ATI cards and SuSE Linux, HELP!!!

[Mike M]

The attempt to use a graphical environment with 4 different computers has
proven frustrating. All have ATI boards in them. All have dual-boot
configs with WinXP.

Computer 1:
HP Pavilion z6000 series laptop, AMD 3500+, 512MB RAM, BrightView screen,
ATI m200 video
Suse 9.3 and Suse 10
Issue: Linux instsalls just fine (64bit), but only offers frame-based
graphics. After a reboot, no graphics. No matter what I've tried, even
installing the very latest ATI video drivers (that errors off at the 87%
mark into the ATI installation), no GUI environment comes up. It always
errors off. Base VESA never works, it just shows some raw GUI environment
without any desktop screen.

Computer 2 :
Intel 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI AIW 9800, Philips 19" monitor
Suse 9.2 and 9.3
Issue: Installation routine finds all hardware 100% correctly, after
installation is complete and SuSE boots for itself for the first time, the
entire computer locks HARD. As if there is an IRQ conflict. Booting to RL3
and manually tinkering with with xorg.conf file is fruitless. Deleting all
xorg.conf files and having YAST re-look for hardware brings up the Yast
screen of the correct hardware...however, when trying to change from the ATI
video driver just to a basic VESA driver, the entire computer freezes once
again.

Computer 3:
Intel 2.4Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI AIW 9700, 19" Sony Monitor
Suse 9.2 and 9.3
Issue: Same as above. Interesting to note that SuSE 9.1 worked fine on
this system.

Computer 4:
Brand new Dell Optiplex GX620, 3.8GHZ, 1GB RAM, ATI express 600 series, Sony
19" TrueBright Monitor
Suse 9.3 and SuSe 10 (tried both 32 and 64 bit installations)
Issue: SuSE 10 found all hardware, even the correct monitor and video card
model! But alas, the same issue as Computer 2 and computer 3 above.


I would *really* like to use Linux (namley SusE 10.0), but it's just been an
pain to get the GUI environment running.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Mike

 

[Hawkeye]

Havent had any problems here with 9.1 thru 10 sorry i cant help
Might try the Suse groups as well.

alt.os.linux.suse
alt.linux.suse

 

[Martin]

The attempt to use a graphical environment with 4 different computers has
proven frustrating. All have ATI boards in them. All have dual-boot
configs with WinXP.

Computer 1:
HP Pavilion z6000 series laptop, AMD 3500+, 512MB RAM, BrightView screen,
ATI m200 video
Suse 9.3 and Suse 10
Issue: Linux instsalls just fine (64bit), but only offers frame-based
graphics. After a reboot, no graphics. No matter what I've tried, even
installing the very latest ATI video drivers (that errors off at the 87%
mark into the ATI installation), no GUI environment comes up. It always
errors off. Base VESA never works, it just shows some raw GUI environment
without any desktop screen.

Computer 2 :
Intel 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI AIW 9800, Philips 19" monitor
Suse 9.2 and 9.3
Issue: Installation routine finds all hardware 100% correctly, after
installation is complete and SuSE boots for itself for the first time, the
entire computer locks HARD. As if there is an IRQ conflict. Booting to
RL3
and manually tinkering with with xorg.conf file is fruitless. Deleting
all xorg.conf files and having YAST re-look for hardware brings up the
Yast screen of the correct hardware...however, when trying to change from
the ATI video driver just to a basic VESA driver, the entire computer
freezes once again.

Computer 3:
Intel 2.4Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI AIW 9700, 19" Sony Monitor
Suse 9.2 and 9.3
Issue: Same as above. Interesting to note that SuSE 9.1 worked fine on
this system.

Computer 4:
Brand new Dell Optiplex GX620, 3.8GHZ, 1GB RAM, ATI express 600 series,
Sony 19" TrueBright Monitor
Suse 9.3 and SuSe 10 (tried both 32 and 64 bit installations)
Issue: SuSE 10 found all hardware, even the correct monitor and video card
model! But alas, the same issue as Computer 2 and computer 3 above.


