Arch Linux

db92

Member

Registered: 2009-05-29

Posts: 5

xorg + 3650 + fglrx...

alright, this is seriously making me sad.
if any of you lurk on irc youve probly argued with me once or twice in the past.

so i was so unlucky i got an ati graphics card. my whole system is compatible, the only thing that refuses to work is xorg+fglrx.

i started off about a year ago or a bit more, trying to make it work. i tried, didnt work, i thought xorg wouldnt work, or fglrx wouldnt anyway, so i put it aside for a while, i said who cares i have the windows pc right next to me. (3 pcs in the house)

no matter what ive tried, i always ended up wiping the hard disk and starting all over. its always better if youve got nothing to lose. i for one didnt.

so i just like reinstalled it and im on a dead end. i cannot believe that this is like the 4th or 5th time im going through this, the exact same problem for the last year or more.

i wipe the disk clean, so i get a clean install. then i make my user, config pacman, all good and ready.
setup xorg with pacman -S xorg, everything installs properly.
however catalyst as i found out was no longer in the repositories. i downloaded both and installed both from aur. first catalyst-utils with makepkg --asroot and then catalyst with the same procedure.

so the software is all prepped and ready to go.
i have never found ONE xorg.conf that ever worked. i even tried that this last time, still didnt work. so i thought ill just skip xorg.conf, ill just do it without a xorg.conf. without xorg.conf everything WORKED, for once. i saw images instead of black and white text coming from the bloody screen, rejoice! screw that, didnt last long. took me a while until i figured out that i couldnt find a way to use fglrx without a xorg.conf. so i made a xorg.conf that worked from the xorg.0.log file. tried to then aticonfig --initial -input blabla whatever. the xorg.conf changed, and then when i tried to run it, everything was unusable. at first it told me it couldnt get the depth right, so i set like default depth 24. when that was out of the way, it had a problem with monitor range. so i set the vertical sync to 60 as my monitor is meant to be. then i ran startx again, and my screen just kept flickering for no reason, getting stuck into an image of a few green and purple lines and boxes (artifacts), with no way of return through ctrl+alt+backspace or whatever. even trying to revert to vesa from that point onward didnt work. total screw up, so i reinstalled again.

i remember being told that with previous versions of xorg there was no such problem. so i downloaded a xorg-server-1.5.3 and when trying to install it i had to install a package called gl which isnt even in the repos. like wtf anyway.

so i scrapped that plan, deleted the archive, and now have my system clean, with only root, a user and xorg installed. i havent installed catalyst yet. suggestions?

my gfx card is hd radeon 3650 and cpu intel pentium 4 3.2ghz

my brain is about to blow...

(if anyone is going to make a comment like "buy a real card", the back button looks like "<".)

db92

Member

Registered: 2009-05-29

Posts: 5

Re: xorg + 3650 + fglrx...

come on, people? its been two days.

i cant be the only one that has an hd3650 and runs arch, the only one that tried installing catalyst and be the only one that is still trying.

if im missing some info that could help you understand, just let me know. theres gotta be a way out of this mess with the proprietary drivers.

and im mainly persistent merely cos i think its something im doing wrong on my side that you can help me with. if its hopeless because the drivers are awfully crappy, then ill let it be. if its difficult, i dont care, just hit me with what you know.

jotapesan

Member

From: chile

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 27

Website

Re: xorg + 3650 + fglrx...

Hi! i exactly have your problem. it started yesterday xorg-server after and update. i looked the logs, and i found the problem:

[2009-05-30 13:29] upgraded xorg-server (1.6.1-1 -> 1.6.1.901-1)

now i will compile the previous version, and i think i will solve the problem

i hope this will work for you

jotapesan

Member

From: chile

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 27

Website

Re: xorg + 3650 + fglrx...

Yes! it worked!
you can download the old package for the i686 architecture in this link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=THW41Y66

and remember to ignore the package in pacman.conf, like this:
IgnorePkg   = libgl ati-dri xorg-server