Hi, whenever I try to use openSUSE it doesn’t go into the desktop, just a text based thingee. All I could try was loggin in and typing init 5, I think it says that the runlevel is already 5. I tried using the safemode thingee but that did pretty much the same thing, plus it said something about the graphics driver. I did try to get some new packages with YaST when I was on it last, they were mostly for graphics editing… I’m pretty clueless as to what I should do. :’(
This seems to be happening to a lot of people lately. Maybe it’s from a kernel update?
To get you desktop back, just boot up to the text prompt, log in as root and run this command:
sax2 -r -m 0=radeon
Then when sax2 starts tell it to save your settings and when you get back to the text prompt, enter this command:
reboot
The sax2 command above will restore the original open source video driver.
I tried that but it just died. It started doing some things, and then the screen turned off like it got no input. I restarted it and tried it again, and left it for ages this time just in case it was doing something but when I came back to it it was still like that.
What about this command:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
Also, from the text prompt while logged in as root, if you ebter the command “yast” you can start yast from there (but you won’t have a mouse so you’ll have to TAB around). Maybe once there you can search for “fglrx” and uninstall whatever ATI driver you may have downloaded. And also uninstall those graphics packages too and see if that helps.
some additional details to augment foresthill’s excellent advice …
If (with root permissions) you run the command: sax2 -p
you will see what sax2 identifies your hardware as, and you will also see if your graphic hardware is chip 0 or chip 1.
Most of the time users have only one graphic device, and hence their graphic hardware is chip 0. But a small number of users have motherboard graphics, and a separate card. If you are one of those, and if you are trying to use chip 1, then instead of:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
you would use
sax2 -r -m 1=vesa
By typing “vesa” you are telling sax2 to use the “vesa” driver.
In all cases, I am assuming your installation was successful, right up to the point where X window was supposed to nominally start.
Another interim option you can try, is to overwrite your xorg.conf file with the installation xorg.conf file. You can do that by typing:cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.mybackup
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.install /etc/X11/xorg.confNote Linux is case sensitive, … ie be very careful where you use capital letters and where you use lower case letters.
When using “radeon” in the sax2 command, one is trying to use the openGL (open source) graphic driver. A small subset of AIT hardware devices use the “radeonhd” driver. For example, for my Dell Studio 15 laptop, which has a Radeon 3450 HD device, I typed on that PC:sax2 -r -m 0=radeonhd
As you can see, it really helps if you know your hardware
Have you tried downloading the latest linux driver from ATi? (You’ll find them here)
The driver linked above is probably the best way to go (it’s the one I prefer) but keep in mind that it won’t install properly without installing all the dependencies it requires prior to running it (quote is from installer instructions):
System Recommendations
For best performance and ease of use, AMD recommends the following:
* Kernel module build environment - should include the following: o Kernel source code: Either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages * ISSE Support enabled in your Linux Kernel o Applies to Intel Pentium III and later CPUs only o Enabled by default on version 2.4 and later kernels * The rpm utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install via RPM packagesThe following packages must be installed in order for the Catalyst™ Linux driver to install and work properly:
* XFree86-Mesa-libGL * libstdc++ * libgcc * XFree86-libs * fontconfig * freetype * zlib * gcc
Nothing seems to work… thanks for trying though :).
Assuming you now have the dependencies installed, you can go to the ATI site and download an earlier version of the installer and try that. Installation procedure is the same.
Had an OpenSuse 10.3 with ATI-drivers working on my laptop, Mobility Radeon 9600, suddenly last week with a kernel upgrade my X died.
Since I’m not a programmer or a sysadmin, I use various Linuxes for production work in GUI, the black CLI screen gives us mere humans goosebumps down the back. Fortunately, I had my big box by the side and did some googling around.
OK, I could save my ass by issuing in runlevel 3:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
but sax never seemed to work properly after that. Tried reinstalling the drivers, but got conflicts. Cleaned the kernel, reinstall (both yast and manual) but sax always exited with “segmentation fault”. I tried both sax2 --initial and sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx to start sax, as used to work for me (some time ago, my memory is not perfect, upgrades have been automatic and painless for more than a year).
I upgraded my system to OpenSuse 11.0, but no change, sax refused to work except with vesa.
Then this morning there was an upgrade to xorg-x11, installing that, following by reinstall of fglrx drivers, I tried your method of:
sax2 -r -m 0=radeon
and voilá; up and running. The new ati driver even has direct support for my laptop monitor (Mitac 15.4 WideScreen).
I’m wondering whether this change from 0=fglrx to 0=radeon would have worked in the first case, or whether there was really a break in x-modules?
Hope this helps someone.
