I have an old machine here with a VIA chipset. The default screen resolution is 800x600 but the monitor is a widescreen LCD monitor which is capable of much more.
I've tried to install the ubuntu 10.04 VIA drivers found on their linux drivers page and I followed the instructions. The ./vinstall completed without a problem and I rebooted.
On reboot Xorg didn't start and the log files say the the driver .so file is missing, cannot be found and therefore there are no screens.
Has anybody managed to get this configuration working? My requirements are really only for a basic desktop on the monitor's default resolution.
Via chrome9 was to have been detected during the installation, because X.org supports this device using Openchrome driver xserver-xorg-video-openchrome. That's why I guess your problem is unusual.
Try to install the driver again, but now using the open-source version. Open a terminal and type:
If the package was installed, try to restart your box (don't use Ctrl + Alt + Backspace).
But if not installed, you may found a bug. Go to launchpad.net and open a bug. Don't forget to provide
lspci
to help solve it.There were already several bugs reported in early October for the openchrome and VIA in Ubuntu 10.10, since many people found that their machine (or rather xorg xserver) failed to come up after the upgrade. There is a recent fix on launchpad.net which seems to work a little bit better.