Linux and Graphics....

tektek678 · November 8, 2021

Hi all! I am stumped.

As a preface, I am running a mess of old hardware. I work in IT, so I have a weird collection of scap. I am running Debian (ParrotOS) on a Dell Poweredge T320 (using a RAID controller I pulled out of an old HP server, but I don't think that is relevant ATM). I have quite a few decent monitors, and I could really use more visual real estate, so I pulled out an AMD WX 2100 that has 3 display ports- perfect for what I need. I am not gaming, I just might be remoting into multiple tenants at once.I first updated/upgraded everything I could then restarted, but no display out from the card. I then went to the AMD website and to the letter followed their instructions for installing and initializing the proper driver. Restarted, and now the weird things happen.

On first startup, the parrotOS splah screen will show on the monitor connected to the card, then goes black to load the distro and only the onboard display comes back on. Once logged in, only one monitor is listed (the onboard) through if I run lspci and grep for VGA, it lists two devices as it should: the built in controller, and the AMD/ATI Lexa XT [Radeon PRO WX 2100. I imagine I just need a boot argument or to mod a load in config file, but I am not sure what. Any guidance would be appreciated!

Radium_Angel · November 8, 2021

Been there, done that.

Only solution I ever found was switch the dedicated GPU to nVidia. Then the system would behave normally.

flindeberg · November 10, 2021

On 11/8/2021 at 8:27 PM, tektek678 said:

Debian (ParrotOS)

Which kernel?

If this is the right card; https://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:1002-6995-1002-0b0c, you will need at least kernel 4.10. Some Debian based derivatives run really really old kernels...