Monday, May 28, 2007

Solution to ATI 9100 IGP TV-out with ubuntu feisty

Problem

I upgraded my "telly box" to the latest Ubuntu not knowing that the bastards in ATI no longer support my graphics card (9100 IGP, it's the one built in on my Shuttle ST61G4). The newest fglrx drivers don't work for my card and the older ones that do work, don't work with xorg 7.2.0 that comes with Ubuntu 7.04 (feisty).

Non-solutions

I tried downgrading to edgy's xorg (6.8 I think) as described by one user, that didn't work for me although I never got the fglrx drivers happily installed so maybe it would have worked eventually.

I tried applying the GATOS tv-out patch to xorg 7.2.0. With some tweaking, I managed to get this to compile and even output sane messages from X about setting my output to PAL but never got working output (there was a flash of the Ubuntu colour-scheme but it looked like it was running at the wrong refresh rate). I never tried getting the GATOS patch working before now so I have no idea whether it should have worked or not. If anyone is interested in playing around with it, my updated version is here - remember, this exists as a patch because the GATOS license isn't compatible with xorg's license.

I spent some time monkeying around with X and fbdev but didn't get any joy from that. I couldn't even get fbset to change the console settings

Solution

Finally I tried something that I'd thought of ages ago but never got around to doing because I assumed it would suck. I switched X to use the vesa driver. I did dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg , chose vesa as my driver and accepted all the defaults and happy days ensued. It even seems to use far less CPU when playing back mpeg2 files!

For reference, here's the xorg.conf I'm using

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file) # # This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using # values from the debconf database. # # Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf(5) manual page. # (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.) # # This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only* # if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg # package. # # If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated # again, run the following command: # sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg Section "Files" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" # path to defoma fonts FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType" EndSection Section "Module" Load "bitmap" Load "ddc" Load "dri" Load "extmod" Load "freetype" Load "glx" Load "int10" Load "vbe" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Generic Keyboard" Driver "kbd" Option "CoreKeyboard" Option "XkbRules" "xorg" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "ie" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Configured Mouse" Driver "mouse" Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "stylus" Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" Option "Type" "stylus" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "eraser" Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" Option "Type" "eraser" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "cursor" Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" Option "Type" "cursor" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "ATI" Driver "vesa" BusID "PCI:1:5:0" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" Option "DPMS" HorizSync 28-50 VertRefresh 43-75 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "ATI" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen "Default Screen" InputDevice "Generic Keyboard" InputDevice "Configured Mouse" InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents" EndSection Section "DRI" Mode 0666 EndSection

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Iran, Iraq US and hostages

Stunningly, it seems that US forces attempted to grab 2 senior Iranian security personnel who were in Iraq on the invitation of the Iraqi president! Patrick Cockburn writes about it here and here. They failed to grab their main targets and instead took 5 Iran officials who's regular job seems to have been issuing travel documentation to Kurds doing business with Iran.

It's pretty amazing that they would do this and puts the sailor abductions in perspective.