Cedar View drivers aren't working [closed]

Question

There has been a lot of commotion about Intel's Cedar View graphics (In the Intel Atom Cedar Trail CPUs including the N2800 and N2600) not working in Ubuntu because the GPU architecture was actually licensed to Intel by Imagination Technologies (a PowerVR GPU). Supposedly, the GPU isn't supported in Linux by Imagination Technologies (who own the Intellectual Property of the GPU's design) but Intel have created some closed source drivers for this GPU in MeeGo 1.2.

I have personally tried out Ubuntu 12.04 and MeeGo 1.2 update 6 on my Intel Atom N2800 notebook.

MeeGo seemed to work very well with the notebook's full screen resolution (1366 X 76 enabled automatically and the 3D graphics working flawlessly in the pre-installed Neverball game without skipping a beat. Suspend/Sleep mode worked perfectly in MeeGo as well. All of this was thanks to Intel's closed-source drivers. MeeGo 1.2 update 6 apparently has Linux Kernel version 2.6.37 according to this page: meego-v1.2-core-software-platform

Ubuntu 12.04 didn't work as well out-of-the-box. The screen resolution was set to 800 X 600 and it could not be increased, Neverball worked horribly with a lot of skipped frames and a flickering black window and for some reason the mouse cursor randomly flickered. Suspend mode worked well and the system was fully usable after using Suspend. To try to get some more graphics support, I upgraded to the newest stable Linux Kernel version (3.4.6) using this guide: http://www.upubuntu.com/2012/07/install-linux-kernel-346-on-ubuntu.html Thankfully things got better and my screen resolution was back to the full 1366 X 768. Unfortunately the 3D graphics support still lacked and Neverball was still laggy and flickery, the cursor still flickered and Suspend mode now failed to work. After I put the computer to Suspend and woke it back up the screen's resolution went very low, many weird horizontal lines appeared and the screen looked cropped, yet the system could be used. The suspend glitch is shown in this image:

I have found a project (https://launchpad.net/~sarvatt/+archive/cedarview/) which aims to bring Cedar View graphics support to Ubuntu and it has worked for some but not for others, including me. After I installed the drivers from the PPA and rebooted the system could only work in a console mode and the 'startx' failed. This has been the same with both Kernel versions 3.2.0-27 from the official Ubuntu 12.04 updates and with version 3.4.6.

Could anyone please help me get the Cedar View graphics working on my Intel Atom N2800 laptop by possibly fixing the cedarview packages from Launchpad or installing the closed-source drivers by Intel from MeeGo 1.2? I have made links to the outputs of the following commands from my notebook to help any problem solvers with this task:

dmesg: http://ubuntuone.com/1h2CRfUSyW4uLX2JmpcBcW

dmidecode: http://ubuntuone.com/2796K6CDv4tnpaGuhAnnJ3

lshw: http://ubuntuone.com/3SCQTDSHmvTaCqMnwJjLYd

lspci: http://ubuntuone.com/7a7rRWdXgyRvLkIYML6kma

Thank you very much for your time!

Answer 1

• I did this with Lubuntu 12.04

• To install Cedarview graphics drivers to get 1920x1080 support follow these instructions (modified from http://daily.siebler.eu/2012/06/ubuntu-12-04-driver-for-intel-cedarview-atom-n2000-und-d2000-serie/) (which were found by googling cedarview ubuntu graphics drivers)

• Add the repository http://ppa.launchpad.net/sarvatt/cedarview/ubuntu/ to your APT: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sarvatt/cedarview

• Install the add-apt-key utility sudo apt-get install add-apt-key

• Install the Repository KE sudo add-apt-key 0x4c96de60854c4636

• do update twice to make sure that system is up to date sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get update

• if using PAE kernel, remove it and install generic kernel sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-generic-pae linux-image-generic-pae

• really get rid of it

  • find out name of correct operating system kernel (one without pae) dpkg --list | grep linux-image
  • purge the rest of them using sudo apt-get purge (paste the names from the above command in one at a time, except for one you don't wish to zap) sudo update-grub2

