Upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala breaks X (xorg) on intel driver on 945G chipset
Posted by Admin • Monday, November 2. 2009 • Category: LinuxAfter upgrading my IBM desktop with "82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller" X stopped working entirely, regardless of any changes to xorg.conf. Running startx manually revealed an error like this:
(EE) Failed to load module "i810" (module does not exist, 0) (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory (EE) intel(0): [drm] Failed to open DRM device for : No such file or directory (EE) intel(0): Failed to become DRM master.
Took me a little while to figure out how to get me my machine back:
Seems that the problem is with the latest intel driver:
xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.0-1ubuntu2
Apparently downgrading to an older intel driver solves the issue. I picked the latest version that Jaunty used: 2:2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3 . I had to figure out how to properly downgrade an .deb package. Downloading an older version and installing with 'dpkg -i' works, but apt immediately wants to fix this "inconsistency" by upgrading again to the broken version. Using apt properly is certainly better!
But the solution boils down to:
- Download the .deb file from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/2:2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3 (click on the appropriate build)
- Install it:
dpkg -i xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3_i386.deb
- Convince apt that it's OK and its database has not been compromised:
sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-intel=2:2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3
- Convince apt that it should not upgrade to the broken version:
echo "xserver-xorg-video-intel hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
- Check that it won't upgrade it : apt-get -s upgrade
I had a similar problem, and your solution worked for me. I opened a bug report on launchpad and posted this work-around there, if you're interested:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/471844