As per the thread title, tried both 32 and 64-bit isos, also re-downloaded the isos in case of a problem with them
Fails to enter runlevel 5 (and start kdm), I’ve tried the usual nomodeset, setting no_kms_in_initrd isn’t much help as mkinitrd fails after setting it
Here’s the gist of the errormsgs:
(==) Using config directory: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d"
(EE) Failed to load module "fglrx" (module does not exist" (0)
(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported
(EE) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series" (ChipID = 0x6738) requires kms
Some things I’ve tried:
Blacklisting fglrx doesn’t work with vi as it tells me 50-blacklist.conf is read-only even when I use the ! override read-only switch
Tried specifying both the radeon and radeonhd and even vesa drivers in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf when trying off a usb pen drive created with imagewriter
As mentioned earlier. tried nomodeset and no_kms_in_initrd to yes
It’s a pain as I have tumbleweed on the machine and prior to putting the radeon card in it I would use a live usb drive to backup the system prior to updating, when I had an nividia card in the machine live usb and live cd would both boot no problem so it pretty much has to be something about the way it’s handling the radeon card (like trying to load the non-existent fglrx driver regardless of what I do to try stopping that maybe?)
Don’t know what else to try though and if I can’t get it booting off a live opensuse I can see myself putting another os on it somewhere just for backing up the system before any updates
Boot into runlevel 3, as root.
(To get into runlevel 3 : add a “3” (without the quotes) at the end of the string that Grub presents you at the very outset.
Install the driver by “sh <path_and_name_of_driverfile>”
Once this is done, try to make an intial config file : aticonfig --intitial
Now try to get into runlmevel 5 : “init 5”
I do know how to install the graphics drivers, if you look I did say that the machine is already reading opensuse tumbleweed so yes the machine can run opensuse with the radeon 6870
Installing the ati drivers to a live cd would be a bit pointless as changes like that wouldn’t be saved so the driver installation would vanish on reboot meaning you’d have to install them every time you booted off the cd
I have tried installing them to the live usb pen but there’s two problems there, first one being that it makes the drive pretty much useless for booting other machines off, the only other machine here with an ati card is one with a radeon hd 5770 and that boots fine off the live usb drive without having to do any trickery to make X start, all the other machines have nvidia cards and they also all ‘just boot’ off the live usb pen
The second problem with installing the ati drivers to it is … that didn’t work either. Can’t remember the exact errors I got after trying that
I think I’ll have another go at forcing it to stop trying to use fglrx, see if I can change the permissions on 50-blacklist.conf to allow write access might do the trick
On another note, I wonder how this thread got marked up with 5 stars after just the one reply?
Even tried installing the ati driver on a live usb pen drive again, after installing the stuff like make, gcc, kernel sources etc etc am left with a few dependencies that prevent the driver installing, mostly libstdc and libx11 stuff
But I can’t install those as zypper tells me they’re already installed … I wasn’t swearing very much while trying all this … honest
So after trying everything I can think of I’m just gonna give up
Sectioned off a 10gb partition on the second hdd cos I figured I’ve wasted so much time on trying to get the live opensuse to boot on the machine that it’ll just be quicker and easier to install another distro … just for backing up the system I already got!
Dunno what I’m gonna install there yet, may not be opensuse cos even the installer on a live disk/usb won’t start let alone the live environment, starting to wish I’d never bought the ****** card now
Yes, but you didn’t say that the Ati drivers were installed in tumbleweed … In fact from the mention
Failed to load module “fglrx” (module does not exist" (0))
I surmised that they weren’t installed.
Installing the ati drivers to a live cd would be a bit pointless as changes like that wouldn’t be saved so the driver installation would vanish on reboot meaning you’d have to install them every time you booted off the cd
Sure, that wouldn’t make any sense= … other than checking whether that works at all.
The second problem with installing the ati drivers to it is … that didn’t work either. Can’t remember the exact errors I got after trying that
Ok, I didn’t see that in your first post, else I wouldn’t have proposed trying them out.
I think I’ll have another go at forcing it to stop trying to use fglrx, see if I can change the permissions on 50-blacklist.conf to allow write access might do the trick
On another note, I wonder how this thread got marked up with 5 stars after just the one reply?
Could you give us some background, as to how much you know about GNU/Linux, and how much you know about openSUSE, so we do not provide inappropriate advice.
What is an " ! override read-only switch " ???
