[SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

ichase · 2011-03-04 16:04:00

Greetings all,
I have spent some time searching the forum as well as the wiki for something along the lines of what is going on with my laptop. Maybe there is something there and I am not providing the correct search criteria.
First some history and what I have done thus far.
I re-installed Arch yesterday. I had (prior to this install) KDE installed and then installed E17. I added exec ck-launch-session enlightenment_start to my .xinitrc file and when I entered startx it loaded without a hitch.
Being that this is an older laptop, I found KDE put to much strain on the CPU and decided to just run E17 solo due to it's light footprint.
So I re-installed Arch. No problem there. Installed all the required stuff like xorg mesa, hal, dbus, fam etc. I have an ATI video card in this laptop so like before, I installed "xf86-video-ati" as per the wiki.
I added exec enlightenment_start in my .xinitrc file then launched with "startx"
I do not receive any errors and E launches but the problem I have is the 1st screen does not fully load. It's scrambled so I can't do anything. I did not have this problem when I had KDE installed but I do not want to re-install KDE.

Any and all responses and guidance are most appreciated.

All the best, and have a great weekend,

Ian

Edited to add additional info: I wanted to add a couple of things that I looked at or tried.
When I run glxgears I get the following error:

[ichase@ichase~]$ glxgears
Error:  couldn't open display (null)

When I looked at my /etc/X11/xorg.conf under devices I am seeing

Identifier  "Card0"
Driver     "vesa"
VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"

If I am reading it correctly, according the the ATI Arch Wiki the Identifier should read what ever my graphics card name is and the Driver should read "Radeon"
I'm starting to think that when I installed the xf86-video-ati driver that it did not take. Maybe I should try and re-install again.
Any thoughts?

Thanks again.

Last edited by ichase (2011-03-16 16:07:54)

lpb331 · 2011-03-04 18:25:32

Hey ichase, I run e17 with an Radeon X1400 and it loads up just fine without any user config files. You might try moving any xorg.conf files out of the xorg.conf.d directory and see if X can autodetect everything properly to get e17 running. From what you've posted it should load the radeon or ati driver. If that doesn't work, try taking a peek at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file; it should give you a hint as to what's happening.

ichase · 2011-03-04 18:47:47

Thanks for the reply lpb331,
In looking in my /ect/X11/xorg.conf.d directory, the only 3 files I have listed is 10-evdev.conf, 10-quirks.conf and 10-synaptics.conf. Once again, this leads me to believe the xf86-video-ati driver never properly installed because I would think there would be a conf file in there for it.

This evening when I can get online with my laptop (currently at work and cannot get on here) I am going to load it from pacman again. I read in another forum where someone had to load it 3 times before it finally took which seems strange but then again, this is a computer and they do strange things sometimes.

All the best,

Ian

lpb331 · 2011-03-04 19:28:29

Those files in the xorg.conf.d directory are just the default files from the installation of X. X should be able to detect your hardware and choose the radeon driver. If a reinstall doesn't work take a look at the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. It should tell you what is going wrong. The only other idea is to delete the ~/.e folder and restart e17, as there may be a bad setting in there too.

ichase · 2011-03-04 19:38:33

Once deleted, will re-starting e17 recreate the ~/.e folder? Thanks for the advice. Will take a look at the Xorg.0.log to see if anything pops out.

All the best,

Ian

lpb331 · 2011-03-04 21:51:04

Deleting that folder will delete all of your settings in e17. After doing this e17 will regenerate that folder when you next log in, and you'll be asked to set the language, ibar apps, etc. as if you'd just installed e17.

ichase · 2011-03-07 14:44:29

I attempted to re-install the xf86-video-ati driver which resulted in errors. So on a whim, I re-imaged the partition with my Arch KDE load. I then looked at the xorg.conf file, it also showed the driver as "vesa" which led me to believe that KDE might install other drivers or makes better use of the "vesa" driver. Even though it worked, I was far from happy with the graphics and feel pretty confident it was using the generic "vesa" driver.
Now here is the issue that is stumping me. According the the ATI Arch Wiki, the driver should be reading "radeon" once I have installed the xf86-video-ati driver. So the first thing I did was manually change "vesa" to read "radeon" which was just like I did not do anything because the result was exactly the same. Now in reading further through the ATI Arch wiki it talks about disabling KMS. Not sure if this is going to matter considering it does not look like this driver is properly installing itself anyway, even though initially I did not recieve any errors when first installing it.
In case it matters this is the chipset of the ATI video card in this laptop: BoardName "Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)" (which is not supported by the catalyst driver) Also, this is a Compaq Presario V2000 laptop.

Due to being very light weight, I really would like to run Enlightenment on this laptop but at this point, I am starting to think I just need to get my hands on an older lappy that has a Nvidia video card.

All the best,

Ian

Edit: I changed the subject of this thread to reflect the actual problem

Last edited by ichase (2011-03-07 15:53:42)

codeRage · 2011-03-08 01:00:54

What is the output of

lsmod | grep radeon (vesa)

Last edited by codeRage (2011-03-08 01:01:58)

sriracha · 2011-03-08 20:24:16

Hello.

Have you tried removing xorg.conf and also tried removing xf86-video-ati, and then tried reinstalling xf86-video-ati?
I also saw you were saying something about an error when trying to install the xf86-video-ati, could you paste that one if you get it again.

Luckily nowadays you don't need an xorg.conf so don't create one, the settings in xorg.conf can cause lots of trouble too.

Just my two cents

ichase · 2011-03-14 14:36:43

@codeRage - I appologize for taking so long to reply. Had some personal stuff come up that kept me away from the computer.
To answer your question about the output here it is:

ichase@ichase~ $ lsmod | grep radeon
radeon                        723481            1
ttm                       38517             1       radeon
drm_kms_helper                21512              1       radeon
drm                            131562             3       radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit                    4219             1       radeon
i2c_core                        15144            5       radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_pii X4

Hopefully this tells something. I re-installed Arch and re-installed Enlightenment. I also re-installed the open source ATI driver. I was actually able to get into Enlightenment this time but I am still showing that I am running off the vesa driver and not the ATI driver.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Identifier  "Card0"
Driver     "vesa"
VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"

Another thing I noticed, I was able to run "glxgears" this time with this output

{ichase@ichase~}$ glxgears
225 frames in 5.0 seconds = 44.952 FPS
226 frames in 5.0 seconds = 45.018 FPS
225 frames in 5.0 seconds = 44.947 FPS
XI0: Fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0.0" after 8134 request (7306 known processed) with 0 events remaining

@sriracha - I have not tried removing the xorg.conf file yet. After the re-install, I did not get the error again but if I do, I will post it.

Thanks you all for the help and hope everyone is coming off a great weekend.

All the best,

Ian

ichase · 2011-03-16 16:05:30

sriracha - Good call. Removed xorg.conf and started X and alas, my ati video card is working and WOW what a difference between an actual video driver and VESA. I will be marking this post as solved. Thank you to everyone that chimed in this thread to offer your expertise. I am very appreciative.

All the best,

Ian

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-04 16:04:00

[SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#2 2011-03-04 18:25:32

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#3 2011-03-04 18:47:47

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#4 2011-03-04 19:28:29

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#5 2011-03-04 19:38:33

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#6 2011-03-04 21:51:04

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#7 2011-03-07 14:44:29

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#8 2011-03-08 01:00:54

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#9 2011-03-08 20:24:16

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#10 2011-03-14 14:36:43

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

#11 2011-03-16 16:05:30

Re: [SOLVED] X not recognizing open source ATI driver

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