Hi, I am having problems installing SuSe 9.0 using the Yast2 installer.

Everything goes fine until the detecting hardware stage and then the install craps out. (Well really my screen just goes dark, which I assume happens when Yast2 tries to detect my video card).

I have tried now with 4 seperate video cards. A Gforce FX 5200, a Radeon 9500pro, a Radeon 9800pro and the onboard S3 Unichrome graphics of my 3 month old Via KT400M motherboard.

Only on the last of these did I see any image at all after the 'detecting harware' stage was complete - and that was completely unreadable with a resolution that looked something like 240x480 with 4 colours.

Is there some way I can configure the Yast2 installer so that I can get it to avoid atempting to detect my video card? I am completely happy and able to write my own XF86Config file, so I don't really need it to do this.

Does anyone know if there is a configuration file somewhere that perhaps I can edit?

All input is appreciated.

Q

Hmm, well clearly this particular question is not an easy one to answer. I guess therefore nor is my next one.

Does anybody know how to get digital out sound working on my on board Via 8233 sound card?

I thought it would work under OSS, but I haven't had much luck with either OSS or alsa. It worked in Red Hat 9.0 - but for all sorts of reasons I won't go into here I ended up abandoning Red Hat 9.0. All in all SuSe has a more polished feel to it - but apparently not so polished that it is able yet to handle basic hardware detection yet.

Any input would be appreciated.

I really don't want to be bangning my head away at this for weeks like I did with RH, Slackware, Gentoo and now Suse.


Thanks in advance.

Q

There's nothing basic about hardware detection... It's actually quite an advanced thing.

Do you have Plug and play OS turned off in your BIOS. If not, then you should. Also, make sure that if the BIOS has an option to diable the onboard video, that the setting is set to disable that onboard video. What you may have is a conflict with 2 devices responding to the querry about whether there is a video device installed on the machine.

If all else fails, look to use one of the manual settings for the install routines. Then you have to specify your hardware. It's been a while since I installed SuSE 8.2, so I can't remember how this works exactly. 9.0 should be more robust.

That is a possibility with the on board video I guess. But consider too that I tried *just* the onboard video, and all that did was present me with an unreadable screen resolution of only a few colours.

I worked through a variety of different video cards and considered as much as I could the possible problems and conflicts they might cause. I finally nailed it down to a problem with the acpi controller on the AGP bus of this motherboard (although Windows is not adversly affected by this bug) and so my only remaning option was to install it on another computer. This worked flawlessly... Well that is if you can call flawlessly the fact that there is still no accelerated video, nor am I able to obtain any sound from my on board sound card.

There is an outside chance I might be able to get the accelearted video going, I'm not sure what script SuSe uses to autoload modules at boot time (in gentoo it's simply /etc/modules.autoload) but if i can figure this out, install the ati driver cleanly and get the module to automatically load at boot I will have cracked it.

But then there is still not much point in any of this without sound. You might imagine in this day and age a modern OS would allow for some tools that would enable SPDIF configuration.

But maybe I should have expected this. I bought Suse though in the hope of avioding all this hassle. I figured with professional developers on the case they might have the whole thing figured.

Apparently they didn't.

I don't want t get into a FW about the relative merrits of Linux (or indeed the lack of them) I have tried many, many Linux versions over the last two years - and for once in my life I just want to plug a Linux version in and have it work.

Gentoo was fun in order to learn about Linux, but now i just want to use my PC in the way you are supposed to. I want it to do useful things.

I don't think I have ever had accelerated sound and video working properly in the two years I have been a Linux user.

I wish for one I could have it.

Q

Did you try DISABLING plug and play OS detection in the BIOS??? This has a huge effect on Linux being able to run gthrough its autodetect routines.

As for the accelerated video, I would go with a nVidia card, and use their installation script. ATI and others are still too spotty.

You still need to edit the XFConfig file to remove certain lines and input others. One thing to try is to use AGPgart instead of native AGP.

As for the sound, I would go with a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 card. Disable the onboard sound for the card.

I've never had a problem configuring accelerated video or sound in Linux, ever since using Mandrake 8.1 (ok, a brief problem with SuSE 6.1 back in 1998).

Yeah I did disable PnP in the bios. Addtionally as I said I tried 4 video cards, 2 ATI - Radeon 9500Pro and 9800Pro, 1 Nvidia card - FX5200 and the onboard S3 Unichrome video of this KM400 motherboard.

Getting accelerated video working might not be so much of a big problem for me - either with Nvidia or ATI - I have experience of both. But getting digital out sound working is quite another matter.

Sure I can just change the sound card. But I am tierd of spending money hand over fist just to get sound from each new Linux version I use working.

To be clear though, sound IS working, it is just digital out sound that I have not yet cracked.

Which is a major pain really, since I have not used an analogue amplifier for several years.

Again its possibly a long shot, I have been all over the web asking this question - and al through the alsa mailing lists. No one sems to have clue how to answer to it.

I know that this Via 8233 soundchip does have digital out support under OSS, as I said I have had it working under Red Hat, but I'm stuffed if I can get t working under SuSe.

Q

Oh BTW what is the name of modules.autoload script that loads modules at boot time in SuSe?

I would love to know this as it is the only way I will be able to automatically load my video and agp drivers when I finally install them.

Is compiling a kernel in SuSe difficult? In Red Hat is was always a nightmare to get a kernel to finish compiling sucessfully. (I have compiled lots of kernels so that's not really what I'm asking).

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Q

Well in for a penny in for a pound I guess. I am now stuck on the ati drivers.

I followed the instructions here:

All pretty straight forward you would think.

So I went to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and did

And guess what happend?

Do you ever get the impression some Linux developers just don't have a clue what they are doing?

Q

Hi, i have an abit va10 w/s3 unichrome vm400 chipset and suse gets 98% done w/install but at very end, tries to change video X11 driver, but screws it up -= looks like 320x200 chopped up. Called Suse, they are clueless, said to go to the mailing lists. I have bandaged it with outdated install program (fortunately w/ 11/03 video driver for X ) so i followed what the shell script was trying to do to install it (not designed for suse 8.2 +) and i have it working w/stock 9.0 2.4.21-99 kernel and 2.6.2.

However, it only works on startup to init 5, once init is changed, screen goes to that 320x200 screwed screen (inc. fb console res 1280x1024) but I can type and go back to init 5 which resets the fb to correct settings.

would fbset info be useful to anyone?