The way you are trying to change the 50-blacklist.conf file makes no sense, and hence one reason for my above question asking for your GNU/Linux knowledge level (and your openSUSE familiarity). Perhaps you can help here as we want to help you, but we also don’t want to waste your time and our time by providing advice that is useless because it is too basic or too advanced.
If you had a GUI and wished to edit a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ directory, then in gnome in a terminal you would type:
gnomesu gedit
and in the liveCD press for the root password, and open the appropriate file with root permissions and edit the file.
If you had a GUI and wished to edit a file in /etc/modprobe.d/directory, then in KDE in a terminal you would type:
kdesu kwrite
and in the liveCD press for the root password, and open the appropriate file with root permissions and edit the file.
If you are stuck in a full screen text mode, then with PC connected to the internet install the program midnight commander (mc) via
su
# use < enter > as root password
zypper in mc
mc
and navigate to the file to edit. In Gnome it is possible mc is already installed.
The file where there will be a lot of useful information is /var/log/Xorg.0.log which can be copied to a memory stick (if you have no gui) and then go to a PC where you have a gui and open that file and copy/paste its contents to SUSE Paste. But that assumes you know how to manually mount a USB stick from a terminal and I have no idea if you have any idea how to do that.
Other files are the /var/log/boot… files if non-zero size, and one can get the contents there by typing ‘dmesg’ or redirect the ‘dmesg’ output to a text file with ‘dmesg > mydmesg.txt’ and copy the created ‘mydmesg.txt’ to a memory stick and then post its contents on SUSE Paste. But again, that assumes you know how to manually mount a USB stick from a terminal and I have no idea if you have any idea how to do that.
There is a lot that can be done but unless we know your knowledge level a LOT of time will be wasted by me and a LOT of time will be wasted by you. So can you narrow the field a bit here so I know where to start ?
Apologies if I wasn’t very clear, but by that there I meant I was originally using an nvidia card in the tumbleweed machine and am now using a radeon, and that it’s only since using the radeon I discovered the machine won’t boot live opensuse, from cd or usb
I’m hardly briliant oldcpu, in the words of lynyrd skynyrd ‘I know a little’, but I have been using using opensuse since 10.2 for desktop machines and a home server, I’ve also used fedora, centos, debian, mandriva, mint and a little playing around with arch, but I prefer opensuse and it’s the distro I use on a daily basis so consequently know my around it a little better than I do the others I mentioned
Probably a bad explanation on my part, in vi you can add a ! at the end of a command to override things, such as closing a file you’ve edited without saving changes, :q! lets you quit without saving whereas :q on it’s own doesn’t. Also it will attempt to override read-only when closing a read-only file if you use :wq! instead of :wq, it actually suggests you try it if trying to save changes to a read-only file
It was just something I tried as no matter what I did it was trying to load fglrx even though it doesn’t exist as far as I’m aware until you install the proprietary driver, I know of no other way to stop something loading unless it’s blacklisted and be all too happy for someone to enlighten me otherwise if another way exists. I’ve no idea why the live version tries to load fglrx, from my limited understanding I would expect it to be trying to use something like radeon or radeonhd, an opensource driver in other words
Appreciate that mate, and I don’t consider advice to be useless, the most knowledgeable person in any field can learn from anyone, even those less knowledgeable … and I certainly don’t count myself among the most knowledgeable, I wouldn’t have to ask so many questions if that were the case
I usually use kdesu kwrite in kde, vi in text mode as it’s what I’m used to, the only other textmode editors I’ve used are pico and nano, but that was in bsd shells more years ago than I care to count
Yes mate I can use mount, but I didn’t copy anything to another usb stick, instead I mounted one of the machine’s partitions and copied stuff to that while I was fiddling with this thing and booted into the machine’s installed opensuse to look at them, didn’t think to paste the whole log to suse paste though, tbh suse paste is something I keep forgetting about so being a simple kind of guy I generally paste relevant bits inside code tags. In all honestly with most problems I’ve encountered that I couldn’t fix myself I’ve never had to paste a block of text as large as an xorg log on here in the 3 years since I started using the forum, I’ll make a fresh live usb after this post and do just that with the xorg log
I get the feeling I might’ve given people the impression I’m impatient or something, never my intention and I apologise if anyone thought I wasn’t grateful for their attempts to help, I always appreciate people taking the time to try helping me out so thanks to you guys that have. When I said about giving up I didn’t mean because I didn’t get an immediate solution, just meant that it’s no big thing to use another method for backing up my root partition while the system’s not running than a live usb which is the way I’ve done it for quite some time. Having said that though, it would be nice to know if there’s a fix for it even if only because it might be helpful to other people who experience the same issue
The machine originally had the nvidia card when I built it. As I hadn’t yet bought the radeon card I used a spare nvidia I had here for a couple of weeks, then put in the radeon. The installed opensuse on the machine isn’t the issue, that works fine
It’s opensuse live that won’t start X, live cd or live usb stick. Yes I had uninstalled the nvidia driver when I fitted the radeon but even if I hadn’t it shouldn’t matter with regards to booting off a live disk … should it?
