Fedora 8 & ATI Radeon X1600

[HDevine]

I just upgraded my x86_64 setup from FC6 to F8, and now my X won't start up. I downloaded the latest livna drivers and I still can't get any X to start in runlevel 5. The xorg drivers that got installed are as follows:

xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-8.443.1-1.7.12.lvn8
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.3.0.0-37.fc8

What happens is my machine boots, and appears to go into runlevel 3, even though I am setup to go into runlevel 5 in my /etc/inittab file. I can log in as normal in runlevel 3, but I periodically get the error message: Id "x" respawning too fast; disabling for 5 minutes. My xorg.conf appears to be correct, and /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0.log don't show any errors at all.

Oddly, if I type startx, I get a crude X session with what appears to be a low resolution terminal window and an xclock running, not the normal GNOME desktop that usually comes up.

Any ideas? I can post whatever logs or config files that are necessary to help get this working.

Thanks,
Harry

[billwww]

Hello, HDevine--

I also have had problems with installing f8 with a radeon x1600 video card. I could not install in graphics mode; x would not start in anaconda because there is no driver for the x1600 in the distro. My choices were either to install in text mode, install the proprietary driver, and then switch everything over to graphics startup (my undertanding is there is a lot involved in that switch), or I could substitute another video card, install in graphics mode, download the driver, and switch to the x1600 card. I chose the latter and it worked.

I don't recall a dot "lvn8" ending on the driver I downloaded, nor do I recall a "server" driver for xorg, but then I'm not using that card in a server configuration. My driver was the x64 version.

I'm on a different machine at the moment (the x1600 machine is being used by my spouse), so I can't get more specific at the moment. If I get a chance to fiddle with it, I'll try to get you more information later. Maybe this will help a little.

You might try the radeonhd open source driver.

Good luck

[HDevine]

I was able to get a GUI install, but after the upgrade/install, after the PC reboots, I get kicked into runlevel 3. Like I said, the logs don't seem to show any errors, but I get no X windows at all. Just the "Id: "x" respawning too fast; disabling for 5 minutes" messages.

Also, what are the radeonhd open source drivers? Are they different than the livna drivers?

Thanks,
Harry

[Janl]

The radeonhd driver is a new open-source driver for the r500/600 generation of cards. It is being supported by AMD/ATI and is being developed by Novell (SUSE). It's pretty basic right now, but is coming along pretty quickly. You can find some more info at RadeonHD.org.