Matrox driver installation

Hi everyone. I just did a fresh install of Manjaro on my computer. I’m trying to install drivers for my Matrox G450 PCI card, since it seems that my screen resolution and color bit is locked with default stock driver.
I tried to install matrox driver by the following command, but it resulted in error.

[nhanvien3@nhanvien3 ~]$ sudo pacman -S xorg-server-video-matrox
error: target not found: xorg-server-video-matrox
[nhanvien3@nhanvien3 ~]$

Checking my files, the xorg.conf is also missing in /etc/X11.

Is there anything i can do about this?

This is all the information of my PC usings lspci if it helps.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6th-10th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 31)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Q170/Q150/B150/H170/H110/Z170/CM236 Chipset SATA Controller [AHCI Mode] (rev 31)
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #19 (rev f1)
00:1b.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #20 (rev f1)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation H170 Chipset LPC/eSPI Controller (rev 31)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family Power Management Controller (rev 31)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Controller (rev 31)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family SMBus (rev 31)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I219-V (rev 31)
01:00.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1083/1085 PCIe to PCI Bridge (rev 04)
02:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8738/CMI8768 PCI Audio (rev 10)
03:00.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1083/1085 PCIe to PCI Bridge (rev 04)
04:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3060 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R
04:01.0 PCI bridge: Hint Corp HB6 Universal PCI-PCI bridge (non-transparent mode) (rev 15)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G400/G450 (rev 85)

Thanks in advance.


Moderator edit: In the future, please use proper formatting: [HowTo] Post command output and file content as formatted text

Hullo,

What makes you believe this should be there?

The closest, and in fact only package I can find even mentioning matrox is in the AUR;

$ paru matrox

1 aur/mga-dri 7.11.2-13 [+0 ~0.00]
    Mesa DRI drivers for Matrox
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There is another package in the AUR called xf86-video-mga which has mga-dri as an optional dependency.

I would do some reading before installing to make sure that it is the right package for your card. The correct way to install via Pamac CLI would be pamac build xf86-video-mga for just the driver or pamac build xf86-video-mga mga-dri for the driver + Mesa support.

Note the use of build instead of install for AUR packages, and make sure you don’t use sudo. Pamac will prompt you for your password when required.

The only driver (for Linux) I could find in the wild for that chipset is: Matrox G450. The driver seems to be very old (2006) and likely will be unsupported generally in modern Linux installations.

I might presume the same applies to the card itself, however, I have no definitive information to support that. This link downloads a user guide (2011) for the Matrox Millennium G450 which may be useful.

There certainly doesn’t seem to be any xorg-server-video-matrox package in the official repositories. Where did that information come from?

I noticed what looks like a compatible driver in man pages of Debian (Stretch) xserver-xorg-video-mga. It’s possible this card still remains supported in Debian 12 – and apparently is – section 2.1.5 Graphics Hardware Support points to xorg/Projects/Drivers where mga is listed.

Indeed, Debian might be the wiser choice if you must use this card.

However, the mga-dri in the AUR referenced by @scotty65 and mentioned by @cscs looks promising.

Make absolutely sure that any package found does in fact support your card (and OS) before attempting to install it.

I hope this additional information is useful. Cheers.

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Thanks everyone. I have managed to installed the mga-driver now. However, it is yet to appear in my kernel. Am i missing something?

pacman -Qs mga-dri
local/mga-dri 7.11.2-13
Mesa DRI drivers for Matrox

lspci -v | grep driver
Kernel driver in use: skl_uncore
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
Kernel driver in use: mei_me
Kernel driver in use: ahci
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
Kernel driver in use: e1000e
Kernel driver in use: snd_cmipci
Kernel driver in use: rt2800pci
Kernel driver in use: matrox_w1

lspci -v | grep modules
Kernel modules: ie31200_edac
Kernel modules: xhci_pci
Kernel modules: mei_me
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_avs
Kernel modules: i2c_i801
Kernel modules: e1000e
Kernel modules: snd_cmipci
Kernel modules: rt2800pci
Kernel modules: matrox_w1

(matrox_w1 is the default driver i’ve been having)

It would appear you need xf86-video-mga (I think).

