named nvidia, for example).

You can check to see if the nouveau module has been blacklisted in one of these files:
/etc/modprobe (any video file), /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau_blacklist.conf, /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf, or /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-dkms.conf
and COMMENT nouveau blacklisting (so it no longer blocked from loading).
#blacklist nouveau

Then, you must remove the nvidia (or other driver controlling the video) and load nouveau. (I think you need to use sudo, but I cannot remember right now):

rmmod nvidia
modprobe nouveau

check dmesg for errors.

See if you can change the resolution then. Maybe a reboot is needed.

Also, you could set the nouveau to launch for your specific nvidia card.

All this I got from the arch wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nouveau#Keep_NVIDIA_driver_installed

Hopefully, something there can help.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Xecure. Reason: fix modeprobe driectory reference

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member olsztyn]

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Xecure wrote:

First what I believe is happening. You have created the live USB system in a computer with a Nvidia graphic card that installed (or is using) a nvidia driver (not nouveau).

Thanks Xecure for advise. Greatly appreciated.
In my case it is Nouveau that was used however as driver. I will confirm through following the diagnostics you suggest but I never installed nVidia driver and relied on Nouveau in spite of much worse performance of Nouveau due to the fact that Live instance with nVidia driver installed does not boot to desktop on some other my laptops with Intel graphics. Live instance with Nouveau works fine on those laptops. Universality of such Live USB, to be able to boot on any my laptop is more important to me than performance of nVidia driver as I am not running games.
As I mentioned, I will verify through diagnostics you suggest but this is quite unlikely that somehow nVidia driver got installed uninvited, particularly I would see nVidia splash screen during boot produced by such driver.
Thanks very much and best Regards…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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olsztyn wrote:

Thanks again Brian…
So far I have not found a way to recover the correctly working Live-USB and having no other option in sight I started rebuilding the entire composition of antiX from scratch. It is a long way to return to normal but antiX is worth it.
This experience just teaches me a lesson: Keep multiple copies of Live instance (This would apply to installed systems too) at different stages of making changes as you may lose your perfectly working system when you least expect for some mysterious reason…
Thanks and Regards…

I agree with your conclusion.

It’s really not that difficult to build a new one. I’ll see if we already have any good instructions, my guess is that we do. If not I will put one together.

More than likely Dolphin Oracle has excellent information already. If in doubt look at the videos and other resources on our main Website and let me know if you need anything else, OK?

Best wishes for continued success and picking up even more great ideas along the way!

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Back up is good.

Data Center operations, for as long as I have been using computer systems, have always backed up information, and even then they do what’s called a full backup anywhere from weekly to monthly to make it possible to restore parts, or even an entire system in the event of a failure.

24×7, 365/366 operations even create multiple redundancy of live systems and servers and locate them such that a natural disaster in one location won’t cause an entire company more than a minor, if ANY, disruption.

I’ve participated in exercises from a development and testing perspective to validate these methods and we found them to be very rugged and successful.

From a personal point of view, you can decide how much time and effort you want to put into your systems and tools. You may not have as much to lose if something is malfunctioning but you probably would prefer to have something available.

On a practical personal level, I have my data and information on and in more than one place. Having anything on a network outside of your personal control puts the responsibility of the safety of the data in the hands of whatever service you use. Make sure that you have a reliable provider. If anything is either “sensitive” or “private” consider encryption, multifactor authentication for access and definitely more than one backup and possibly even a safe or some other forms of physical security.

It all depends on the value and importance of the information.

Testing systems? That’s another story. Sometimes I do whatever I can to try to break them. If I break them in a way that really should be better protected I share my methods of breaking it and the steps so that better steps and equipment can be built.

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Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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Brian Masinick wrote:

Data Center operations, for as long as I have been using computer systems, have always backed up information, and even then they do what’s called a full backup anywhere from weekly to monthly to make it possible to restore parts, or even an entire system in the event of a failure.

Indeed. I have come from data center operation in my past, where integrity and reliability was of absolute importance. You had backups and redundancy and any changes required thorough testing to ensure integrity of the system, that it will work as expected and no data will be lost.

Brian Masinick wrote:

It all depends on the value and importance of the information.

Even if your information is not that important you do not want to lose it as lots of work is required to reconstruct if needed and lots of time wasted. You want to depend on your system that it will behave in a predictable way each time and not malfunction unexpectedly. This is a big part of being useful.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member Xecure]

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hopefully you can figure this out. I have changed boot parameters on the boot menu before to change some kernel options to boot in spefici computers, and was planing to have an extra menu option (besides custom) with those specific options saved there, but maybe this cannot be done.
If you confirm that nouveau is NOT blacklisted, you coult test different boot parameters, like nouveau.modeset=1 only for the problematic devices.

Let us know if you find a way to solve this, as it can be extrapoleted for other future similar problems.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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For me, redundancy and information stored in different ways, forms and completely different media, I don’t worry about it and I am satisfied with the overall security of the approach I have chosen.

Yes, we desire and deserve our system (hardware and software) to be trustworthy and we want our network and anything else that we use to “measure up” to the expectation that it will work.

My point is that if you adequately prepare for unexpected and unplanned events, including natural ones that we simply cannot reliably predict, except to make sure that we have several different ways to make them, even from scratch.

Individuals may not think that they need that – until a disaster wipes out everything they have and their belongings and maybe more. It’s not impossible to recover from such things, though the cost of doing so drastically changes if your entire house and possessions is destroyed. Of course that kind of thing is beyond what a distribution can recover from, but if we make as many things as possible (and that we can afford) redundant, the possibility of recovery increases dramatically.

I submit that even with relatively modest means, a couple of old computer systems, back up data on disk, USB and network storage, possibly from two or more sources (just as an example Google and Yahoo), a retired person like me can put a system back together in relatively short time.

It’s certainly NOT the only way, I have simply provided a couple of possible things to do.

Everyone has a choice to make, build, create, buy, or acquire whatever makes sense for their own lives.

I’m just putting down some ideas in case someone with limited resources wants to make an affordable system. antiX certainly makes a great set of software to make it possible and expect an excellent usable system.

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Brian Masinick

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