Hi all,

I am linux noob, and after trying 3 distros, I have chosen mandriva mainly because it had a builtin driver for my graphics card. So all went well with the compiz effects and the only 3d game I play. Beautifull.

After some 3-4 days I think, 3d effects were still ok but the game could not get into fullscreen mode, had wall textures all messed up, and a very low frame per seconds rate - as if there was just no 3d acceleration. This problem goes away if I turn off 3d effects, but without 3d effects there is also no hardware mouse - which makes my mouse unusable ingame because of its acceleration factor. And I cant turn off the damn acceleration. Or even if I could turn it on ... why cant I have them both back (game + 3ddesktop) ?

Of course I did not play with X configuration or anything during those 3-4 days ... but I do vaguely recall that some of the updates I have made through the system updater were kernel related; as far as i can remember, initial driver used for my card was "ATI Radeon x1300 and later"; this one if used now (after kernel updates) results in extreme chopyness for 3d effects and game just not launching (black screen, system gets stuck). Currently the system is running "r500 and r600 based FireGL" graphics driver. Trying to reenable and test the old driver gets this error:

"An error occurred:
(EE) fglrx(0): incompatible kernel module detected - HW accelerated OpenGL will not work
fglrx: QS connection has not been initialized"

I have tried with other drivers listed in xfdrake control panels but I cant get any better than this. So is there anyway to revert the kernel update ? Or if you can suggest some other way to get it working again, please do.

Meanwhile, back to good ol' windows.

Thank you all.

It sounds as if the kernel got upgraded and the ATI module did not. Every module must be compiled for the specific kernel version it is going to be loaded into. You should be able to fix your problem if you boot to your old kernel or if you upgrade the ATI module. I'm not a Mandriva expert so I'm not exactly sure how to do that on your system.

HTH

Forrest

Allright, so anyone knows how to boot the old kernel ?

Because at the boot screen - grub screen, I have got 2 extra options which are rather odd. I dont know if they were there from the very beggining of mandriva's residence in my system. The otions are:

title desktop586 2.6.22.9-1
kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=desktop586_2.6.22.9-1 root=/dev/sda5 resume=/dev/sda6 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

title desktop586 2.6.22.12-1
kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.12-desktop586-1mdv BOOT_IMAGE=desktop586_2.6.22.12-1 root=/dev/sda5 resume=/dev/sda6 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd-2.6.22.12-desktop586-1mdv.img

However none of them work ok with any graphics driver.

Bless y'all, and happy holidays.

title desktop586 2.6.22.9-1

That one looks like the older kernel. If it is, it should still work.
If not, you'll need to work from the command line.
When the system has booted, hit Ctrl + Alt + F1.
Log in as root.
type: XFdrake (or was it XFDrake?) and select the fglrx driver. If none is available, select the vesa driver for the time being, that will restore your display too and you can then install the fglrx driver afterwards.
Hit Alt+F7 to return to your GUI. A reboot may be required.

Note: this issue shouldn't arise if you select the fglrx-current package, which is meant to install a newer ati driver automatically any time you upgrade the kernel.

Some great idea came through my mind: I have booted from livecd and checked what was the original kernel version - yes, it was desktop586 2.6.22.9-1. I have also checked what drivers where there for my graphical card. I have found some "Radeon x1300 to x1950 (avivo driver)" driver that was running on live boot session. This driver however does not exist anymore in my current hard drive instalation running kernel desktop586 2.6.22.12-1; But while the livecd session was running, I have tried enabling 3d desktop and then tried to run that game. It seems that it was not possible - same crappy graphics and no fullscreen for the game, 3ddesktop worked ok.

So, it turns out that I have made some confusions. 3ddesktop and game never worked together. In both kernel versions, if i turn off the 3d desktop, I will get okay graphics and fullscreen ingame... however one thing still confuses me: I do recall playing the game in linux with neither issues regarding mouse control, nor issues regarding graphics. Now, if I turn off 3d desktop, ingame graphics get ok, but hardware accelerated mouse gets turned off, and I definitely cannot play the game - not because of crap graphics and low fps, but because of the mouse being uncontrolable. Bottom line is: 3d desktop off - no mouse control / 3d desktop on - shit graphics. Somehow I was able to play without any of those issues. So, how the hell did I play it ?... linux ways are veeery misterious.