Here’s the url for the Xorg.0.log paste: SUSE Paste
OK, so if I understand correctly, you are trying to get openSUSE-11.4 running with a fairly new AMD Radeon 6850, and you have tried (1) using an install on the hard drive (that previous worked for nVidia card), (2) liveCD, (3) USB stick. You may or may not have tried a fresh 11.4 install. In all cases it won’t boot.
I can not see if you tried with the ‘Fail Safe Settings’ (in a hard drive install) or the ‘Safe Settings’ (in an openSUSE liveCD boot). I can not see if you tried boot code ‘x11failsafe’ (to force fbdev graphic driver) nor can I see if you tried the ‘fbdev’ graphic driver. I can not see if when trying ‘radeon’ driver if you also tried it with the ‘nomodeset’ boot code.
I note you state you tried ‘radeon’ and ‘radeonhd’ in the 50-device.conf, but it puzzles me you could save changes there but could not in the 50-blacklist.conf … which makes me think you actually also did NOT save the changes in the 50-device.conf. Hence I confess to being puzzled as to what you actually were able to try correctly and were you were not.
So rather than build on what you have already reported, I will post on what I would try in such a case, in the hope that might help. I also note this from your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from a liveCD (?) or liveUSB (?) … [its not clear to me which] … and also note the behaviour one gets from a liveUSB and liveCD of openSUSE-11.4 can be different from the hard drive install of an 11.4 if one has applied updates to 11.4 (such as kernel updates, or initrd updates or xorg-x11-driver-video updates or Mesa updates … (to mention only some packages) …
… back to the Xorg.0.log and I note:
109.111] X.Org X Server 1.9.3 Release Date: 2010-12-13
.......
109.111] Current Operating System: Linux **linux 2.6.37.1-1.2**-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-02-21 10:34:10 +0100 x86_64
109.111] **Kernel command line**: initrd=initrd,12801024.spl ramdisk_size=512000 ramdisk_blocksize=4096 splash=silent quiet preloadlog=/dev/null vga=0x31a
.....
109.730] (II) LoadModule: "fglrx"
109.733] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module fglrx
109.733] (II) UnloadModule: "fglrx"
109.733] **(EE) Failed to load module "fglrx" (module does not exist, 0)**
........
110.034] (II) RADEON: Driver for ATI Radeon chipsets:
Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series, BARTS, BARTS,
Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series, Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series,
BARTS, BARTS, BARTS, BARTS, AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series,
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS,
TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, CAICOS, CAICOS,
CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS,
CAICOS
......
110.065] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
.........
110.049] **(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported**.
110.049] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
........
.......
110.068] (--) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series" (ChipID = 0x6738)
110.068] **(EE) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series" (ChipID = 0x6738) requires KMS**
.......
110.068] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
110.068]
Fatal server error:
110.068] no screens found
I see the 2.6.37.1 kernel, suggesting to me this is the liveCD or liveUSB or a fresh 11.4 install, and not an ‘old’ 11.4 hard drive install, as presumeably for 11.4 with an old install on the hard drive you would have had the 2.6.37.6 kernel but with a fresh install the 2.6.37.1. These facts are all important when trying to understand what is in the log file and know what fixes may have been applied by updates.
I see no indication in the boot code of nomodeset being applied. I see an entry saying “drm report modesetting isn’t supported” and another error stating “(EE) RADEON(0): Chipset: “AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series” (ChipID = 0x6738) requires KMS” … so there does appear to be an inconsistency in the modesetting.
I also note an entry about the fglrx driver being removed and that puzzles me ? Were there fglrx rpms installed ?
So if this is from a hard drive install, please advise what is the output of:
rpm -qa '*fglrx*'
Now, note for openSUSE-11.4 there is BUG somewhere in the build of initrd for some Radeon hardware, in that a liveCD/liveUSB (nor fresh install without updates) will NOT boot some Radeon hardware. The work around normally is to apply the boot code ‘nomodeset’ which avoids the bug, but unfortunately that boot code also forces the load of the ‘radeonhd’ driver if not already specified for another driver. And definitely your Radeon HD 6850 is NOT supported by the radeonhd driver. Its possible even the Radeon driver does not support all Radeon 68xx series (but I would still try that driver).
