Help! Fedora 8 + IBM T60p (FireGL V5200) + fglrx

[jlabadie]

Hello all, I am sure that this thread is nothing new, it is about being unable to get the fglrx drivers working correctly. I have seen several people with the same vid card and laptop who say it "just works", but I have had no such luck. I am part of the "I wish this dang thing would just work!" group, that cannot seem to get it right. So, here are the details...

It is pretty simple really (in theory). I download the fglrx drivers, make sure my xorg.conf looks good, restart X, and thats when stuff breaks. I am able to get everything working fine when I revert back to the vesa driver (naturally), but as soon as I load up the fglrx driver I am unable to start X. I get the typical "X is broke do you want to see the output and try to fix it" screens on startup. At that point I usually just move my old xorg.conf back into place and I am OK. Here is my xorg output when it errors out:

(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

From what I can find, this error is pretty common, at least with people like me, who cannot get this working. I have tried all sorts of tutorials, and how-tos, etc, and none of them seem to work for me. I am really just hoping that after staring at this for so long, it is something easy that I am missing (after all, other people can get it to work).

I am running fedora 8, 2.6.21-2952.fc8xen
I have a IBM T60p with a ATI FireFL V5200 card.
I have tried pulling the fglrx drivers down via livna, as well as downloading the installer from ATI directly.

Here is what I have installed as far as fglrx:
[jlabadie@linuxlaptop01 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep fglrx
xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-8.43-1.7.11.fc8
kmod-fglrx-2.6.23.8-63.fc8-8.43-3.7.11.lvn8
xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-devel-8.43-1.7.11.fc8
kmod-fglrx-8.43-3.7.11.lvn8

Here is my Xorg version:
[jlabadie@linuxlaptop01 ~]$ X -version

X Window System Version 1.3.0
Release Date: 19 April 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 1.3
Build Operating System: Fedora 8 Red Hat, Inc.
Current Operating System: Linux linuxlaptop01 2.6.21-2952.fc8xen #1 SMP Mon Nov 19 07:06:55 EST 2007 i686
Build Date: 30 November 2007
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.3.0.0-36.fc8
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
[jlabadie@linuxlaptop01 ~]$

If you would like more output from my xorg log, please let me know, I just didn't want to paste the whole thing in here because of the size. I had a IBM T42 previously which worked well with the radeon driver (I don't believe fglrx was supported for the mobility 7500), but I just recently upgraded to this T60p. I started with Fedora 7, but had the same problem there. I eventually decided to upgrade to Fedora 8. My point being that I have never a) had to mess with the fglrx driver before and b) I have never had fglrx working on this laptop previously with any other distros. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for the help!

Jeremy

[pfpenteado]

Sounds like the same problem I have (Mobility FireGL V5200 on a Z61p). The recent drivers do not support FireGL, so I get something like:

(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Version Identifier:8.42.3
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Release Identifier: UNSUPPORTED-8.423.2
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Build Date: Oct 19 2007 16:14:11
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

Forcing a X1600 PCIID (0x71c5) only results on a beep and a blank screen, but no complaints at the end of the xorg.log file. Switching to a text console still does not show anything on the screen, though the console does work.

It all worked fine with an older driver (8.36) on Fedora 7 with an older kernel. But the old driver does not work on the newer kernels, and the newer drivers do not support FireGL.

I am waiting to see if 7.12 solves it. I am using avivo or radeonhd, which means no hardware 3D for now.

[jlabadie]

So, in my hunting online, I have also noticed other people saying that you can use the X1600 drivers, but I am not sure how to do it. How would I go about forcing the X1600 drivers? Do the avivo and/or radeonhd drivers work with compiz/beryl do you know? I am sure the hw accel would be nice, but I am just curious. OK, last question, does anyone know when the 7.12 drivers will be released? Thanks!

[pfpenteado]

Adding the line ChipID XXXX to the device section of the xorg.conf file makes the X server assume that the card is whatever card specified by that PCI ID. For Mobility Radeon X1600, it is 0x71c5. There is an ATI list at

http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=1002

As I said, for me that only resulted in a blank screen.

[Nexus6]

Has ATi abandoned support for these FireGL mobility cards?

The FireGL V5200 mobility and other similar cards are no longer listed in the supported cards on the ATi site. 8.40 was the last driver that worked on my T60p and since then I've been making do with vesa (although I'll give the RadeonHD driver a try).

Has ATI stopped supporting these devices? I find it odd, since they are still fairly new. I can find no mention of them under Windows or other driver platforms.

[dposselt]

The FireGL V5200 mobility and other similar cards are no longer listed in the supported cards on the ATi site. 8.40 was the last driver that worked on my T60p and since then I've been making do with vesa (although I'll give the RadeonHD driver a try).

Has ATI stopped supporting these devices? I find it odd, since they are still fairly new. I can find no mention of them under Windows or other driver platforms.

Have you tried the latest series of drivers? 8.3 in particular works fairly well for me on a T60p with 1680x1050 resolution screen and FireGL v5250 (though I get corruption around my cursor when using Compiz/Beryl). I am running a slightly older version of Fedora (7), but the results should be similar for Fedora 8. FYI: I downloaded the driver and installed using the driver install script (having uninstalled all previous versions of the driver first), and everything has been working for me...

[Nexus6]

Have you tried the latest series of drivers? 8.3 in particular works fairly well for me on a T60p with 1680x1050 resolution screen and FireGL v5250 (though I get corruption around my cursor when using Compiz/Beryl). I am running a slightly older version of Fedora (7), but the results should be similar for Fedora 8. FYI: I downloaded the driver and installed using the driver install script (having uninstalled all previous versions of the driver first), and everything has been working for me...

I've tried every driver up to 8.2 using the Livna rpms (which have been reliable up to 8.40). I can start a basic X server on fglrx 8.2 but it hangs hard within seconds of logging into GNOME.

I'll try clearing out the existing install and using the 8.03 driver install script.

[Nexus6]

I've tried every driver up to 8.2 using the Livna rpms (which have been reliable up to 8.40). I can start a basic X server on fglrx 8.2 but it hangs hard within seconds of logging into GNOME.

Well - now I've tried everything up to and including 8.05 and I'm still seeing hangs and crashes with this setup (T60p with Mobility FireGL V5200 running at 1600x1200). The RadeonHD driver works fairly well but doesn't allow the brightness of the screen to be changed so right now I'm using the Vesa driver.

If someone out there has the same hardware and a working fglrx setup, I'd be really interested in knowing what the contents of their /etc/X11/xorg.conf is.