Re: Trying to add new video card

[hobie@rumormillnews.com]

Thanks, Felix. P:)

>> My amd64 stable ('buster') system has this on the motherboard:
>
>> AMD Kaveri [Radeon R7 Graphics]
>
>> In the "Psychedelic colors" thread we added this to the kernal
>> commandline:
>
>> radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1
>
>> ...which, in the long run, may not have been necessary, but it's still
>> there.
>
> They should be inert with no AMD GPU or APU available.

Whatever's on the motherboard (presumably Kaveri) is still present,
nothing done to tell it to sit idly by.  Here's the current command line:

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-5-amd64
root=UUID=c378147d-1aca-4d98-a589-6b47f02e0ef7 ro video=640x400
consoleblank=600 reboot=pci radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1
quiet

>> I plugged in an nvidia GeForce 210 card and essentially lost most
>> functional video, resulting in either "no signal" or a message that
>> meant
>> "I can see a signal but somewhere/somehow, it's not supported", sent by
>> the display, depending on which card I connected to the display via
>> either VGA or DVI cable.
>
>> What am I missing?  What do I need to do in order to make use of the
>> nvidia GeForce card?
>
> Is there some leftover manual Kaveri configuration via xrandr, kernel
> cmdline or /etc/X11/xorg.con*? I would expect it to work perfectly
> automagically, like mine:

Here's mine (without the nvidia card; if that card were in place, system
boot would not get far enough for me to read and reply to your post):

inxi -GxxS
System:
  Host: saphira Kernel: 4.19.0-5-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
  v: 8.3.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.4 tk: Gtk 2.24.32 wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM
  Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Kaveri [Radeon R7 Graphics] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu
  v: kernel bus ID: 00:01.0 chip ID: 1002:130f
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: amdgpu,ati
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1600x900~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD KAVERI (DRM 3.27.0 4.19.0-5-amd64 LLVM 7.0.1)
  v: 4.5 Mesa 18.3.6 direct render: Yes

xrandr | egrep 'onnect|creen|\*' | grep -v disconn | sort -r
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 900, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-D-0 connected 1600x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
443mm x 249mm
   1600x900      60.00*+

Grub:
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="video=640x400 consoleblank=600 reboot=pci
radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1"

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"


> Are there (EE) lines in /var/log/Xorg.0.log or
> ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log?

None, presently. with the  nvidia card having been removed for now, to
make the computer at all usable - but as mentioned, I'm not sure the boot
process even reaches the point of launching an xorg server; messages I've
been seeing are at the console.

>  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
>
> Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

I was a big OS/2 fan, felt most unhappy when IBM chose not to support
non-commercial users any longer - but then that's how we've come to be
here together on this list, so ... :)

--hobie