HD6850 driver issue

[Unhyper]

Okay, I could use your help. I am completely new to this...

I downloaded the Mageia 1 x64 iso and burned it on dvd...installed the OS and everything went fine...first boot, all I get after bootloader is a screen full of colourful noise. I suspect it's a gfx driver issue, but I have no idea how to go about fixing it. When I installed Mageia, I noticed that the video driver it automatically selected was "radeon/fglrx" or something similar. Other options included "radeonhd/fglrx", but I figured the installer new best. My gfx card is Radeon HD 6850. My computer in general is HP Pavilion Elite HPE-515sc.

I tried booting into Mageia in safe mode, same result.

I don't know what to do.

[doktor5000]

Try booting after adding the following kernel options:

Code: Select all

radeon.modeset=0 nomodeset

You can do this by pressing F3 in the bootloader (for Kernel Options), select Default,
and enter both options seperated by a space. Does that help?

[Unhyper]

That did work in the sense that it booted me into console, where I could log in with my user account... However, I have no idea where to go from there.

[martinw]

Try following the instructions here:
https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=380&p=2503#p2503

[akbrian]

I'm tagging on to this thread because I just recently upgraded from my Asus onboard ATI 4350? to a new AMD/ATI PCIE HD6870, very similar to the OP's card. The existing Mageia dkms-fglrx rpm (Catalyst version 11.8) still worked, but was not great. Launching the Catalyst Control Center would somehow freeze up Firefox until I rebooted (other browsers remanded fine). Tearing in video's. Weird fragments of previously viewed web pages displayed on logoff from KDE.

So I downloaded the latest Linux 64 ATI driver from directly from AMD,
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
version 12.1, new as of mid-january 2012 to /home/(me)/Downloads/AMD

booted into safemode, as root;
# urpme dkms-fglrx

did NOT remove the orphans.
rebooted again into safemode agian, as root;
# cd /home/(me)/Downloads/AMD
# sh amd-driver-installer-12.1-x86.x86_64.run

I chose to install the driver directly when presented the option, because the alternative presented was to have the installer create a distro specific RPM for "Mandrake/Mandriva 1", which made my nervous. I don't know if that was a real problem, or just a naming glitch. rebooted again after the installer finished, I just used the default install rather than custom. 12.1 works much better! Really sharp display, good acceleration, no Firefox issues. I do still get fragments temporarily on logout. Video and sound is via HDMI on my install. I had to manually make a link to /usr/bin/amdcccle to launch the Catalyst Control Center. I'm really happy with the upgraded driver.

I happy to hear suggestions as to a better way to have done this, but I'm satisfied for now.

[akbrian]

Oddly enough, after raving about how good 12.1 is, I've developed a new problem. If I boot directly to what should be the graphic log-in screen, my display "no signals" (it's a hdtv via hdmi). If I boot via safe mode, then <cnrl><d> at the prompt, it goes straight to graphical log-in, no problem and all works well. weird. Any suggestions?