Install issues with my ATI Radeon HD 6870

[david522]

So I tried to try out mageia and It wont work with my video card Ati Radeon HD 6870 I have tried the 6800 drivers and when I hit test I can see the box that says click yes or no so I click yes. When I reboot it says it has a issue and do to drakx11 or whatever it was called. Tryed typing that in after I logged in as root and nothing happens. So I put the DVD back in and redid the setup (update) and selected vesa someone said that should work for any videocard and it doesn't same issue. I have tried about 5 different video card types under ATI and two vesa under other video card menus with no luck.

Ideas?

[mithion]

Are you using Mageia 2, or Cauldron?

[david522]

Mageia 2

[mithion]

EDIT: Before you try method 2, I'm not sure if it will work. I've tried it on my system and there seems to be a problem when enabling the nonfree repositories with the method outline below. I hope someone else pitches in. I'm curious as to how this is done. It appears that each media has a key ID, but that this ID is missing from the /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg file so simply removing the ignore part isn't sufficient to enable the repo. So method 1 may be you're only recourse until someone explains how to properly enable media from the command line.

Sorry for the delay in response. So it sounds like there's a compatibility problem with the available drivers. The DVD for mageia 2 doesn't include the proprietary drivers, but does include the open source drivers. However, I'm not 100% sure if the HD6870 is supported by the version of that driver that comes on the DVD. What's more perplexing though is the fact your computer isn't booting with the vesa. Maybe you'll have to use the closed driver for your system to work and I have a couple of methods I can suggest for you to try.

Method 1: This is by far the easiest method. Simply download the Mageia Live CD (it comes in different flavors like gnome and KDE or 32bit and 64bit). Then reinstall mageia from the Live CD. These mediums include the proprietary drivers on the disk and will install them automatically for you.

If method 1 doesn't work or you cannot download another disk, there is this method you can use with your current installation.

Method 2: Start by printing these steps if you don't have a second computer to read them off of. Then reboot your computer. When you're at the grub prompt, edit the boot parameters (I don't have a grub 1.0 install right now so I forgot the exact keys to press, but I think you press like F5, select default parameters) and then append the number "3" at the end of the line. This will force your computer to boot in text mode, and you'll avoid the X11 error you've been getting.

Once you're booted, log in as root.

Now I'm not 100% certain the next step is necessary, but I like to remove all the repositories that are installed by default by running the following command.

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urpmi.removemedia -a

Then add new repositories with

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urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist

Then you'll want to enable the non-free repositories which contain the closed source driver FGLRX which you need.

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urpmi.update --no-ignore "Nonfree Release"
urpmi.update --no-ignore "Nonfree Updates"

Then you'll need to update the newly added media with

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urpmi --auto-update

Once that completes, you can launch the tool

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drakx11

A text version of the graphics driver configuration tool will popup. Go ahead and configure your graphics driver just as you would normally. When selecting the chipset, the tool will ask you if you want to install the proprietary driver, choose "YES". With the added repositories, it should then download the appropriate packages and install them for you. Complete the configuration and reboot once the tool requests it. Hopefully upon rebooting, your system will boot into a nice graphical session. Let me know if you have more trouble.

[david522]

Thanks, for the lengthy and also for giving me more than one option to try. I will pull this up on my tablet and give it a go.


Thanks for the help will let you know how it turns out

[david522]

Ok, just a update for you the live cd worked for me with no issues. Thanks again for your time and maybe this might help someone else later on.

[mithion]

Glad to hear the simple method worked well for you. On a side note, I'm still interested in figuring out how to enable nonfree repositories through the command line. Everywhere I've looked in mageia and mandriva's wikis, they use the drakrpm-edit-media which doesn't work for command line. Hopefully someone in the know will chime in on this.