scenario:
just installed debian 503 kde .

installation went smooth w/no graphical problems.

but after reboot i can't see a damn thing...login window looks like about 180x120 res.

using a ati sapphire radeon x1650 video card.
question:
if i d/l ati graphics driver to a usb drive, would i be able to install it in single user mode?

if so, what would the path to usb drive be?

It might be easier to edit xorg.conf and activate the vesa driver. That way you have access to the computer to download drivers and install them.

Start your computer, when the login screen show up, press CTRL-ALT-F1. Log in as root.

Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf with your favorite editor (or nano)
Change the driver to "vesa" including the quotes.
Please complete your profile so it shows your distro.

Please write English, no SMS language.

jlinkels

this doesn't work.

it's an ATI card.

Did you try it? The VendorName is irrelevant; if the vesa driver actually failed then you have bigger problems.

The VESA driver happens to run all VGA cards. Have you tried it or are you just drawing a conclusion because I left the VendorName in?

jlinkels

EDIT: AlucardZero: you hit the submit button faster than I did!

tried it exactly as posted.

rebooted, and system boots to "Input Not Supported" box floating around a black screen.

resolution and/or refresh rate is too high

Open xorg again.

If you have a CRT monitor the Modes 640x480 etc are OK. If you have an LCD enter at least one combination which complies with the native resolution of your monitor.

If you have an LCD, change the highest VertRefresh to 60.0

If that fails, check /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what resolution/refresh rate has been chosen by X and if that is something your monitor chokes on.

jlinkels

thanks for all replies, but none of these xorg edits work.

isn't there some way that the correct downloaded ati driver could be installed via floppy drive, cd-rom or usb device?

What does Xorg.0.log tell you?

Sure you can download the driver and try to install it. Given the total lack of success with a generic VESA driver the chances are slight that something useful emerges when making things more complicated by installing another proprietary driver.

jlinkels

i would like to give it a shot. i have the driver on a usb stick, but i don't know the commands to install it.

(there is no hardware issue here; the box has an elive installation on another partition that works perfectly.)

I have looked at the ATI driver. It is a shell script with a fairly large binary attached. The binary consist of compiled libraries for a number of distros, a number of different cards and probably some source files to be compiled against your current kernel.

Installation is most likely taken care of by a GUI app. (Which is tremendously stupid as often you won't have a GUI available when you install this driver)

Anyway, you can list and decompress all the files in the shell script (use -h parameter to see how) After that is done, you should dig into the directory tree of the decompressed driver files to see if there is somewhere some some scripts which will perform the install, or at least a README to tell you how to install this driver from the command line.

That is as much as I can tell you. Time doesn't permit to sort this all out for you and give you a step-by-step instruction. Someone else maybe?

jlinkels

You could install the proprietary Ati driver from the Debian repository.
Had a quick scan through the guide,and from what i can see should be possible to install from the cli.
Here's the link:

http://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary

ok, all is well..
after wasting too much time with it, i put in a nvidia card,
thank you all for your patience & help.

"I will not be pushed,filed,stamped,indexed,briefed,debriefed or numbered.My life is my own...."

the prisoner?

Yes,well spotted.