Change of video driver causes login GUI problems

[alejack12001]

I have sucessfully installed Fodora Core 3 on AMD64 system. Fedora spotted my video card which is ATI 9200. However, I had to accept 256 colors and 800x600 default screen. I was able to identify the Sony monitor I have CPD-420GS from the listed monitors.

I went to ATI and found a driver for the x86-64 Fedora. I installed the driver in Standalone mode init S. Then rebooted the system. Fedora accepted the new driver and when I was able to get to the KDE then I was able to select the screens icon. Now I had different levels of screen resolution as well as thousands or millions of colors. However, if I select a setting that is anyway different from the 256 and 800x600 then the login screen fails to appear. It seems to hang since I am unable to get the login prompt to appear.

So, my first question is how can I return to console when the GUI login promt is unavailable to me.

Next, /etc/X11/xorg.conf is the default description for GUI for Fedora. What are the other X11 files that need adjustment to allow a higher setting of say 1024X768 and millions of colors?

Thanks to all that respond.

[tashirosgt]

When there is no gui login, once the system is booted, see if Ctrl-Alt-F2 will give you a text console.

I think you can do all the adjustments within /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Post your current version of this file and perhaps someone call tell you what to change.

[alejack12001]

Thank you for the suggestion. The control Alt command with the F2 will not break in right now. I believe that the system may be locked up in the GUI mode. I don't understand grub enough. Ibeleive this is a way in. I did see a terminal command. I executed that command and was taken to a vt100 type terminal. Booting from the grub is still unknown to me. Booting seems to require the absolute path to the kernel. I don't know the path to the kernel. If I could get the kernel running from the terminal then I could copy this file to another name and overwrite the xorg.conf file with my saved original file. The only probelm is getting past the GUI startup screen. How to get the system running on vt100 terminal?

[tashirosgt]

As soon as you see the grub screen, hit the spacebar key. This will let you use the arrow keys to pick a particular kernel. Then use the 'e' key to select it for editing. There will be directions.
Change the line that looks like:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.14_FC3 ro root=/dev/Volroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
so it says
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.14_FC3 ro root=/dev/Volroup00/LogVol00 1
(i.e. get rid of the "rhgb quiet" and replace it with "1")
Then use the 'b' key to boot. That should boot you a terminal login prompt.

[alejack12001]

Thank you for the information about using grub to get into the system. It worked! I have included the contents of the xorg.conf below:

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Sony CPD-420GS/GST/19GS2"
HorizSync 30.0 - 96.0
VertRefresh 48.0 - 120.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon 9200"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

ATI web site gave two video drivers as their model for the Radeon 9200 I have. Along with a script that identified the driver to match. The script check.sh displayed XOrg68 as the correct driver. This was the driver I installed using rpm -i. after install and reboot the new driver was in place and the settings changed with more choices for resolution and colors. Of course any selection that I make must only change the defaultdepth. I didn't see the other resolutions of say 1280x1024 or 1024x768 etc; just the defaults. So for some reason the xorg.conf is not updated. One last comment I read someplace either here in the web site that radeon was not a good driver that I should ahve ati instead.

Again, I thank you for your help.

[tashirosgt]

Looking at the ATI site, they have one page for X86 32 bit drivers (Radeon 9200 and below) and one page for X86 64 bit drivers. An X86 64 page says that no 64 bit driver is available yet and
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...ge&folderID=27
contains the cryptic statement "32-Bit packages must be installed for 64-Bit Linux drivers to install or work".

( A little rant: Does anyone else notice that the technical quality of web pages is declining? I suppose that when the web was new, the technical people were the ones who did the web pages. But more and more they seem to be put together by the marketing or advertising departments. )

My advice is to edit your xorg.conf and try using a new Modes line.

Section Screen
...
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

[alejack12001]

I looked and can see that ATI suggests installing 32-bit drivers installion before the 64-bit. I find it odd that ATI requires the install of these drivers. Yes, I agree with your assertion of the lack of technical support from ATI. Now looking at the page suggestion of the 32-bit drivers there was a sentence stating a requirement for POSIX shared memory. I wanted to ask about this since POSIX shared memory under LInux 7.3 had to be manually configured. Will POSIX shared memory require manual intevention here as well?