I do have it, too. It does not appear in the kernal still.

pacman -Qs xf86-video-mga
local/xf86-video-mga 2.0.1-2 (xorg-drivers)
X.org mga video driver

Sorry @konkon306 I dont know anything about that driver, if you should modprobe some module, or what.


Thats gotta be some of the biggest dumb on ‘arch packages’ I have seen.
Thousands of entries all with some of the same problems.

  • It includes a pacman -S %package% for AUR package install instructions which is not functional.
  • It states pacman -Sy then pacman -S %package% which is a partial upgrade.
  • It suggests removal with sudo pacman -Rcns %package% which is recursive on cascade which is almost always a bad idea.

I guess I’d suggest never linking that source again :sweat_smile:

1 Like

I was told that i need to do something with the linux-headers package. Do you know anything of it?

I remember I used Matrox card long time ago back when Ubuntu was new 2004 and it was next to impossible to working.

If that is correct - and it is quite possible - then you may need dkms and the relevant header package for your running kernel.

To find the running kernel use mhwd-kernel - example from my system

 $ mhwd-kernel -li
Currently running: 6.6.8-2-MANJARO (linux66)
The following kernels are installed in your system:
   * linux66

Then use the output from your system to install dkms and headers.

Following the example above

sudo pacman -Syu linux66-headers dkms

I don’t think you will get it work - at least not how you intend. Please see the part I highlighted with bold font

To support Unix and Linux, Matrox has released only binary drivers for most of their product line and one partially free and open-source driver for the G550 card which comes with a binary blob to enable some additional functionality. These drivers were tested and are allegedly supported for quite old distributions. They do not work on newer Linux kernels and X.Org Server versions. In addition to the proprietary drivers provided by Matrox, the DRI community has provided drivers under the GPLlicense for many more of the devices.

Matrox - Wikipedia

I have installed that. what should i do next?

:facepalm: I believe I can do even better.

  1. Edit the hosts file:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
  1. Add the following entry:
127.0.0.1  linux-packages.com

Save, and exit.

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It appears that my mga-dri driver is located in these places.

$ pacman -Ql mga-dri
mga-dri /usr/
mga-dri /usr/lib/
mga-dri /usr/lib/xorg/
mga-dri /usr/lib/xorg/modules/
mga-dri /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/
mga-dri /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/mga_dri.so
mga-dri /usr/share/
mga-dri /usr/share/licenses/
mga-dri /usr/share/licenses/mga-dri/
mga-dri /usr/share/licenses/mga-dri/LICENSE

I assume i just need to add it to a .conf file of xorg at /etc/X11?

I think you want something like

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "mga"
	BusID       "PCI:1:3:0"
	#Option     "OldDmaInit"         	"True"
EndSection

in an xorg.conf file. I’m not sure about the identifier.

You can also try just modprobing the module;

sudo modprobe mga

I think you are wasting time trying to get it to work - I sincerely doubt you will be succesful.

Perhaps - I don’t believe you will be succesful

x.org foundation has a page for mga - but the link to the manual page is dead.

Latest release was 6.7.0 in 2013 and the wikipedia source states the above.

The mga packages in AUR was dropped from Arch official repo - likely because they were not used and/or due to incompatibility issues.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mga-dri

builds on mesa 7.x

ftp://ftp.freedesktop.org/pub/mesa/older-versions/7.x/7.11.2/MesaLib-7.11.2.tar.bz2
https://www.x.org/wiki/VideoDriverFAQ/

Links to Matrox own drivers - a dead link

http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/latest/home.cfm

I moved the topic to AUR as it is about building obsolete drivers using custom scripts

1 Like