I have a Dell 8300 machine with a p4 3.0.

A few days ago I decided to get into Linux. I am a newbie to Linux but I managed to install it on a separate partition. I couldn’t go into graphical install because it kept freezing so I had to go into text.


By reading the forum, I recently found out that ATI 9800 PRO cards are having problems with Linux. My system uses a 9800 PRO card.

The Linux I am using is Fedora. Every time I boot up Linux for the first time, it hangs.

From my understanding by reading this forum, it is because of the video card. Therefore I will need to install a driver for it.

The problem is that I’m completely lost with the code stuff. I have no idea how to install it or even where to go to install it.

Could someone please help me out and walk me through the process?

So far I have found the driver that I need to install. I got it from ATI’s site.

I’ve burned the driver onto a CD. So, how do I install the driver?

Meaning, when I boot up my computer I go into grub where I select what operating system I want to load. I have two Linux things (core and core-up,) then Windows XP. What are the steps I must take from that screen in order to install the driver so Linux will not hang during boot up?

hey nobet. All you need to do is boot to run level 3 and install from your cd-rom mount. To do this when grub comes up hit the "a" key. this will take you to the grub command line. you will already see some commands there. At the end of the line put a space and then the number "3". This will tell the kernel to boot to a command line instead of X. When you come to login prompt be sure to login as root. When you are logged in type "cd /mnt/cdrom" without quotes. This will take you to the CD-ROM mount. Now follow the instructions from the ati website for install of the drivers. Hope this helps.

--Jeff

So far I am able to log into root.

I then type

Mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

I hear my cd rom drive spin up so it is now mounted.

I then go into the mnt/cdrom where I should be able to read the files on the cd, right?

On ati’s page, it tells me to type the name of the file on the cd. The file is directly on the cd and not in any directories.

I type

rpm –Uh –force fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm


It comes back and says file not found. What should I do?

Did you make sure that you can see the file on the CD? If you can see the file, you may try copying the file to an directory on your harddrive like /usr/src and running rpm from there.

Firstly jerick70

I would like to say 1 thing to you ... "congradulations" I had that exact same problem awhile ago and you solved it in 2 lines. Amazing, other people where telling me the same things but it seemed that much harder.

Anyways what I did was I slapped in another video card, booted up and copied all the neccesaries across, read the readme and Bam! It works.

What I suggest it that u read the readme within the drivers so that you can install them from the console. You are the console so your basically 80% there ...

As a fellow 9800 user I guess I'll have to do this too. I supprised that the Fedora team haven't put support in out of the box for such a popular graphics card though.