I’m running 10.3 and I tried to change the video settings by running sax2 -r and it showed what looked like the right screen dimensions. Then I stupidly accepted it without testing.
Now whenever I try to boot my computer, the graphical interface crashes to the command line. I’ve tried sax2 again with lots of different command options, but they all fail. I get the message “xc: sorry could not start config server” and I should look at the /var/log/SaX.log.
That log is pages and pages and pages of data that mean virtually nothing to me, ending with “fatal error” and “no screens found”.
Well, the SaX startup didn’t abort this time, but the screen went black and I got “Input Signal Out of Range” message. The hard drive busy light was flashing intermittently, so something was happening–but I have no idea what.
Eventually I powered down and rebooted–and it crashed out of level 5 back to the command line again.
I know 10.3 support has ended–but i can’t update my OS because anytime I try I get the same black screen and “input signal out of range” message. I was trying some of the fixes I’d read here to let me run 11.0 or 11.1 when i screwed it up.
I’m beginning to wonder if I should just reinstall 10.3 and then go look for a newer video card…as soon as I figure out what I can run with my motherboard.
(where that is zero equals vesa).
Then to restart type:
shutdown -r now
Can you also provide the output of:
sax2 -p
and finally, if you have a proprietary ATI driver installed, you need to tell us, as the fglrx rpm can intefer with the use of vesa or the open source ATI driver.
and finally, if you have a proprietary ATI driver installed, you need to tell us, as the fglrx rpm can intefer with the use of vesa or the open source ATI driver.
I don’t know how to determine that, certainly not working from the command line.
I did. I wasn’t sure if I should, given the error message, but I did.
Sax2 didn’t abort, but the screen went black and I got “Input Signal Out of Range” and whatever else was going on inside my computer, I couldn’t see it.
This chip works well with the radeon open source driver.
As opposed to ‘vesa’, what will work better is radeon.
i.e. assuming you did not attempt to install a proprietary ATI driver, and assuming you did NOT install an rpm with fglrx in the file name, then in run level 3, with root permissions, you should be able to type:
sax2 -r -m 0=radeon
to configure that card.
Note you should not log in as root. Ok? You should not log in as root. Instead log in as a regular user. Once you are a regular user, then you should type “su” to switch users to root permissions. Run the sax2 command as described, and when finished, type exit.
If you try to start X window with root permissions IMHO you will simply totally mess things up.
10.3 was a good release. While 11.2 is also a good release, 11.2 has some minor hiccups with the ATI drivers (both proprietary and open source) so if I were you, I would not rush to update to 11.2. I’m hoping in the next month or so, we will see some updates for the open source ATI driver (for 11.2).
10.3 was a good release. While 11.2 is also a good release, 11.2 has some minor hiccups with the ATI drivers (both proprietary and open source) so if I were you, I would not rush to update to 11.2. I’m hoping in the next month or so, we will see some updates for the open source ATI driver (for 11.2).
I’ll keep that in mind. I want to update eventually, but I’ve been in no hurry. The notice I got yesterday that there would be no more 10.3 updates or patches worried me a little.
Also, I seem to have better resolution now than before my little accident. I don’t know why (or how). Always before when I tried to adjust the display the widest available (on the dropdown for my video card) was 1080, now its wider.
Did the reconfigure you suggested tell the system to use a different driver? I’m mostly just curious at this point. I have no desire to monkey with it again.
Up until, and including openSUSE-11.1, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file was the main configuration file needed for one’s graphic device. In that file is specified the graphic driver that is used.
However the xorg organization that develops X window want to move away from the need to have that file, and as a result the community is moving to having the graphics automatically configured without the file being present. openSUSE-11.2 is the first openSUSE release that does not (for many graphic cards) require an xorg.conf file. However this implementation (of not requiring an xorg.conf file) is not complete yet and many 11.2 users are still have problems when there is no xorg.conf file. In those cases, those 11.2 openSUSE users have had to build an xorg.conf file with a software tool (of which there are a few, such as sax2) and thus able to run a configured X window with an xorg.conf file in place.
Some (not all) of the various drivers in place for xorg.conf (that can be configured/loaded as part of the sax2 program) are :
fbdev #frame buffer graphic driver - slow and primitive. Often works on nvidia, ati, intel and other graphic cards
vesa # vesa graphic driver - very compatible, slow, but survives a kernel update. Works on nvidia, ati, intel and other graphic cards
nv # nvidia open source driver - moderate in speed, and survives a kernel update
nvidia # nvidia proprietary driver - requires certain binary apps from nVidia installed. Fast/high speed performance. Typically broken by a kernel update and needs a rebuild in such a case
ati # old opensource ATI graphic driver for very old ATI cards. Typically survives a kernel update. Better than VESA but not as good as radeon performance.
radeon # opensource ATI graphic driver for ATI radeon cards. Typically survives a kernel update. Moderate performance.
radeonhd # opensource ATI graphic driver for ATI radeon HD cards. Typically survives a kernel update. Moderate performance.
fglrx # proprietary ATI graphic driver. - requires certain binary apps from ATI installed. Fast/high speed performance. Typically broken by a kernel update and needs a rebuild in such a case
i810 # not sure on this - old intel graphic driver - discontinued ?
intel # intel graphic driver - I’m not not up to date re: performance aspects
so when one runs the sax2 program, one will specify the graphic card (ie #0, or #1, or #2 dependant on how many cards one has) and specify the graphic driver.
For example:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
specifies to use the vesa driver assigned to graphic card #0
For the proprietary graphic drivers, ATI supplied a tool for ATI proprietary driver called “aticonfig” (which will create the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file) and for the nVidia proprietary driver nVidia supplied a tool called “nvidia-xconfig” (which will create the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file). For the proprietary drivers, both those tools are likely better than sax2.
SuSE-GmbH , to be consistent with the policy to gradually move away from there being an xorg.conf file, and also because they could not keep maintaining sax2 to be consistent with the automatic probe/configuration of graphic cards are moving toward depreciating sax2. It is no longer in YaST in openSUSE-11.2, although it is in the menu, and can be called from a terminal.
