Bugzilla – Bug 148298
Sax2 and Radeon X700 combination
Last modified: 2006-05-30 19:05:11 UTC
The radeon X700 card is correctly identified on my PCIE laptop. Congratulations, this is a first in the 9 months that I own my Acer 8104 laptop. However, when testing the video modes (800x600 through to 1680x1050) it turns up a blank screen. Despite this I was able to finish the installation procedure, set my system to boot in level 3 and gave sax2 a go. The results here are the same. Because I can't get sax2 to run (stays with the X700 and a blank screen) I'm not able to set a VESA mode or try something else. Let me know if you need any more information. Thanks for a great OS! Matt
Try sax2 -r -l (for 800x600) or sax2 -r -V xxx where xxx is the resolution you want/need - see sax2 --help for details. And please attach /var/log/SaX2.log to this bugreport. Can you switch to TTY1 (Ctrl-Alt-F1) when the screen is black?
I tried various sax2 options including "-r -l" to force sane defaults, however to no avail. I didn't try the "-r -V xxx" option. I'll try to kick it into 640x480 later today. I'll attach the complete log also later today. I can indeed switch to TTY1 (CTRL-ALT-F1) or back (CTRL-ALT-F?) so in any case it's not crashing my system. Also the screen is deep black, no flickering, nothing. Thanks again! Matt
For your information, the "-r -V 640x480" option didn't work either. It produces a blank screen and after a while returns to the prompt. CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE kills the X-server if you don't want to wait. I'm adding SaX.log as an attachement. Please ask if you need anything else. Kind regards, Matt
Created attachment 66506 [details] /var/log/SaX log as requested I couldn't find /var/log/SaX2.log, but /var/log/SaX.log had a recent timestamp.
Created attachment 66507 [details] The Xorg.0.log found after running "sax2 -r -V 640x480" The Xorg.0.log found after running "sax2 -r -V 640x480"
The radeon driver on Beta3 has serious problems (crashes during start or during vt switch). Please try again with Beta4.
Should really be fixed with Beta4. Please reopen if the problem remains.
Hi SuSe, I had too much on my hands lately with my own open source project Kettle ETL. Because of that, I had to skip a couple of beta releases. In any case, the brand new Beta 8 still behaves exactly the same. The bug is still there. It would be great to be able to use X on my laptop as I'm speaking at a couple of open source / linux conferences this year. Just let me know what you need in terms of information. Thanks, Matt
Unfortunately we don't have any more time for radeon driver experiments and most radeon users are rather happy meanwhile. Therefore I would like to ask you to try "radeonold" driver instead. Simply replace the according entry in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and let me know whether this helps. Thanks.
I'm trying a re-install at the moment as 10.1B8 borked on grub and my WinXP is not useable anymore. "radeonold" doesn't sound to encouraging. I guess I'll just have to wait a few more years ;-)
"radeonold" is the driver of SUSE 10.0 compiled against X.Org 6.9.
In the "Device" Section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf I changed the Driver "radeon" entry to "radeonold". The behavior is exactly the same: the screen goes pitch black. (even darker as a normal virtual terminal window) Killing it with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE still works, the machine doesn't stall or anything. Let me know if there is anything else I can test for you guys! I'll leave the partition untouched until I here from you. Thanks for the help, Matt
Unfortunately I don't. I'm afraid you need to use fbdev for now. Switch to runlevel 3 and execute "sax2 -m 0=fbdev" for this. This needs to be tested/investigate again after switching to X.Org > 7.0 (SUSE > 10.1). ==> LATER
Sorry dude, I'm getting an error: /dev/fb0 : No such file or directory I guess I'll go for a VMWare session on my Windows XP and try again in a year on a SuSE > 10.1 Thanks for trying anyway! Matt
> /dev/fb0 : No such file or directory Kernel framebuffer disabled? This is something you can change. Adjust the vga boot option in /boot/grub/menu.lst to your favorite resolution (color depth 64k). /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt: [...] | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 ----+------------------------------------- 256 | 0x301 0x303 0x305 0x307 32k | 0x310 0x313 0x316 0x319 64k | 0x311 0x314 0x317 0x31A 16M | 0x312 0x315 0x318 0x31B 10.2 Alpha1 is scheduled for "Jun 16, 2006" (see www.opensuse.org). So fortunately this is not a year away. Another option would be to give the ATI proprietary driver a try. --> http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/ati-installer-HOWTO.html
I've added the current ati-1-0-branch radeon driver to RC1. Some things might have been fixed. Give it a try with "sax2 -r -m 0=radeon10b". (The driver is called "radeon10b")
Hi Stefan, Thanks for all the suggestions. I finally got it running today on the 10.1B8. In the end I installed the ATI prop. driver. It's not running yet with GLX (need some kernel stuff compiled) but I least I can work now. Seems like we'll be doing a presentation on the Linuxdays May, 3rd in Wiesbaden (Germany). At least I'll be able to do it on Linux hé? ;-) I'm looking forward to the new drivers though, because it seems a very fragile driver as far as going to VT's is concerned (doesn't crash, but nothing is displayed) Thanks again, Matt
I upgraded to RC1 yesterday and the problem is history. Thank you Stefan for your excellent work! Matt
reopen
Since it workw with radeon10b, we can assume, that it will also work with X.Org 7.1 radeon driver on SUSE 10.2.