Now with NO fglrx rpms installed (and thats important !! ) to boot my Radeon HD 3450 to the liveCD I had to boot with the boot code ‘nomodeset’ (which boots to radeonhd) , and then type “init 3” to get to a full screen text mode, edit (and edit successfully I might add) the file 50-device.conf and remove the " # " in front of “Radeon” in the 50-device.conf file and then return to X with “init 5”.
You can’t do that because the radeonhd won’t work for a 6800 series (it will work for 3400 series).
You could try booting with nomodeset and the fbdev driver (force it with boot code ‘x11failsafe’) [ie boot code ‘nomodeset x11failsafe’ ] where the ‘nomodeset’ is to work around the initrd bug and ‘x11failsafe’ to force the fbdev. Then try ‘init 3’ as root, edit the 50-device.conf to load the ‘radeon’ driver and save that, and then try ‘init 5’. That might work on the liveCD. If the ‘radeon’ does not work, then try the ‘vesa’.
Now the fglrx driver will work, but if you are going to do this the ‘hardway’ you need to boot with nomodeset AND also ensure modesetting is disabled in the kernel by running “yast” (you can run yast in text mode with root permissions if X window not available) and navigate to yast > System > /etc/sysconfig Editor > System > Kernel > NO_KMS_IN_INITRD and change it to “yes” (which can be done in text (ncurses) or gui mode) as noted here: SDB:Configuring graphics cards - openSUSE and then assuming you have all appropriate build rpms installed, then building the Catalyst driver is possible.
On my laptop with Radeon HD3450 I booted to desktop with radeonhd driver with ‘nomodeset’ (you would need to try x11failsafe for fbdev), downloaded proprietary Catalyst driver from amd site (the .run file), typed ‘init 3’ to switch to full screen text mode, installed kernel-source, kernel-syms, gcc, make, and then disabled modesetting in yast, and then built the Catalyst driver the manual way (used to be called the hardway), and then typed ‘init 5’ to get back to GUI with fglrx driver.
Note in the openSUSE liveCD the password for user ‘linux’ and also for root is in both cases < enter >
Ok mate, let me try making things a bit clearer,bit of background might be advisable to start, likely to be a long post but can’t be helped
Built the machine about 6-8 weeks ago but didn’t have the graphics card I intended to use in it at the time of building so I used a spare nvidia gt210 just to get things up and running until I got the card I wanted a week or two later. With the nvidia card in I installed OS 11.4 x86_64 from a usb stick with the live iso written to it using suse studio imagewriter, immediately after the installation and updates I rolled it over to tumbleweed (had already been using tumbleweed for several months on one of my other machines)
Once I had the tumbleweed installed and running I installed the nvidia driver ‘the hard way’, a process I’m well conversant with having installed the drivers that way more times than I can count so I’m well aware of the init 3/kms/nomodeset stuff involved. When the radeon was delievered I removed the nvidia driver with sh nvidia-blah.run --uninstall, shut the machine down, installed the radeon card, started the machine back up and installed the ati drivers without a hitch
The state of the machine at this point is that it pretty much runs perfectly, there are no problems whatsoever with the hdd installation (ok, akonadi’s still a bit of a pig but hey I’ve come to expect no less lol), so onto the issue with the live disk
I’ve long used live disks (usually usb) to backup root partitions as it’s a nice & simple way to do it without the system running off the partition I wish to make a backup of, I actually make 3 backups, one using cp, one with tar and one using lucky backup, all saved on different drives/machines. Since the very beginning of my using tumbleweed I’ve done this before every single ‘zypper dup’, call me over-cautious but experience has taught me there ain’t no such thing as having too many backups if you have the drive space, and I do
On the machine in question though, I was backing up merrily with my live usb until I put the radeon card in, since it’s been running with that in I can’t boot off live usb or cd. The xorg log I pasted was from a freshly created usb stick with no changes made, I thought it best to use a ‘clean’ live system so you could see what I’m starting out with
Hopefully that’s made the position a bit clearer so onto oldcpu’s questions
Explained above, hdd install no problems whatsoever, it’s just live opensuse that I can boot but only to runlevel 3, X won’t start
I tried safe settings and the fbdev driver in 50-device.conf, also tried vesa, but I didn’t know about the x11failsafe parameter, will try it later. I have tried nomodeset with the radeon driver and as far as I could see it made no difference to the behaviour or the output in the xorg log.
