AST2000 (Aspeed Graphics) Driver/Problem on ESXi 5.5uX

[daish0]

Hi,

I wondered if the AST2000 chip (Aspeed onboard graphics for VGA/IPMI, used in Supermicro X10SL7-F board) is still included in the 5.5u1 and 5.5u2 ISOs and if, which version of the driver is used?

Updates (via ESXi shell) up to ESXi550-201406001 (Build 1881737) run without problem.

After an update to ESXi550-201407001 (Build 1892794) when I reboot the server the start hangs at "Starting Xorg service"!

When I try to install with the newer ISOs I get scrambled/corrupted graphics while booting the ESXi installer (see attachments) - did not happen back when I installed the vanilla 5.5 release.

btw, is it normal that the Xorg service is not started on ESXi? When I try to start it manually from vSphere Client it simply stops instantly. Regardless of version (my current version is build 1881737)

I contacted Supermicro support to check if that is a mainboard issue/defect and they suggested to try first a newer driver (0.99.10) for the AST2000 chipset. Unfortunately I don't have a clue how to create a .vib package out of raw linux drivers.

I hope someone can help me, this is driving me nuts 😞

Best regards,

daish0

/Edit: P.S.: I'm using a AMD HD 6450 graphics card for passthrough to a VM if that matters.

[Linjo]

Why would you enable Xorg? Its only used for vSGA (Virtual Shared Graphics Adapter) and its basically only interesting if you are running VDI workloads.

// Linjo

[daish0]

Thanks for the info, but I still have the problem (at build 1892794 onwards) that the ESXi host hangs while loading Xorg service at startup (it loads it automatically at the end before reaching the default info menu) and I can't make a fresh install because of the corrupted graphics when I boot with the newer ISOs 😞

[Linjo]

What if you remove the passthrough of the AMD Card, put it as primary GPU in the bios, hook up a monitor and install that way?

// Linjo

[Caruso68]

I got exactly the same problem with ASPEED GPU. Is there any driver for this available?