Radeon 9600 on Sarge

dereke55 · 10-10-2004, 02:49 PM

Ok, well I'm a newbie at linux.

I have installed Sarge and have that up and running. Unfortunately, I have a Radeon 9600 video card which is not currenly supported (I found this out after attempting to install and run x-window-system).

I have found a .deb package for my video card, however, it requires xserver-xfree86 version 4.3 or above. The version I have is 4.1, and I can't figure out how to upgrade it. when I run apt-get, I get a message that says I have the newest version.

If anyone has had any problems with Radeon video cards, could you please post your step by step instructions, or if anyone has any ideas or tips.

Thank you very much!

cadj · 10-10-2004, 09:20 PM

sarge atm has XFree86 Version 4.3.0.1

run apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

that will upgrade everything to the latest "testing"

i took my radeon 9200 back because of the crap linux support, but i did get it working well before i did

this site helped, its for the 9200 but shoudl work for you

http://www.desktop-linux.net/ati.htm

dereke55 · 10-11-2004, 12:18 PM

thanks cadj,

I'm attempting to go through those instructions, however I am getting stuck on installing alien (to convert the rpm to deb)

I run:
apt-get install alien

but I get the error:
alien: Depends: debhelper (>=3) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken Packages

Then I run:
apt-get install debhelper:
dephelper: Depends: debconf-utils but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken Packages

Then I run:
apt-get install debconf-utils:
debconf-utils: Depends: debconf (>= 0.9.59) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken Packages

Finally:
apt-get install debconf
debconf is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded

Is there anyway to force an upgrade?
Or any other ideas around this?

Thanks again

cadj · 10-11-2004, 10:09 PM

did u do the apt-get dist-upgrade?

if u have i cant really think of anythin to help, mayb someone else can tho

dereke55 · 10-11-2004, 10:49 PM

I tried to do the apt-get dist-upgrade, but got the following error message:

Unpacking fileutils (from .../fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite '/bin/chgrp', which is also in package coreutils
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Any ideas?

(I'm thinking about trying a different disto, maybe Mandrake or Suse?)

iAmAnthony · 10-12-2004, 02:10 PM

ok you need to get midnight commander if you dont already have it

apt-get install mc

run mc and navigate to /etc/apt/sources.list
edit sources (F4)

in there youll see your cd first, put a # infront of this line to comment it out

you shoould have a few xources listed here. comment all of them out but one

the one you leave should start with deb , not deb-src

after the site in that line itll say stable contrib non us, whatever you selected when you added this

well just change stable to testing, press f10 to exit, say yes to the change and then run apt-get update

try it then

afterwords, you should neaten up your apt list, i usually keep 2 sets of sources and security updates i have a stable set and a testing set. leave the testing set commented out untill you come across a time when you need to use it like this
i found when looking for something in testing its best to comment out EVERYTING else just to be sure

and remember you probably moved to linux so that you can build and customize your machine just how you like it. learning exploring and running into trouble is gonna happen, but your doing the right thing, asking questioins and sticking with it, dont move to suse or mandrake, when all is said and done the skills your learning will be a great reward.

dereke55 · 10-19-2004, 02:23 PM

Well, I hate to say it, but I switched to Mandrake 10. When I have more time, I'll try Debain again as I would like to completely customize my install. But for now, just to get something up and running, Mandrake worked like a charm. Thanks to everyone for all of your help

R6Sven · 10-21-2004, 03:07 PM

For when you decide to give it another try:

make /etc/apt/sources.list read like the following (subsitute your preferred mirror host for ftp.de.debian.org)

Code:

# official stable
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

# official testing
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

# official unstable
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

# official security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main

make /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf read like:

Code:

APT::Cache-Limit 10485760;
APT::Default-Release "stable";

// Pre-configure all packages with debconf before they are installed.
// If you don't like it, comment it out.
DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true";};

The upped Cache-Limit is a bit of a bug fix. Without it, you won't be able to process the list of packages. The second line makes Debian stick to the stable distribution unless you tell it otherwise. This is one way to eliminate the need to comment/uncomment blocks in sources.list all the time.

Finally, if it doesn't yet exist, create /etc/apt/preferences like this:

Code:

Explanation: see http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 400

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

This is used to keep things under control when sources.list pulls in more than two releases. If you only want to install from two (say stable and testing, or testing and unstable), you don't need it.

You can now install from any of the official releases. Just remember to run 'apt-get update' before your first install of testing/unstable on any given day. Use the '-t' flag with 'install' to indicate the release you want to use. This will automatically add/upgrade the packages required by whatever you're trying to install.

So: 'apt-get -t testing install xserver-xfree86' grabs XFree86 4.3.x and all the packages that need to be upgraded