My changes to 50-device.conf were correctly saved, I know this because the changes were still in place after a reboot, to save changes in 50-blacklist.conf I first had to reset it’s permissions, don’t know why but that seems to be the case every time I tried it, even when booting off a variety of freshly made disks
Live usb, as to the rest, noted and understood
109.111] X.Org X Server 1.9.3 Release Date: 2010-12-13
.......
109.111] Current Operating System: Linux **linux 2.6.37.1-1.2**-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-02-21 10:34:10 +0100 x86_64
109.111] **Kernel command line**: initrd=initrd,12801024.spl ramdisk_size=512000 ramdisk_blocksize=4096 splash=silent quiet preloadlog=/dev/null vga=0x31a
.....
109.730] (II) LoadModule: "fglrx"
109.733] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module fglrx
109.733] (II) UnloadModule: "fglrx"
109.733] **(EE) Failed to load module "fglrx" (module does not exist, 0)**
........
110.034] (II) RADEON: Driver for ATI Radeon chipsets:
Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series, BARTS, BARTS,
Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series, Mobility Radeon HD 6000 Series,
BARTS, BARTS, BARTS, BARTS, AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series,
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS,
TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, TURKS, CAICOS, CAICOS,
CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS, CAICOS,
CAICOS
......
110.065] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
.........
110.049] **(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported**.
110.049] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
........
.......
110.068] (--) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series" (ChipID = 0x6738)
110.068] **(EE) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series" (ChipID = 0x6738) requires KMS**
.......
110.068] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
110.068]
Fatal server error:
110.068] no screens found
Being tumbleweed the installed kernel is 2.6.39.2-36 but as this is a live usb stick we’re talking about I guess that’s irrelevant
I didn’t specify nomodeset for the boot which the pasted log is a record of, though I have on other boots. The modesetting inconsistency is one the things I mentioned earlier, using nomodeset or not has no effect whatsoever on what gets reported in the xorg log
I do seem to be affected by said bug, I cannot mkinitrd after setting no_kms_in_initrd to yes, this is the case whether I do it in yast or by directly editing /etc/sysconfig/kernel then subsequently running ‘mkinitrd’, as to the rest it appears to be exactly as you stated in this case. I’ve tried nomodeset as well as specifying the ‘radeon’ and ‘radeonhd’ drivers, also tried specifying ‘fbdev’ and ‘vesa’.
What gets me here is, when I first put the card in and fired up the machine it went straight into kde so it’s obviously capable of booting without the proprietary driver, and to do that it must have been using some driver or other and logically speaking wouldn’t it have been one of the drivers we’ve already mentioned and that I’ve already tried when booting off a live version?
That’s a fact, one of the first things I tried before even starting this thread, at the time of course I knew nothing about the bug you’ve mentioned
Tried all of that except for x11failsafe code, and going back into runlevel 3 of course as I’ve not managed to get into runlevel 5 to begin with
I’m well used to textmode yast mate as well as ‘hard way’ driver installs, and I have tried the fglrx driver but ran into dependency problems as mentioned earlier (libstdc and libx11 stuff), basically it won’t let me install saying I have missing dependencies but those dependencies it says are missing are actually installed, all the relevant build rpms were installed. Even if I reboot they are still reported as missing, this was all done with a live usb of course so that changes made would be saved.
Whether the x11failsafe option is going to make any difference to that or the mkinitrd failure when setting no_kms_in_initrd we’ll find out when I give it a go later
I have to say oldcpu, if it took you anything like as long to type all that out as it has me to reply to it, then you’re one patient man indeed!
It’s difficult to give someone an accurate picture when they ask your level of knowledge/experience, you don’t wanna risk making yourself appear more clued up than you really are but I think I might have given the opposite impression in trying to avoid that, so apologies if that caused me to take up more of your time than necessary
Will let ya know I got on trying things out with that x11failsafe later tonight, beginning to think though that the ‘newness’ of the card is the root of the problem
Just for info & in case it’s of any use here, this is the rest of the hardware in the machine, it’s all fairly new standard stuff so it wouldn’t be fair to expect 100% glitch-free support for it all anyway
NZXT Hush 2 Black Case
Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H mptherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.20GHz Black Edition Cpu
8GB Corsair Vengeance Blue Ram (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX SATA III Hard Drive
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 Graphics
800watt psu (not new and soon to be replaced)
If I understand the above , you can boot ok with the Radeon hardware to your hard drive. Its just that the openSUSE-11.4 liveCD nor liveUSB do not boot for you to X ?
