I've been busy installing Slack 12.2 on my HP Pavilion dv7 the past couple of days. I have everything working except for the graphics. That is the main issue. I need the 3D accel for pretty much everything I do, so I can't give up on that. Anyway, this is what I've tried so far. Keep in mind that I'm not the most experienced user.

I installed the latest proprietary driver available from ATI's website via sh ./ati.....

It brings up the gui install screen, which leads through the steps of the install. After install is completed, I enter a terminal and enter aticonfig --initial .

Then Reboot.

Ok, from here the problems begin. I run startx and I get a black screen with red symbols at the very top of my screen all the way across. Sometimes a couple of _ will appear in the upper left mid section of the monitor, but other than that it is all blacked out. Also, at times the mouse pointer is on screen. You can hear the system load fine through the speakers and I can also hit ctl+alt+del and enter to logout of the session. From there the screen turns to snow (as in TV snow, where there is no viewable channel, just noise) and the system locks up. I have to do a hard shutdown and the only fix is to run xorgconfig and recreate the xorg.conf file.

I've tried editing out the old info entered in by xorgconfig and using what is created with aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf, aticonfig --resolution=0,1280x1024,1024x768,800x600 and then entering the file with joe to verify that the default depth value is 24. I still get the same results. When I modprobe (which I'm not sure exactly what this does anyway, but I've read somewhere along the way to do it) fglrx it says there is some messed up symbol or something to that extent. Anywho, the biggest problem is being too much of a novice when it comes to the in-depth system repairs.

Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks so much!

P.s. If you need any screen output, please be kind and explain how to get that info within Slackware 12.2. I've noticed lots of people do things in different *nix environments like the apt-get...doesn't work for me. Thanks.

Have you tried older and beta drivers?

No, I've not tried other drivers than the fglrx from ATI. The error message when I modprobe is this :

FATAL: Error inserting fglrx (/lib/modules/2.6.27.7-smp/external/fglrx.ko.gz): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

This is from dmesg:


fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.
fglrx: Unknown symbol pci_disable_msi
fglrx: Unknown symbol pci_enable_msi
ACPI: Power Button (CM) [PWRB]



and this is my xorg.conf info which was created at first with xorgconfig, then altered I guess with aticonfig --initial


Section "ServerLayout"

Identifier "Simple Layout"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/OTF/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.
# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
# This loads the font modules
# Load "type1"
# This loads the GLX module
# Load "dri"
Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection
Load "freetype"
# Load "xtt"
Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "kbd"
Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc101"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Auto" # Auto detect
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Mouse-speed setting for PS/2 mouse.
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
# Emulate3Buttons is an option for 2-button mice
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

Identifier "My Monitor"
HorizSync 31.5 - 64.3
VertRefresh 50.0 - 90.0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"


Identifier "Standard VGA"
Driver "vga"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
EndSection

Section "Device"

#VideoRam 131072
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
Identifier "** ATI Radeon (generic) [radeon]"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "** ATI Radeon (generic) [radeon]"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

It sounds like the driver didn't compile correctly. Have you looked at the install logs to see if everything went OK? Also, after compiling the driver, did you run the ATI setup routine?

I don't exactly know where to locate the install logs, so I haven't checked that. I created the driver and X server module with ATI pkgbuild and then installed with KPackage. After install I ran aticonfig --initial. From here, if I reboot and attempt to startx again, I get hte black screen with red symbols forming a line across the top edge of my screen along with the two underscore's in the upper left mid section.

Look in /usr/share/ati and it is called fglrx-install.log.
That is exactly what I get if the compile went bad. By the way, when you installed Slackware, did you also install the kernel sources? You need those for your running kernel. And while we're on this subject, it might be useful to know what kernel version your running and what version of the ATI driver you're trying to use.

Ok, I redid everything today to give another go at it. I downloaded the 9.4 driver from ATI and I'm using the 2.6.27.7-smp kernel.

After downloading the driver, I ran sh ati....run --buildandinstallpkg Slackware/All. So this was one thing I hadn't done before, and now I still get the black screen but I can back out of it into the shell prompt with ctl+alt+backspace. No lockups! We are progressing I guess. lol.

I am not sure what you mean about installing the kernel sources....when I installed Slackware 12.2, I went with the full install selection. From there the only real changes I made were installing wicd from /extras on the install disc so my wireless would work.

Oh, modprobe fglrx still gives the error inserting fglrx module regarding pci_disable_msi and pci_enable_msi.

A quick btw, I am posting via Slack with the radeon driver, so video is capable but I need the 3D that comes with the proprietary driver. It makes it difficult to return to the GUI as I have to redo the xorgconfig each time I give up on new tries and then when I'm ready to retry the ati driver, i do the aticonfig --initial and of course manually edit the xorg.conf file to remove all of the radeon stuff.

I haven't been using the Slackpkg to install mine. I've just been running the ATI install package directly. To be honest, I'm not sure I see a huge advantage to using a Slackpkg for this.

A full install should have installed the kernel sources. You might want to have a look in /usr/src just to be sure however.

My googling on these errors show up lots of problems with 12.2 and the ATI 9.1 drivers. The only solution I see is to recompile the kernel with PCI_MSI enabled.

Again, have a look in the ATI log file and see if it is leaving any error messages. At the moment we're kind of flying blind.

I'll give this a try right now, as well as get the log info.