I would *really* like to use Linux (namley SusE 10.0), but it's just been
an pain to get the GUI environment running.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Mike

Login as root

Run;

XFdrake

Try using this ugly interface to set up your graphics.

You might have to reboot. If you want to see whether the x server is working
type;

init 5
service dm start


It worked for me with the 64 but version of mandriva.

Good luck

Martin

 

[Bill Kraski]

The attempt to use a graphical environment with 4 different computers has
proven frustrating. All have ATI boards in them. All have dual-boot
configs with WinXP.
[snip for brevity]

I would *really* like to use Linux (namley SusE 10.0), but it's just been
an pain to get the GUI environment running.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Like Hawkeye, I haven't seem any problems here. AMD 3300+, 1 gig of RAM,
ATI Radeon 9550 vid card, ATI Wonder TV card, Sony HS95P 19" lcd screen.
The only graphics glitch I had was that my monitor wasn't listed, so I had
to use a generic lcd with 1280x1024@75hz. I see a couple of potential
problems in what you describe, although I'm not sure how much effect any of
them have.

1) If you're trying the 64 bit versions on P4s, there may be a lack of
success. Because the AMD processors are more "mature", 64 bit linux is
optimized for that platform.

2) Several of your boxes have the AIW cards. There seems to be less success
with these than separate graphics & tv cards.

3) This past summer, when I was asking about tv & vid cards in several NGs,
IIRC there were comments indicating that anything in the x200-800 series
above x300 did not have good linux support yet. So, your express 600 may
still be awaiting the proper drivers from ATI. I'm not sure where the m200
falls in the scheme of things.

4) If all your hardware was correctly recognized, your attempt to drop to
VESA might have been foiled by the monitor previously being set to a higher
resolution than VESA supports (1024x768). I'm not sure if SUSE will
automatically lower the resolution in this case or not. But it's a
thought.

Hawkeye suggested the two "public" SUSE NGs. Besides that, I'd suggest
adding a news account to your reader at support-forums.novell.com & asking
questions in the opensuse.org NGs. Some ISPs carry some or all of them, but
posting has to be done through the Novell server or your message will only
show up in the small chain between your ISP & Novell's server.

Bill K

 

[at]

Are there any messages in the ATI driver install log? I had some
problems once and then checked the logs to find I hadn't installed the
kernel source, so it couldn't compile. Of course it didn't actually
*tell* me that that was the case at the time it was installing....

 

[Mike M]

First off, thanks for all the suggestions!

Doing this on the laptop, 64 bit version...
The lastest driver is installed, after first installing "kernel-source".
Went back into YAST to configure the graphics, and whoa!, there was the m200
driver and the LG monitor after all...manually set it to 1280x800 and it
tested well. rebooted. Logged in (rl 3 for the duration of this process)
ran "startx" and it gave me the same generic X Window environment, TVM.
With a bare desktop screen, albeit at the correct resolution.


I've tried everything I know, which isn't much LOL, and it still doesn't
work. I feel that I'm "almost there". I'm ready to give up. But I can't.
I'm sick of Windows.

 

[at]

That's good news then I don't use Suse myself, but in other
distributions the desktop (e.g. KDE or Gnome) that the X server uses is
determined by the contents of a file in the user's home directory,
called .xinitrc.

I'm a bit unsure of the details myself, but the following link may be of
help (I know it's for freebsd, but the same principle should apply):

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11-wm.html

The key is commands echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc for
Gnome or echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc for KDE, which echo specific
contents into the ~/.xinitrc (where ~/ represents your home directory),
as long as you have Gnome / KDE installed.

I'm actually a bit surprised at least one hasn't come up by default, as
this is the normal configuration. Anyway, see how it goes and let us
know if it works.

PS. I've only been using linux for maybe 4-5 months, so I still consider
myself somewhat a noob!