linux newbie w/ vid problem

gobeav3rs297 · 2007-11-08 21:49:39

three days old linux user so i'm a total newbie. Anyway i've an 9800XT installed with fglrx and for some reason when i do startx, the screen goes blank, pitch black and fluxbox does not start. The weird thing is that when i first installed fglrx and setup with the help of the ATI ArchWIKI everything was working fine running at 1600x1200 resolution except for the direct rendering but after i turned on the computer the next morning the problem described above appeared. I've have been browsing the forum for the past 2 days trying to solve this problem. I did an lspci and saw that my card is listed, did a grep EE in the xorg.0.log and there was no errors just a few warning about font folder not exist and also:

(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:1) found
(WW) fglrx(0): Only one display is connected, so single mode is enabled
(WW) fglrx(0): could not detect X server version
(WW) fglrx(0): Option "VendorName" is not used
(WW) fglrx(0): Option "ModelName" is not used

lspci output(excerpt):
01:00:0 VGA compatiable controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT]
01:00:1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT] (Secondary)

I also did an glxinfo command and recived an "Error: unable to open display"

I've put agpgart and intel-agp before the fglrx in the module section of /etc/rc.conf

doing dmesg | grep agp outputs:
agpgart: Detect an Intel 845G Chipset
agpgart: AGP aperture in 64M @ 0xf8000000

Any help at all would be great because i've been going crazy reading the forum trying to figure how to fix this problem myself and so far nothing is working.

-Vincent

Doehni · 2007-11-08 22:01:04

Welcome to linux an Arch!!

Could you post your xorg.conf file? You can find it in /etx/X11/xorg.conf

gobeav3rs297 · 2007-11-08 22:38:01

Yea, i totally forgot about that, here it is, sorry.

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri"
Load "xtrap"
Load "dbe"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option    "Protocol" "auto"
Option    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

#Section "Monitor"
# Identifier "Monitor0"
# VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
# ModelName "Monitor Model"
#EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

#Section "Device"
#
# ### Available Driver options are:-
# ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
# ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
# ### [arg]: arg optional
# #Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
# #Option "DefaultRefresh" # [<bool>]
# #Option "ModeSetClearScreen" # [<bool>]
# Identifier "9800XT"
# Driver "fglrx"
# VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
# BoardName "RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT]"
# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
#EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
BoardName "RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

#Section "Screen"
# Identifier "Screen0"
# Device "9800XT"
# Monitor "Monitor0"
# DefaultDepth 24
# SubSection "Display"
# Viewport 0 0
# Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
# Depth 16
# EndSubSection
# SubSection "Display"
# Viewport 0 0
# Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
# Depth 24
# EndSubSection
#EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1600x1200" 1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

-Vincent

Last edited by gobeav3rs297 (2007-11-08 22:38:48)

AlmaMater · 2007-11-09 00:16:35

remove some # so you get something like this

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri"
Load "xtrap"
Load "dbe"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
#
# ### Available Driver options are:-
# ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
# ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
# ### [arg]: arg optional
# #Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
# #Option "DefaultRefresh" # [<bool>]
# #Option "ModeSetClearScreen" # [<bool>]
Identifier "9800XT"
Driver "fglrx"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
BoardName "RV350 NJ [Radeon 9800 XT]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "9800XT"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1600x1200" 1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Last edited by AlmaMater (2007-11-09 00:17:29)

gobeav3rs297 · 2007-11-09 00:34:34

oh i put in those # to commented out the part that was created before doing the "aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf" command. So everything that was doesn't have the # are those configuration created by fglrx. However, taking them out or leaving it as is doesn't seem to solve anything, the problem still exists.

-Vincent

ToastedToad · 2007-11-09 02:58:23

My no-fail (for me anyways) method of installing and configuring fglrx:

# pacman -Syu

# pacman -S hwd fglrx fglrx-utils

You may want to back up your existing xorg.conf now.

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf  /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old

Then instead of aticonfig ,use hwd. This will overwrite/create xorg.conf:

# hwd -xa

Edit xorg.conf, substituting fglrx for whatever is there, in Device Section.

#modprobe fglrx

Ensure that mod autoload is set to yes in rc.conf.

Restart X.

So just for reference, that's how I do it. Probably not much different than you.

Last edited by ToastedToad (2007-11-09 03:00:20)

gobeav3rs297 · 2007-11-09 10:51:38

Toastmaster, thanks for the reply.

I did all of that as you mentioned but didn't seem to help either. I know i'm just a beginner with linux but it seems to me it should be working because there isn't really a huge error that is popping up causing this problem. The only problem i see is that warning message i posted earlier within the xorg log file about "fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:1) found" but i still don't really understand what that message really means because it the systems see my vid card fine.

I'm at my wits end and its driving me crazy but i'm probably not the only one, most linux newbie probably goes through this at the beginning. Any more ideas?

-Vincent

gobeav3rs297 · 2007-11-10 02:20:10

Anyway just wanted to say thanks for everyone who tried to help but i think I'm going to give up trying to use linux or at least give up Arch because i have tried reinstalling Arch at least 6 times now and still can't get it work, same issues everytime and i followed the installation direction on ArchWIKI to the book. Its very frustrating because it will boot into fluxbox fine with fglrx driver the very first time but once you reboot it and try to start fluxbox again the screen will go blank. I thought it might be becuase i set the resolution too high but even at 1024x768 it crapped out on me. It should not be this hard to get this stupid thing working but apparently it is.

Misfit138 · 2007-11-10 02:36:32

ATI drivers for GNU/Linux are a hassle. Though ATI/AMD has committed itself publicly, to improving them, not much has happened yet.
For now I am sticking with nvidia when possible.
If you can hang in there, you may find someone or some document which may help you with a workaround or solution for now.
Good luck.

ganja_guru · 2007-11-10 04:40:19

Your error message states BusID "PCI:1:0:1" not found, so try replacing PCI:1:0:0 with PCI:1:0:1 (after you uncomment the line of course).

If that didn't work, I read somewhere that commenting out the BusID line could help, so make sure all instances of BusID in your xorg.conf are like so:

# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

I too have an NVIDIA, but I'm sure ATI Support will be better in the near future.

Last edited by ganja_guru (2007-11-10 04:44:37)

Mikko777 · 2007-11-10 14:29:55

gobeav3rs297 wrote:

i think I'm going to give up trying to use linux or at least give up Arch because i have tried reinstalling Arch at least 6 times now and still can't get it work

Yup, bad bad time to install arch, ati and new xorg are pain in the ass.

Atleast vesa and opensource ati drivers "should" work. fglrx seems to bit of 50% chance to getting it work...

Arch Linux

#1 2007-11-08 21:49:39

linux newbie w/ vid problem

#2 2007-11-08 22:01:04

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#3 2007-11-08 22:38:01

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#4 2007-11-09 00:16:35

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#5 2007-11-09 00:34:34

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#6 2007-11-09 02:58:23

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#7 2007-11-09 10:51:38

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#8 2007-11-10 02:20:10

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#9 2007-11-10 02:36:32

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#10 2007-11-10 04:40:19

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

#11 2007-11-10 14:29:55

Re: linux newbie w/ vid problem

Board footer