Screen Resolution (only 800x600 and 640x480 available after upgrade from 13.5 to 14.4)

S

smnbldwn

I have just upgraded from 13.5 to 14.4 and one issue I am encountering is that the screen resolution has gone down from 1024x600 to 800x600. I had a similar issue when I first installed FreeBSD on this old netbook back in 2022. This forum helped me to install the correct drivers then to sort this out but the recommended packages so not seem to be available on 14.4. This is an old MSI u100 netbook clone with an intel Atom N270 processor with GMA945 integrated graphics.

Code: 
simon@MinilaptopBSD
  ` `.....---.......--.```   -/    -------------------
  +o   .--`         /y:`      +.   OS: FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE i386
   yo`:.            :o      `+-    Uptime: 58 mins
    y/               -/`   -o/     Packages: 1466 (pkg)
   .-                  ::/sy+:.    Shell: sh
   /                     `--  /    Resolution: 800x600
  `:                          :`   DE: Xfce 4.20
  `:                          :`   WM: Xfwm4
   /                          /    Theme: Greybird-dark [GTK3]
   .-                        -.    Icons: elementary-xfce [GTK3]
    --                      -.     Terminal: xfce4-terminal
     `:`                  `:`      Terminal Font: Monospace 12
       .--             `--.        CPU: Intel Atom N270 (2) @ 1.600GHz
          .---.....----.           GPU: Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Grap
                                   Memory: 985MiB / 2014MiB
 
Did you follow the instructions here? https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.4R/installation/#upgrade
If you don't freebsd-update install the final time to update third-party software, the system will attempt to boot with drivers for the old kernel.

ls -l /boot/modules to see if your drivers were updated. You should check drm.ko and the intel files for your GPU.

Also, you can run dmesg to see if the drivers give you an error saying the kernel module version is wrong. It'll be toward the beginning.
 
Run freebsd-update install again too see if you have updates pending. If there are none, try uninstalling drm-kmod and your drivers. Make sure the driver files in /boot/modules are gone, and reinstalling them.
 
jwillia3 said:
If you don't freebsd-update install the final time to update third-party software
Click to expand...
freebsd-update(8) only operates on the base OS, not ports/packages (i.e. third party software).

In between the second and third freebsd-udate install you are instructed to reinstall your ports/packages. The third freebsd-update install actually removes all libraries, executables and whatnot from the previously installed major version.
 
drm-kmod doesn't seem to be available.
Code: 
# pkg install drm-kmod
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
pkg: warning: database version 38 is newer than libpkg(3) version 37, but still compatible
pkg: No packages available to install matching 'drm-kmod' have been found in the repositories

Am I on the wrong libpkg or something?
 
A driver problem.
pkg install graphics/drm-kmod
sysrc kld_list+="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"

Code: 
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "intel"
    BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
 
Code: 
$ freebsd-version -kru
14.4-RELEASE
14.4-RELEASE
14.4-RELEASE

Code: 
$ pkg repos
FreeBSD: {
    url             : "pkg+https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:14:i386/quarterly",
    enabled         : yes,
    priority        : 0,
    mirror_type     : "SRV",
    signature_type  : "FINGERPRINTS",
    fingerprints    : "/usr/share/keys/pkg"
  }
FreeBSD-kmods: {
    url             : "pkg+https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:14:i386/kmods_quarterly_4",
    enabled         : yes,
    priority        : 0,
    mirror_type     : "SRV",
    signature_type  : "FINGERPRINTS",
    fingerprints    : "/usr/share/keys/pkg"
  }
 
Alain De Vos said:
A driver problem.
pkg install graphics/drm-kmod
sysrc kld_list+="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"

Code: 
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "intel"
    BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
Click to expand...
I don't think i915 works on this ancient GPU. This could well be the problem.
Maybe support for Intel 945GSE has gone away on FreeBSD 14.
 
SirDice said:
The Intel Atom N270 is a CPU that supports Intel 64, why is it running on 32 bit?
Click to expand...
Wow! I have never managed to get anything 64bit to run on it before. I have tried to boot both Windows 10 64bit and PopOS but always got messages about it not supporting this architecture.
 
Emrion said:
Oh, I see now. You're on an i386 machine. Alas, i386 arch isn't really well supported since some times... You are on Tier 2.
www.freebsd.org

Platforms

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.
www.freebsd.org www.freebsd.org
Click to expand...
It has worked pretty well with FreeBSD 13 for the last 4 years but I guess all good things come to an end.
 
There is nothing in the BIOS to switch and after some more research I am pretty certain it is 32bit only. Does that mean there are no options to get a suitable driver for the graphics? I think it has defaulted to the fallback VGA driver, hence the 800x600 display.
 
Do you have a blank storage device that you could try a fresh install of 14.4-RELEASE amd64? If that works then you may have a path forward.
 
Alain De Vos said:
I would go for,
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-linux/files/Old/MX-23.6/Fluxbox/
Click to expand...
Thanks Alain, I triple boot this thing, MX's even lighter cousin, AntiX runs well on it. Windows 10 is incredibly slow but does still work with lots of de-cluttering and switching off of telemetry etc. FreeBSD 13.5 was still pretty useful and stable, I used to use it with Jupyter lab and it all worked better than it did with AntiX. I will persevere for a bit on trying to get the graphics working, all I need is a driver that lets me get back to 1024x600. I like the form factor on this thing and it is very light and easy to carry around and gives around 4hrs battery life so not such a bad package.
 
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