X does not start any more since upgrading to Debian 9.1 with NVIDIA GeForce 7100

[Felix Miata]

"Andreas Köhler" composed on 2017-10-05 14:24 (UTC-0400):

> getting the NVIDIA GeForce 7100 working under current Debian stretch has been 
> totally failed. The Xorg nouveau driver failed to detect any screen and the 
> fallback vesa driver supported only a resolution of 1024x768 ... but it worked. 
> The kernel module nouveau driver always created the "write ... FAULT" messages 
> and resulted in a system without a properly working mouse in gdms login dialog 
> and a totally unstable session.
> Finally I plugged in a different NVidia Card into the free PCI-E slot and it 
> immediately worked fine. So my problem is solved by this workaround but the 
> problem behind the  NVIDIA GeForce 7100 is still open.

I believe there are things left for you to try if you want to make that 7100
work. Note that I used the nouveau Xorg driver in neither of my old NVidia
systems running Stretch. There's probably still something interfering to prevent
the integral modesetting driver from working (primary fallback) instead of the
secondary fallback VESA. One possibility is:

	 nouveau.config=NvMSI=0

on the kernel cmdline. I've needed this in the past with the GeForce 6150SE,
which is close in vintage to the 7100.

Another thing to try is booting Knoppix or some (or more than one) other live
distro from CD, DVD or USB stick, to see whether Stretch or Xorg is the more
likely cause of "[drm] Failed to open DRM device".
-- 
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 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

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