Try the boot code ‘nomodeset x11failsafe’ or just ‘x11failsafe’ by itself.
If that gets you to X, then when booting with ‘nomodeset x11failsafe’ after getting to X, try the ‘init 3’ , edit 50-device.conf (uncomment ‘radeon’), followed by ‘init 5’ trick I used/described to you (or did you already try that) ? NOTE if the ‘radeon’ does not work, then try ‘vesa’.
Not a whole lot surprised tbh, I had tried Driver fbdev in 50-device.conf and nomodeset in the grub boot options before, which is about the same thing as using the x11failsave parm isn’t it? Had to be worth a try though
Wonder if anyone else has managed to get a live disk booting with one of this series cards and if so what driver their system loaded, could of course be something that’ll sort itself out when the next version(s) of opensuse/xorg/drivers are released and maybe best revisited when that time comes
I’ve put a lightweight kde debian squeeze on a little 10 gig partition now so I’m not without a way to do my backups before zypper dups and when I do them I’ll check if anything that might be related to this gets upgraded … unless of course there’s any more ideas I can try
I think I understand why the nominal boot with no boot codes (radeon driver) does not work, and that is due to a known bug that was fixed (and hence the installed version works). I think I understand why the boot with nomodeset does not work, as that attempts to boot with ‘radeonhd’ driver where there is no support in ‘radeonhd’ for new hardware (as development on ‘radeonhd’ GNU/Linux driver has mostly stopped).
I don’t understand why ‘fbdev’ nor ‘vesa’ did not work and normally I would recommend writing a bug report on same, however …
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across a live distro not booting on a particular machine, just the way it is sometimes I suppose
Of greater concern though I think is the fact that the installer won’t even start with this card, could lead to a situation where people download a live disk to install OS, can’t use it to install so move on to something else
So with that in mind I most certainly will try the latest milestone disk and file a bug report if I experience the same thing, whichever way it goes I’ll also report the result back here
And thanks for all the time, help & input you and everyone else have given to this
Indeed, the bug in openSUSE-11.4 wrt the Radeon driver was introduced (I think) between RC1 and RC2 … ie a mistake made at the last part of the liveCD production, and since those of us reporting the bug did not understand it was due to initrd, the solution could not be found nor fixed in time before the liveCD headed off ‘to the press’ for GM version. It was a MOST nasty bug. Not as bad as the package management of openSUSE-10.1 which caused former loyal openSUSE fans to depart in droves, but it was still nasty. In fact, I never did install openSUSE-11.4 on my hardware with the AMD Radeon HD3450 (which is also bit by the bug) but rather I left 11.3 on that PC. Still, I should also concede it was not the 11.4 initrd Radeon driver hiccup that stopped me from installing 11.4 (as I knew how to work around it), but it rather it was a problem with the Intel wireless driver in 11.4 for my wireless hardware.
Fortunately bug reports were raised on 11.4, and I’m hopeful 12.1 will be better.
Milestone 3 on a live cd does boot into kde without having to specify any kind of grub options
On a usb stick however it doesn’t, some message about the mbr that I can’t remember exactly as I’ve been running round like a headless chicken ever … whoever invented real work should come back and finish it for us!
I wrote the usb using suse studio imagewriter and then tried again with dd when that failed, same result
I’ll try it once more with debian’s unetbootin since I just installed the debian on there but that’ll have to wait until later, about to go prep the roof of a car I’m doing up a bit ready to spray it tomorrow
Still worth filing a bug report do you think since it looks like 12.1 is gonna boot off cd fine, plus it’s still got some way to go yet so the usb issue might well get sorted by the time we see the final release,
I’m running into similar issues using a Radeon HD 6790 (barts) - quite a few live desktops fail to load using the open source driver. Using the various nomodeset radeon.modeset=0,1 have not helped. Current milestone M5 for instance fails completely.
I’m starting to think this is xorg related. Older livecd’s load no problem - seems to be the latest releases.
I also had issue after upgrading to tumbleweed a couple of weeks back, I lost the desktop completely and had to reinstall 11.4 and leave it at that.
There is very little info with similar issues. Also newer distros give me a playback issue in fullscreen mode where the playback is smooth until the pointer hides when the playback then starts to stutter.