• reboot into lubuntu sudo reboot --poweroff

  • remove memory stick
  • reboot

• Install the cedarview drivers sudo apt-get install cedarview-drm libva-cedarview-vaapi-driver cedarview-graphics-drivers

• You may need to change Option "AIGLX" to "Off" because 3D isn't working (default settion) sudo leafpad /usr/share/intel-cdv/X11/xorg.conf.d/61-cdv-pvr.conf

• Install gdm as display manager

• I tried using lightdm but it kept on hanging

• I thought that lxdm would also work since Lubuntu is based on LXDE (it didn't) sudo apt-get install gdm

• Update the Grub Bootloader sudo update-grub2

• Reboot and log in with full resolution

• You may need to specify kernel options when booting from Grub2

  • go to the line you wish to boot
  • type e
  • zap the ro quiet and other parameters at the end
  • optionally add mem=4g and video=LVDS-1:d
  • alternatitively you might wish to use grub-customizer

Other notes - Look at /etc/default/ and /boot/grub/grub.cfgrub - I had issues with ntp so I turned it off

• Look up sudo service gdm start (or sudo service lightdm start)

Answer 2

the drivers in ppa:sarvatt/cedarview are now also in precise-update, since a little earlier than the release of Ubuntu 12.04.1. If someone is interested in making it work also with full video acceleration (1080p at 10% CPU or less), I wrote a small guide that maybe can help someone (feedback appreciated):

http://linuxeeepc.blogspot.com/2012/08/lubuntu-on-eeepc-1025c-with-correct.html

It is fully tested on an Eeepc 1025c, but it should work on any cedar trail netbook.

Answer 3

I tried using lightdm but it kept on hanging"

cedarview-drm package overwrites the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file and replaces it with the unity greeter. Make a copy of your lightdm.conf file before installing the cedarview packages and then replace the modified lightdm.conf with your copy. Do it before rebooting or it will hang up at your next boot.

Answer 4

While this is an extremely well-researched and detailed post (thank you for that!), I think it belongs more on Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker (I guess for the Xorg package since the Cedar View graphics drivers don't involve Mesa). The reason I say that is that you are reporting legitimate defects with out of the box Ubuntu packages. The fact that Ubuntu provides some basic Cedar View support in 12.04 indicates that the feature is already there, but not working correctly (for you, at least).

Your post suggests that you are using a third-party driver (from the PPA). This is generally not the kind of thing that is supported on Ask Ubuntu. Third party drivers in PPAs are basically unsupported, unless you can get some help from the package maintainer.

It's great that you are finding these details about the Cedar View chipset driver, and I share your disdain for the proprietary graphics technology of Imagination Tech, but there are a very small number of people who could even begin to help you resolve your problems, and most of them are probably watching the Ubuntu bug tracker, not Ask Ubuntu.

In other words, I don't think Ubuntu 12.04 is ever going to support Cedar View in a better way out of the box, as that would entail introducing new major versions of both the userspace driver and the Linux kernel (unlikely to happen). The earliest it could appear is Ubuntu 12.10. Your expertise would be most welcome in championing the integration of the most recent proprietary drivers in Ubuntu 12.10. And if you ever do figure out how to make them work well, your solution will be greatly valued by everyone who benefits from the drivers.

As to your posted logs:

[    4.183368] [drm] Initialized gma500 1.0.0 2011-06-06 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0

Sounds like it's at least initializing the direct rendering manager properly, which is a good sign. But we can get a lot more detail if you can revert to the stock Ubuntu 12.04 drivers (if you can't figure out how, reinstall the OS... it can be challenging to downgrade the right packages) and if you provide this file: /var/log/Xorg.0.log

You're definitely thinking the right things and experimenting with the right stuff; I think you're on track to solve your problem and help others... but Ask Ubuntu is more for end-users who don't even know how to install a driver from a PPA. So you're ahead of the game!