topic Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help in Operating System - Linux

X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 01:12:47 GMT

Hi,

I have purchased a Compaq 2134AD laptop http://h50102.www5.hp.com/store/storeModel.asp?familyid=286&gna=Notebooks

The Display card is ATI Mobility Radeon 4X AGP
and in windows the driver is IGP 340M

When I installed RH8 on my system it detected most of my hardware except for my display driver. Now the general driver is picked due to which the screen size is small i.e. does fill the monitor..take only half of the space...

Can someone please advise me in this regard.

Thanks in advance,
Vineeth.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Stuart Browne — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 01:46:44 GMT

From what I recall about the various ATI Mobility chipsets, the version of XFree that comes with RH8 (4.2.0) doesn't have an appropriate driver for it.

RH9 comes with an updated XFree version (4.3.0) which has newer, and better support for the ATI Mobility chipsets, but I'm unsure whether the eratta updates for RH8 include these.

Suggestion at this point, update to RH9.

Either that, or manually update your XFree versions (www.xfree.org) to a newer build/version.

Over the past few months, I beleive there have been a number of posts in this newsgroup with regards to this issue.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Jerome Henry — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:11:40 GMT

I also remember solving this issue on rh8, by running redhat-config-Xfree86, and choosing another ATI card, but I don't remember which. It was a very close card on the list to the default suggested card by the system.
Not full 3D acceleration of course, but still full screen 24 bits colors...
Maybe could you give it a try...

J

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Alexander Chuzhoy — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:27:55 GMT

I suggest you to focus on screen.What screen do you have?Try to run redhat-config-xfree86 and select the apropriate type of screen (your screen) and then you should be able to change the resolution.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:13:24 GMT

I need some more clarifictions. First of all if I go for RH9 what should I select for my display device bcoz my machine config says "ATI Mobility Radeon 4X AGP" but in windows system properties is "IGP 340M".

What is the scree type?. With windows (and the config list)the only information is digital flat screen. How can I know the exact make etc..

Now Grub is my bootloader so will the advanced power saving features of WinXP work now.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Patrick Van Humbeeck — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:22:42 GMT

if you dont care for hardware acceleration (which is probably the case on a laptop) then you can just spare yourself the headache and run X in vesa framebuffer mode, that should work fine at higher resolutions too.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:28:46 GMT

I am not at all bothered abt high graphic performance in Linux...(though it won't hurt to have something that I have paid for, working ;-) )

but the real headache is the display size which is half of my screen size

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Patrick Van Humbeeck — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:37:34 GMT

maybe your laptop has a button to switch video modes too ? I know I have a Compaq Armada on which pressing the display switch button (I believe this is for tv out actually) causes the laptop's screen to switch between fullscreen and a tiny window (about 1/4th screen real estate) in the middle. but then it's another model and it's running gentoo linux so YMMV.

in any case running the card in framebuffer mode should allow you to go full screen without any specific driver, all it takes is to enable it in the kernel (probably done already) and passing an appropriate vga=X arg to your bootloader.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Alexander Chuzhoy — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:40:53 GMT

in order to know the type of youe video adapter :
1. you can phisically open your pc and look on the card.-tipically it's vendor name is written on it.
2. You can run devmgmt.msc utility to see the list of devices on your windows 2000,XP

For screen type -simply look at the screen -you should see it's type and model.Alternatively-see it's manual.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Alexander Chuzhoy — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 04:10:41 GMT

There is a small chance that your laptops drivers (and specially video driver isn't supported by your version of linux).
I highly recommend using the latest version of redhat -which is currently redhat9.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Huc_1 — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 04:11:44 GMT

Can you run the command glxinfo from an X xterm
and post here perhap this will tell use more informations on your card, and from there perhap we could find more !

J-P

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Huc_1 — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 04:27:59 GMT

I also found that if I did a locate radeon on my Linux RH 9.0 there are some files and directory under/usr/src/linux-2.4.20-20.9/drivers/char/* that refer to radeon there is probably a module and/or kernel driver that one can include/load for radeon viedeo card ... in fact there is also a

# man radeon

last question do you see a very small screen also before you start x ?

J-P

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Jerome Henry — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 04:57:04 GMT

To answer also some of your questions :
- The screen to select is standard laptop 1024x768 screen;
- You card says IGP 340M, because this is the driver Windows uses for many ATI Radeon cards. But your card is physically a RADEON, you'll find it under ATI section upon install.
- As Redhat 9 is more recent than 8.0, there a more chances that driver is adapted... The problem is that... you know, video card business is a war, and makers anounce features before they are really able to make them work... result is that some cards don't have on their chipset exactly the feature anounced... this is what make Linux support unsure. One often have to wait a later release where developpers for Linux implement real features instead of promised features...

J

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 05:39:46 GMT

Before start X I don't see any small screen but I see 3 distorted images of the login screen, side by side. Then it goes to the correct screen.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Huc_1 — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 05:43:41 GMT

Oopps, Sorry
I forgot to ask for the
# cat /var/log/XFree86.0.log
from your X session this with other files could help us find/help futher if posible.

J-P (0 pts for this pls)

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Jerome Henry — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 06:43:24 GMT

Hi
So are you turning to RH9, or do you want us to try to fix with rh8, which may come to a dead end ?

J

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 06:56:16 GMT

From all your replies and from some articles on the web I think turning to RH9 is the best available option which I am going to do. But I am still baffled at why the screen size is small with VESA.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Vineeth Varghese — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 07:00:53 GMT

I had one more question which I posted before "Now Grub is my bootloader so will the advanced power saving features of WinXP work now."

The reason I am asking this is when my laptop goes to standby from windows and when I restart I used to get the "Resuming Windows screen" but I don't after RH8 installation. Even though it is restarting correctly I am just wondering whether there could be any lingering effects due to this.

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Bruce Copeland — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 07:14:34 GMT

Radeon IGP graphics systems, which are found on most of the recent Compaq and HP notebooks, are not well detected/configured by any of the currently available Linux distributions. You can sometimes get the graphical X config programs to work if you choose Generic Laptop Display 1024x768 and Generic vesa for the driver. For RH8, you generally need to manually configure your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. None of the distributions use the radeon drivers without some serious tweaking. BUT there are ways to make it all work--including 3D acceleration!!!. You can find out more on my Linux-ze4100 web page:

http://www.cybersym.com/pages/linux-ze4100.html

Advanced power saving features don't work on any of these notebooks without building/running a kernel that supports ACPI. The power saving features under Linux have nothing to do with the bootloader or Windows XP.

Bruce

Re: X server incompatible with ATI driver...Pls help

Jerome Henry — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 08:13:56 GMT

This 'reasume' screen is, as Bruce writes, linked to your XP OS, not the boot loader. The difference now is that XP OS can write a 'going to sleep' info, that your NTLDR reads on coming back.
Now that you have grub, the going to sleep works as well, but NTLDR just can't pass to the right screen anymore, as NTLDR has been replace with GRUB. It doesn't affect the feature from XP side.
It's another point if you want to use it from Linux size, search on this side for ACPI, there were many questions on that during spring..

J