Hi! I need to use this new laptop in the classroom. My old laptop had an nvidia card, which always was a problem with Fedora, so I looked for a laptop with some other card, and got this Toshiba Sattellite 600. I took it to class today, plugged in the overhead projector and booted. I only had a screen on the projector. The laptop screen was blank, black.

I went to System>Preferences>Monitors and clicked the 'detect monitors' button. No joy!! I unplugged the overhead projector, and rebooted. I had my laptop screen back. Plug in the projector, go to Monitors>detect monitors, it sees nothing.

I'm sure I need to install something, but what?? Why doesn't Fedora see my screen. I'm not really sure what card I have, but here is lspci output, it must be some ati card.

Because the laptop is new, it had Windows installed, I kept Windows on a little partition, and it can boot into both screens.

Any tips out there?? I really need to use both screens at the same time.

[pedroski@fangshan2 ~]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1510
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9802
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a0
00:15.1 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a1
00:16.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:16.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1700 (rev 43)
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1701
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1702
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1703
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1704
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1718
00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1716
00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1719
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8176 (rev 01)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)

Thats a 'Fusion' APU.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=675177

Fusion/APU is still pretty new, and code is being added to xorg and kernels still. A newer kernel and/or xorg might fix the problem. Fedora 'rawhide' should work better with the fusion APUs, and fedora 16 should be better than fedora 15. When it comes out anyway.

Oh great, so now I have to install Fed 15? I only installed Fed 14 because I find Fed 15 hard to handle. Do you think I could do that on another partition, install both Feds, and see which one boots well?

I have the latest kernel for Fed 14, at least, as far as the updater goes.

Whats 'hard to handle' with fedora 15? I'd guess that its the new gnome 3 desktop. You could try the fedora xfce spin.

Installing both is do-able, and should run just fine. Still, AFAIK the fusion APU wont run well with fedora 14, and fedora 14 will be end of life when fedora 16 gets released. Easier to just move to 15 IMO, rather than sodding around trying to figure out which you like more.

I was distracted, so I forgot. I wanted to install Fed 15. I boot from the live CD. I go to Network settings to get the internet connection up and running, and there is no tab 'dsl' where I could enter my username and password. So I could install a basic system, but not update. The same cd in my old laptop has the dsl tab when I boot from it.

Any ideas?? I will download Fed 15 again, but I'm not very hopeful. The same thing happens if I boot with a Ubuntu live cd!

Sorry, I'm no help with that. I havent used fedora that much, only had a limited time on gnome 3.X and its been a while since I used gnome 2.X.

I actually use ADSL, but I've never had to setup passwords/usernames from the OS, I do it on the modem/router.

Well, it got a bit weirder: I already had Fed 14 on the Toshiba, but no twin view. This can be due to the new graphics chip ATI 9802, so I tried to install Fed 15, thinking the newer kernel can handle the graphics. After installation, from the Fed 15 dvd, I went straight to updates. That froze somewhere in the middle, I could not reboot, got a kernel panic, no screen. I had to reinstall Fed 14, just to boot. Fed 15 would start, from the disc, or the HD, but I had no dsl connection. The only way to get that was to reinstall Fed 14, then update to 15. I'm just doing that, but I keep getting transaction errors and no update!

Are Toshiba laptops so weird??

Can I try to tell X to specifically use ATI 9802 driver, or say 9800??

I think my Toshiba is defaulting to vesa, and that's part of the reason why I can't get two screens.

You would be better off calling the APU in your system the offical name- HD6310 .

You can check what driver is being used from the command line, though I'm not sure if the commands I've used with debian would work with fedora.

Creating an xorg.conf file should let you force the radeon (open source) driver. Or you could install the fglrx (closed source) drivers.

I'd guess that the APU might not have 100% suport with fedora 15 with the open source drivers. Hopefully the closed drivers work better, and the open source drivers in fedora 16 have full support.

I'd like to go to Fed 16, but: being inept at lots of things, and needing video support for the classroom, I will have to wait until Dangermouse has support for Fed 16. His script is wonderful for lay people like me!

As soon as he has that, I will upgrade!

But, the good news: today in class, I started Fed 15, with the screen plugged in, and it worked!

Do you know where I can get the driver for my APU HD6310??

Sounds like F15 is working just fine with the open source drivers.

If you want to install the closed fglrx drivers, see here-

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...d.php?t=155503

2 warnings- I dont know if the fglrx drivers in the RPM fusion repos supports the HD6310 (it should do, but I havent checked). The forum post where the directions are has a nice big "(Please note that gnome-shell doesn't work with fglrx)" watning as well.

If you are using gnome-shell (gnome 3) dont install the fglrx drivers unless you want to break F15. The other fedroa spins should be fine.

The open source driver you are using by default in F15 exists in three parts: Mesa (the 3D direct rendering driver), Xorg (the xf86-video-ati 2D DDX), and the kernel. You'd undoubtedly have to update all three components to get the same functionality in F14, if that's what you're going for, and, if you went down that road, you'd probably be more likely to break your system than actually make things work.

Adam

No no, you misunderstood me: I won't go back to Fed 14, now I have Fed 15 working. But I think the graphics are not what they could be. It I miss my 'desktop on a cube' and sliding windows between the desktops. Gnome 3 has gone backwards there, or maybe, because I don't have the right driver for the chipset, it can't do that.

But it is obiously better if I am using the correct driver for the chipset. So how do I get it, and how do I tell x to use it?

What do you think if I make a xorg.cong with only this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI radeon 6310"
Driver "fglrx"
EndSection

Well, gnome3 definitely does not have a desktop cube, no matter what driver you are using :-)

It is possible that the driver in F15 is too old to support 3D acceleration on your GPU. What's the output of 'glxinfo | grep -i render' ?

Adam

pedro@fangshan ~]$ glxinfo | grep -i render
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD PALM
GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend,
[pedro@fangshan ~]$