Fedora 16 - Installing ATI drivers for a ATI Radeon 2600 Pro AGP

paxile2k · #1 9th May 2012, 02:04 AM

I am aware of the thousands of posts concerning..ATI in general when it comes to Linux. I thought i would try to get some localized help with this one. Regardless of ANY ATI driver I install whether it be proprietary or opensource it does not work or I lose some functionality.

Here is my system setup..currently till i can afford a real computer:
ASUS A7N8X - System Board
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP
eMachines 17F3 Monitor

On install i have to add acpi=off and nomodeset to the grub line just for the LiveCD to work, after updating, all works with the exception of 3D support (obviously due to mesa, which also drops the resolution i prefer which is 1280x1024)

I installed the Catalyst drivers but getting a kernel compile error in the fglrx log file created and the kernel-devel is installed, i even went so far as to add the radeon/radeonhd to the blacklist file and made sure radeon.modeset=0 was also in the grub line.

On one occastion i was able to get in the desktop but had massive performance issues, even added the swcursor false option to the xorg.conf (which really threw me off in the newer version of fedora with the xorg.conf files missing but only to find them in the xorg.conf.d folder).
Ii tried to verify glxgears but get errors about core dump or module not installed. I ran the uninstall script and reinstalled mesa drivers and glxgears works again but still stuck where i started.

I installed the xorg-x11-drv-catalyst drivers, but these cause a new issue where it just shows the loading bar for Fedora 16.
Needless to say, i removed those drivers as well and now back to mesa. I am @ loss, i have gone thru a log of forums/help files and what not, and asside from trying my hand and building a new xorg.conf file, which i am still a n00b to linux but want to learn.

I know a lot of answers have been live with it or buy a nvidia card. Granted that will be in the future once i can actually afford a new computer that is no longer on AGP, i would like to at least use this one till that time comes. Any help would be appreciated and any log files that would be needed i can do my best to get..provided i have not killed the shell/kernel

Thank you in advance.

paxile2k · #2 9th May 2012, 02:52 AM

I have attached a copy of my xorg.conf file, i had to change the driver to "ati" in order for it to boot to a desktop

paxile2k · #3 9th May 2012, 03:19 AM

This is a copy of the xorg.0.log w/the "fglrx" driver. Both "radeon" & "ati" will allow a boot to the desktop. But window drawing is very very slow, and glxgears is broken.

paxile2k · #4 9th May 2012, 03:22 AM

Here is a copy of the kdm.log file if it helps also and the xorg.conf

george_toolan · #5 10th May 2012, 09:25 AM

Are you talking to yourself again?

To install the Catalyst driver just enable rpmfusion repository and

Code:

yum install kmod-catalyst

No compilation required, so there won't be any compiler errors ;-)

Hint: forget about 3d acceleration and use a classic desktop environment like XFCE or LXDE.

paxile2k · #6 3rd June 2012, 11:27 PM

Sorry for the delay in my response, i ended up have to wipe the system completely due to a wonderful "grub" error, and load (shudder) windows vista, download and burned Fedora 17. Then loaded it. I did however before the "grub" repeat and fill your screen and not load anything problem, load the drivers but to no avail, the system became unstable and would not load with the "fglrx" driver, and was using ATI, and it would only boot with the nomodeset option in the kernel. Sadly i am not finding kmod for 17 yet...I will have to be patient, either for working kmod drivers or the finances to rid myself of the ATI curse. On a side note...any ideas on how to create and or find the xorg.conf file. I tried the xorg -configure and it fails even if failsafe mode.

george_toolan · #7 4th June 2012, 02:32 PM

There are no Catalyst drivers for Fedora 17 yet, because they're not compatible with the new X-Server, but your card should be working with the free Radeon driver.

Agent20 · #8 4th June 2012, 04:09 PM

Apparently the Catalyst 12.6 beta release does work with F17, but unfortunately AMD have dropped support for HD2000/HD3000/HD4000 series cards using Catalyst so this is no help for paxile2k. See posts 5 and 6 from this thread:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=280311

What is the problem with the F17 live CD paxile2k? When you try and start it normally (without using nomodeset) does it just freeze or do you get an error message?

paxile2k · #9 4th June 2012, 05:17 PM

Thank you for your response, I saw that post a couple of days ago, but never saw the HD 2xxx series mentioned. How sad

I am assuming the radeon drivers are included in F17?

