cannot start X after driver install (ATI)
 

Hi

After installation of the new RPM of ATI Radeon 9700 driver, I rebooted and got a screen flickering (with frequency about 2-4 Hz) from the text mode (that displayed "login: ") and blank black screen with a white X mouse pointer. It looks like it tries to detect a proper mode - but i see no colors.
After like dozen flickers like this it settled in text mode.

How do i get back my X windows working?
please help

Thanks
Alex

Edit the driver line for your video card in /etc/X11/XF86Config (or XF86Config4 on some distros). You can change it to 'vesa' and that will almost surely get X up and running again. You'll still want to look into trying to get the radeon driver working again, but at least you'll be able to research within a functional X session.

The video card section will look similar to this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Yourvideocard"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "Radeon"
EndSection


Just change the driver line to vesa and then try to start X again.

Thanks,

Mike
HowTo.cc

Thanks for the reply Mike

I changed the line to vesa, however i get some colorful garbage on the upper portion of the screen now instead of purely black blank screen with white cross mouse pointer

after some digging i discovered redhat-configure-xfree86 command and it launches just fine! I can see everything. So i am able to setup my videocard and monitor - but that doesnt help

Also i took a look at the log over at /var/log/XFree86.0.log and at the end of it there is SIGNAL 11 error (segfault i think) so that could be the problem


more info is appreciated

thanks
Alex

one more Q: how does X know which one of the XFree86Conf files to launch?
(ie regular XFree86Conf or ati's XFree86Conf-4)

XFree86 4.x will use the -4 file if it exists, otherwise the first one. This is a hangover from the transition from 3.0 to 4.0.

Read the Radeon READMEs carefully. I have had success with these drivers but the installation is fiddly as hell, with a manual compile step for most kernels. Unless you are a hardcore gamer, stick to the open source driver which comes with XFree.

And back up your config files before you fiddle - but I guess you know that now!

TIM

thanks

any links on a good ATI installation guide?

I solved my "no X" problem by reinstalling X packages from distro

Thanks
Alex

Sorry, I got my help from a friend, and by trial and error.

There is some documentation which gets installed by the RPM, but where it ends up I can't recall. The installation was on my work machine, which is currently turned off so I can't log in and check for you, but you can hunt it down with:

rpm -q --filesbypkg <whatever-the-hell-that-rpm-was-called> | less

Like I said - fiddly as hell.

TIM