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I just installed 18.04 on a Dell T310 server, and I'm noticing that the text console is unusably slow when scrolling text.
To add some numbers to this, invoking dmesg immediately after boot over an ssh connection takes about half a second to show all of the output, but doing it on the console it takes about 36 seconds for the same amount of output. (A 72x slowdown)
The console stops for a moment immediately after GRUB, and then appears to switch graphics modes to something higher resolution.
Something that worked in the past was forcing vesafb in GRUB (GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3" in /etc/default/grub), but that does nothing here.
This has to be something framebuffer related. In dmesg, I see the following:
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.15.0-72-generic root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv ro video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
[ 0.212182] pci 0000:01:03.0: BAR 0: assigned to efifb
[ 1.115763] efifb: probing for efifb
[ 1.115776] efifb: framebuffer at 0xd9800000, using 1216k, total 1216k
[ 1.115779] efifb: mode is 640x480x32, linelength=2560, pages=1
[ 1.115782] efifb: scrolling: redraw
[ 1.115784] efifb: Truecolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=24:16:8:0
[ 1.142136] fb0: EFI VGA frame buffer device
[ 4.121850] fb: switching to mgag200drmfb from EFI VGA
[ 4.208453] fbcon: mgadrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 4.726896] mgag200 0000:01:03.0: fb0: mgadrmfb frame buffer device
I tried blacklisting mgadrmfb in the hopes that a more generic driver would work, but that didn't help either (actually it just made the text a bit chunkier, but just as slow)
At this point, I'm more interested in a usable console than I am having it at high resolution (640x480 is perfectly acceptable), but high res wouldn't be unwelcome if there's a way to have it speedy.
I did find that setting nomodeset in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINX in /etc/default/grub helped a little, the mode is now down to 640x480 and isn't unusably slow (about 15 seconds to scroll dmesg now), but there's still some kind of fancyness happening that I'd like to be able to turn off.
Mikey T.K.
Posted 2019-12-12T16:18:47.827
Reputation: 3 224
Please append output of
xrandr --verboseand an Xorg log to your question. – dirdi – 2020-02-07T20:24:59.340@dirdi X is not installed on this server, so that command is unavailable. – Mikey T.K. – 2020-02-07T20:28:21.030
Did you try to do a bootable usb and see if booting from that you experience the same problem? (If not you will have a solution in the pen drive
;-)– Hastur – 2020-02-08T11:27:11.620@hastur This seems to happen on most modern distros as well, but the question was about Ubuntu since that's what's installed. – Mikey T.K. – 2020-02-08T14:42:06.053
@MikeyT.K. I got it, I meant try a fresh install. The faster and less invasive way to do it, is to put Ubuntu on a usb drive and to start so... If you will not have this problem, you already have a solution... in the usb. If you state that it seems to happen on most modern distros you can check on one where it doesn't and copy the settings from there. – Hastur – 2020-02-08T16:20:48.110
@MikeyT.K. I would rule out some sort of GPU or graphics type bug perhaps specific with your flavor of Ubuntu and the older server hardware. Are you able to upgrade the Dell T30 firmware including BIOS/CMOS? Are you able to make graphic output adjustment in BIOS and see if any of those help with the issue? Are you able to disable the graphic from BIOS and use a newer GPU card that supports higher resolution and see if that makes a difference? I would also try with different variations of RAM and rule out RAM issue oddly enough too. Quick thoughts and ideas for you if nothing else. – Pimp Juice IT – 2020-02-08T22:13:32.673