Solved!!! (Can't get X working with Ati xpress 1100) Yeeahh!

[OldNoob]

Well it's noobtime again!

I've been trying for a week now to get X working on an Acer Aspire 3100 lap, but when i use startkde it says unable to open display, when i use startx it starts from black screen goes slowly to white, then back to black and then it's time for the three finger salute.

First i used soho 5.8 rc2 then i downloaded the final soho and in between those i tried suse and managed to install ati driver easy, suse also had a working x with a stretched out 1024x768 before that install, but i never managed that with vector (tried all three driver options) autoconfig failed and so did my changes in xorg.conf.

Also tried to copy xorg.conf from suse, but with the same result, then i read something in ati files about posix shm? must be enabled and checked .config for that and found that one posix option was not enabled so i compiled a new kernel with that option set. Did that work? OOh no, of course not, so i'm starting to get a bit pissed off now, but no way suse is an alternative! It's too bloated and slow.

Can someone please help me before i get a stroke or something?

Forgot some facts: driver is ati 8.37.6 tested kernels is 2.6.20.3 and 2.6.21.3, the resolution is 1280x800 

[bigpaws]

First have you tried to use the vesa driver in xorg.conf?

Please post video driver from this command:

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep Driver

Bigpaws

[OldNoob]

Hello bigpaws, grep gave two drivers radeon and fglrx, i must have been sleepy during the week, because i didn't notice that there was two each of sections monitor,device,modes and screen. That must mean the aticonfig wasn't working like it should on Vector (it worked in suse). So i have cleaned it up but the fglrx don't work, but vesa does in 1024x768, so what to do now? I did modprobe fglrx and checked with lsmod, but no luck.  Well things seem lighter now that x works at least partially. The new soho is really slick and beautiful, a nice job done there.

[nightflier]

Now that you have X working with vesa, make a backup of xorg.conf.

Try downloading the ati-installer from their web site and install using it. After it finishes, run "aticonfig --initial".

You need the kernel sources installed to do this, do you remember if you chose that during install?

[OldNoob]

Hello Nightflier, i always install kernel sources, but then i downloaded and compiled the latest kernel from kernel.org, and i was lazy and used .config file from soho-kernel with one or two small changes in settings only.

When i ran the installer it worked nicely until aticonfig --initial, then segmentation fault, then tried to enter driver fglrx in
xorg.conf and modprobe it, didn't work.

I'm fed up for today with this ati-shit so i'm going to try and get wireless working instead, strange stuff happen here too, it's atheros and it usually works at once with madwifi and it was installed but no ath_pci module present.

[newt]

When i ran the installer it worked nicely until aticonfig --initial, then segmentation fault, then tried to enter driver fglrx in
xorg.conf and modprobe it, didn't work.

I came across similar 'segmentation fault' problems when attempting 'aticonfig --initial'.  I solved the problem by not having X started when issuing the command.  Try switching to 'init 2', enter your command, switch back to 'init 4'.  Good luck!!

[nightflier]

i downloaded and compiled the latest kernel from kernel.org

In that case your kernel may not be supported by fglrx. I remember it was a couple of months after the release of kernel 2.6.20 before the driver worked with it.

There should be a log of what happened, think it is in /var/log/ati-installer or similar. Also, as suggested above, if you install this in text mode (select linux-tui on boot or do init 2) then you will be able to see the error message if it fails.

[The Headacher]

I'm fed up for today with this ati-shit so i'm going to try and get wireless working instead, strange stuff happen here too, it's atheros and it usually works at once with madwifi and it was installed but no ath_pci module present.

Doesn't the kernel have to be patched to support those (not sure)? On my stock SOHO kernel this module is present. But actually this is more suitable for a new thread .

[OldNoob]

Hallo again, made a new install and this time the nic problem didn't show up, all ath modules where loaded, nice!
But the x trouble is persisting, i looked in xorg.0.log and found the error, but finding it is one thing and grasp the meaning is definitely another thing. So please enlighten me.

(II) fglrx(0): pEnt->device->identifier=0x821e690
(WW) ****INVALID IO ALLOCATION**** b: 0x9000 e: 0x90ff correcting
(II) window:
   

• -1   0   0x00009000 - 0x000090ff (0x100) IX
[1] -1   0   0x00009400 - 0x000094ff (0x100) IX

   [2] -1   0   0x00009800 - 0x000098ff (0x100) IX
   [3] -1   0   0x00009c00 - 0x00009cff (0x100) IX
(II) resSize:
   

• -1   0   0x00000000 - 0xffffffff (0x0) IX

(II) window fixed:
   

• -1   0   0x00009000 - 0x000090ff (0x100) IX
[1] -1   0   0x00009400 - 0x000094ff (0x100) IX

   [2] -1   0   0x00009800 - 0x000098ff (0x100) IX
   [3] -1   0   0x00009c00 - 0x00009cff (0x100) IX
Requesting insufficient memory window!: start: 0x9000 end: 0x90ff size 0xc0120100
Requesting insufficient memory window!: start: 0x9400 end: 0x94ff size 0xc0120100
Requesting insufficient memory window!: start: 0x9800 end: 0x98ff size 0xc0120100
Requesting insufficient memory window!: start: 0x9c00 end: 0x9cff size 0xc0120100
(EE) Cannot find a replacement memory range

[Masta]

It seems to me that the driver you might be using is either incompatible with your card/chipset or there is a kernel issue (perhapps something was not set during the configuration?).

[OldNoob]

Hello Masta, fast answer!
No i don't think there's any driver compability issue because it's the same driver that worked with suse, maybe kernel issue i don't know, but i made a fresh install of vector, so that's also not probable because most people get ati to work with 2.6.20.3, don't they?

The card is detected by lspci as a radeon xpress 200m (1100 is the real numbers) , but i don't know if that's an issue and also it's a cheapo with shared memory, maybe that's the cause? But on the other hand suse fixed that, so i'm confused. 

It would be nice to solve this so i can make my friend really happy by also installing supergamer, then maybe i can delay delivery some days to be able to try supergamer out on a fast machine with lot's of memory, my boxes aren't up to handle some of the games.

[Masta]

Are you using the aticonfig command after driver installation? (just curious on that)
Can you post the xorg.conf ?
Can you also post the installer log?


If you post them into scrolling boxes it won't take up a lot of thread.

[OldNoob]

I tried both aticonfig --initial and aticonfig --initial --force on numerous occasions.

I'll post xorg.conf and the log (where can i find that?) tomorrow.
Tell me how to make scrolling boxes while you are at it.

[newt]

the log may be location in /var/log(s), but I'm not certain.

Also, using 'code' tags will produce the scrolling boxes.

[bigpaws]

The logs are in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Easy way as root cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log > /home/<user>/xorg

then cd /home/<user>

then chown <user> xorg

then chgrp users xorg

You needed to work as root due to /var/log not being accessible as
a regular user and then change the permissions and group so you
can read the file.

HTH

Bigpaws