Auto vga driver installation

[Kriss]

Hi all!
vga-detect works for Radeon HD 4650 but doesn't work for my notebook since its videocard requires legacy drivers (or driver v9.3 and below):
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx
lspci: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] [1002:5975]
Actually lspci information is probably not entirely correct, since it's Radeon x1100 mobile (there's no Radeon 200M on notebook Acer Aspire 5100)
http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-driver ... 03491.html

I think users of older nVidia cards have similar situation.
May I suggest 2 more options for legacy drivers (one for nVidia and one for ATi)?

[fanthom]

Amd dropped support for legacy ati cards with Catalyst-9.3 release. i dont think 9.3 will compile against latest kernels so Amd legacy users must stick to opensource drivers (which are working very good from what i know)

'vga-detect' cheatcode wont be able to recognize which nVidia GPU is legacy and which is not.
in case of AMD its easier as all HD cards have 'Radeon HD' string in the pci.id description (that's how linuxrc recognizes them).

Anyway - we could add legacy nvidia drivers to the repo but someone must create them first (to compile nvidia driver you must have the hardware - i dont have any nVidia around).

@beny and others
will you be able to compile nVidia legacy on your hardware? if yes then please post it as usual.

Cheers

[beny]

hi fanthom i can try, but i have a geforce 6 series,i do a clean installation of 32 bit and try in, so if something fails,no problem,just a try

[oranus]

Hi fanthom,

I encounter some problem on vga-detect cheatcode. As you know some vga does not appropriate, and get error " Starting up X11 session manager".
So how can we solve the problem? I suppose that we add some script to get this error message than
1. deactivate ati or nVidia*.xzm
2. startx

Do u think is it solution for this problem?
Any Idea?

[fanthom]

hmmm... this issue will be hard to sort out but i'll try to do something in rc.4.
will update this post with new code for testing.

Posted after 15 hours 50 minutes 4 seconds:
good news, i have found a list of supported pci ids for the legacy drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html
so full autodetection will be implemented in linuxrc.

for next porteus version beny will have to create 3 drivers for each arch:
a) current
b) 173.14.xx
c) 96.43
(i think we can skip 71.86 series - i dont know if it even compile on latest kernel)

and there should be no more xrog failures
just place all 3 nVidia drivers and ati-fglrx in /optional, use vga-detect cheat and linuxrc will do all the job.
ofc there will be errors if users wont use vga-detect and put wrong driver in /modules.

[oranus]

Thanks fanthom and Beny for nVidia drivers but some ati vga makes error on fglrx driver. So ati*.xzm on /optional folder does not work correctly on all ati vga. I come up with "Starting up X11 session manager" error on ati vga laptops.
How can we deal with ati-vga problem?

Cheers..

[fanthom]

hi oranus,

please post output of 'lspci | grep VGA' command for each PC failing with vga-detect cheatcode.
please also write which driver was activated by linuxrc.

(i may have to update list of pciids manually if the data is incorrect)

[oranus]

Hi fanthom,

I'll give VGA spec which has problem. But I suppose that you should add control on rc.4 because we can't grab all VGA product id. And we can't predict all vga esp new ones. So If you add control it will solve problem whatever vga product.

[fanthom]

@oranus

you are right (but please post pci ids anyway). i have added 'proprietary-watcher' process which sniffs /var/log/Xorg.0.log for errors and unload nVidia|ati-fglrx drivers when Xorg fails at startup.
tested here and seems to be ok. i'll push it to porteus-1.2-rc1 for wider testing.

thanks for forcing me to do the job correctly

[oranus]

@fanthom

lspci |grep VGA: 01:05.0 VGA * [AMD] nee ATI RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series]

sory for late response. If I found another vga-detect problem laptop I'll give output.

Regards

[fanthom]

@oranus

this card is present in the pciid database so i guess it's fglrx driver fault unless it's double GPU notebook.
for your next reports please use following command:

Code: Select all

lspci -n | grep 0300:

which gonna tell me much more.

thanks

[oranus]

01:05.0 0300: 1002:9712

Posted after 2 hours 17 minutes 16 seconds:
I test P.1.2 rc1 on VGA: 01:05.0 VGA * [AMD] nee ATI RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series].
Here is output:
Fatal server error:
unloading ati-fglrx*
Starting up X11 session manager loop

regards....

[fanthom]

hi oranus,

please try following options on 'Radeon HD 4200 Series' notebook
1) boot porteus with 'autoexec=xconf' cheatcode, if that still wont work then please post /var/log/Xorg.0.log and try second advice
2) there is a chance that fglrx driver provided in the repo wont work for certain ati GPU's or this is an upstream issue. let's check it: please boot porteus on 'Radeon HD 4200 Series' notebook in 'always fresh' mode with open source driver then try to build fglrx with script from this page:
http://porteus.org/info/docs/46-video/7 ... river.html
when driver builds successfully please move it to /porteus/modules and reboot.
if that helped then please upload your driver somewhere and i'll add it to the repo.

good luck!