Best regards,
Sveinn í Felli
sveinki, thanks for that information. A further clarification to your post, for those who don’t understand the difference between vesa, fglrx, or radeon/radeonhd.
Vesa is a graphic standard that most video cards support. Hence if one does not have a driver to use the full performance proprietary features of a graphic card, one can often use the generic “vesa” driver that many graphic cards are backward compatible to support.
fglrx is for the proprietary ati driver. This driver is often sensitive to one’s kernel version, and also to one’s x11-xorg version. Hence an update to one’s kernel, or to x11-xorg, can break the functionality of that proprietary AT driver, and the proprietary driver may need to be rebuilt against one’s PC’s setup (kernel/x11-xorg) to function properly.
radeon/radeongl are opensource drivers (also called openGL drivers) for ATI graphic cards that work with many ATI graphci cards. Typically they have performance better than the VESA driver, but not as good as the proprietary ATI graphic driver.
Thanks for clarifying.
So I’m not using the ATI drivers with sax2 -r -m 0=radeon (should have known that)…
sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx still ruins sax2.>:(
Do you know if this is a Suse specific problem, or are there other distros involved? Found some discussions on a recent *buntu X-related problem.
I can live with the mesa radeon driver for most tasks, but I checked my Stellarium app which used 3d acceleration and it’s almost unusable. Unfortunately I had the intention of using it for showoff at a presentation on using Linux/OSS in a local college next week. Got to find out quickly how to display 3d and how to plug into a projector…:shame:
If all fails, I’ll find a laptop with Nvidia card 
then with VNC I could show my desktop.
I confess I have minimal (almost no) ATI card experience. My wife’s PC has an ATI card, that is an inexpensive low-end low-performance card that has always “just worked” under Linux. I have always been a big nVidia fan, and I’ve deliberately never procured a PC with ATI hardware, until just over a week ago, when I deliberately procured a laptop with an ATI Radeon 3450 HD. (I procured that ATI card because the alternative nVidia 8000 and 9000 series cards, plus some other nVidia cards have known quality/heat problems).
The sort of problem where a new kernel or a new X11/xorg update breaks one’s proprietary drivers functionality can happen to all distributions. But how each distribution handles this type of breakage is likely different, and some distributions may be very quick in pumping out a fix (in a precompiled driver package) and others may be very slow.
But rather than wait for a pre-compiled package, I suspect it is possible to rebuild the driver in openSUSE (but I do not know for certain in your case).
There is guidance here on how to build one’s driver for one’s PC:
ATI - openSUSE
After rebuilding one’s driver, then the “fglrx” should work.
If that does not work, then this is not an easy fix, and it impacts all distributions equally, and all distributions will need to wait for an ATI fix.
The only time I have been unable to get some method of installing ATI drivers to work, has been when I had a kernel version that was too new to have kernel source packages available for it, so the installer would not run correctly.
In all other situations, I have ALWAYS been able to find some method that worked, due to the numerous options available, which include:
- Repo drivers installed through a YAST / Software Management search for “fglrx” after the ATI repo has been added in YAST / Repositories / Community Repositories.
OR
- Running the latest installer:
ATI Catalyst™ 8.11 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver
using these instructions:
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_cat89-inst.html
to install via the “automatic” method, after the following dependencies have been installed:
System Recommendations
For best performance and ease of use, AMD recommends the following:
- Kernel module build environment - should include the following:
o Kernel source code: Either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages- ISSE Support enabled in your Linux Kernel
o Applies to Intel Pentium III and later CPUs only
o Enabled by default on version 2.4 and later kernels- The rpm utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install via RPM packages
The following packages must be installed in order for the Catalyst™ Linux driver to install and work properly:
- XFree86-Mesa-libGL
- libstdc++
- libgcc
- XFree86-libs
- fontconfig
- freetype
- zlib
- gcc
-
Running the latest version of the installer using the “RPM generator” option and then creating a new repository where the RPM file is located in YAST / Repositories / Add / Local Directory.
-
Downloading the PREVIOUS version of the installer from the ATI site:
Previous Radeon® Series/Motherboard/Notebook Display Drivers for Linux x86
and running the installer using the “automatic method”.
-
Downloading the PREVIOUS version of the installer and using it to generate an RPM and installing the RPM as described above.
-
Downloading the next older version of the installer, and so on.
So from my experience, it has been largely patience that has worked in getting ATI drivers to work, that and being extremely cautious about updating my kernel.
Also, keep desktop effects turned off until you get your card properly configured, and be ready to turn them off at the first sign of trouble.
Also, there is one other reason why the ATI driver may not work that I should mention, namely if your card is not supported. In general, cards that are older than the the 9500 series are not supported. Also, very new cards are sometimes not supported, If in doubt, check the release notes for the driver.