When i do not have a "nomodeset" i get the following repeat message with no desktop loading, it also happens if i boot to mode 1

[drm:drm_edid_block_valid] *ERROR* EDID checksum is invalid, remainder is 82
(insert series of hex code lines here)

rinse, and repeat.

guess, and stuck with stock drivers for now...

Agent20 · #10 4th June 2012, 06:20 PM

Yes the open source radeon drivers are included in F17 and these should be used by default.

EDID error seems to be a hardware related error, caused by either the monitor or the monitor and graphic card combination. The system gets the EDID information from the monitor when booting so that it knows what resolution and timings to use.
The Catalyst driver must handle the error better than the open source drivers and can work around it.

I see that you are using a CRT monitor and that the graphics card has 2 DVI connections. I suppose you must be using an DVI/VGA adapter if that is the case. There was one thread I found while searching where someone said their EDID problem was fixed by using a different connection on the graphics card. You could try plugging the monitor into the other DVI connection or trying a different adapter if you have one.

paxile2k · #11 4th June 2012, 08:19 PM

Thank you for your response, I am indeed using a vga/dvi adapter, I have tried both ports and still get the same error :

[ 253.801942] [drm:drm_edid_block_valid] *ERROR* EDID checksum is invalid, remainder is 82
[ 253.801945] Raw EDID:
[ 253.801947] 52 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 63 18 72 17 00 00 00 00
[ 253.801949] 2a 10 01 01 68 20 19 a0 e8 00 bd a0 57 49 9b 26
[ 253.801951] 10 44 4a ff fe 00 45 59 31 59 61 59 81 80 01 01
[ 253.801954] 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 00 00 fd 00 32 82 1e 48 0b
[ 253.801956] 00 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 fc 00 31 37 37
[ 253.801958] 32 45 44 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 ff 00 48
[ 253.801961] 36 41 20 38 30 30 20 30 36 37 37 34 01 01 01 01
[ 253.801963] 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 9d
[ 253.801967] radeon 0000:02:00.0: DVI-I-2: EDID block 0 invalid.
[ 263.390035] [drm:drm_edid_block_valid] *ERROR* EDID checksum is invalid, remainder is 82

at the end of dmesg the ports change based on where its plugged in:

64.208001] radeon 0000:02:00.0: DVI-I-1: EDID block 0 invalid.

when in port 2 this is the end of the log and of course in port 1 it switches to DVI-I-2

I found a fix a while back using F15 whcih was a kernel mode for setting EDID but have yet to find it again, that resolved it, i believe it was referring to the buffer for edid, but of course it has been a while. I am not using "nomodeset" if boots which F15/16 did not do without "nomodeset" now just diving into the screen flicker/freezes. and getting a resolution of 1280x1024

Agent20 · #12 5th June 2012, 12:44 AM

The problem with using "nomodeset" is that you don't get any 3D acceleration, although you should be able to set the correct screen size with xorg.conf options.

Do you have another monitor that you could try using instead of the eMachines 17F3?

paxile2k · #13 5th June 2012, 02:55 AM

Thank you again for your response

I managed to get the resolution fixed after creating the xorg from the root one and removing the extra monitors/screen info to prevent confusion. The flickering stopped on its own after a little bit, system seems stable, glxgears runs smoothy. Now to dive into some graphics testing (ie games)

To loop back to your question about the live cd, if i booted it as normal, system performance went down the toilet, constant freezes and graphical issues, i had to install with the acpi=off and nomodeset. acpi=off is still in the grub line, but nomodeset is gone.

As far as another monitor, i dont have another @ the current time, will be looking into it when i start to really dive info java programming and when funds are available for it.

paxile2k · #14 8th June 2012, 05:15 PM

Update:

After the latest kernel update, seems like it broke not only the display again, but it made some changes, found radeon.modeset=0, and this is not allowing the system to boot, but the resolutions are not being seen now and, it cause minor issues with the mouse too, got part of it working just not the scroll wheel.

Agent20 · #15 11th June 2012, 05:37 PM

I don't think the kernel update would have broken the open source drivers, it is probably the monitor was having trouble with the EDID data again.

"radeon.modeset=0" does the same as "nomodeset" it will disable kernel modesetting. This will stop the open source drivers from using the graphics card to do hardware accelerated graphics. But it also stops the constant EDID messages and allows you to use your system with basic graphics.

There is an open bug report on bugzilla for the EDID problem, so it should hopefully get fixed at some point:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=533632

AMD might release a version of Catalyst that works with HD2000 cards and F17 as well:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTExMzU