I’ve got 64 bit openSUSE 11.2 KDE4 running. I have a Mobility Radeon HD 4300 video card.
I’ve downloaded the catalyst 9.11 driver to try it out (if I can). But first I want to discover exactly what video driver I’m currently using in case I have to reverse things. I notice the installation program for openSUSE automatically installed this RPM:
xorg-x11-driver-video-radeonhd-1.3.0_20091026_8b89b9-1.1.1.x86_64
so I suspect that’s the driver at the moment. How do I check which video driver is in use?
The latest X dynamically checks the settings and no xorg.conf is needed.
Run the following command to generate xorg.conf file so that you can see the settings.
FWIW: before running that command, lsmod shows these two lines
radeon 386784 2
drm 227808 3 radeon
OK, now to your suggestion: I boot to runlevel 1 and run the command: Xorg -configure
That stores a file in /root/xorg.con.new and the program invites me to run a command that will test it. So I do – and I get a black screen. I can only extricate myself by turning off the power, so I don’t think I’ll be using that config file. Here’s a link to a copy of the file xorg.conf.new
Copy the file xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and then, do “init 5”.
cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
init 5
[Please note that directly running X may not work sometimes. Instead, you have to try “init 5” only.]
If you see any blank screen for longer time, you can press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to abort.
The log file will be available and you can have a look at it for any errors/warnings.
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/usr/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard | grep Driver
No return (the word “Driver” is not there)
So now thanks to you all I’ve got three equivalent methods for displays using radeon, one from letting X do its own thing (no xorg.conf), one from “sax2 -r -m 0=radeon” and one from “Xorg -configre”. Thanks guys, I really know how to get the video back if I muck up the catalyst drivers, so I’ll try firsy radeonhd and then catalyst and report back.
Next I ran “sax2 -r -m 0=radeonhd” and got a good result, xorg.conf showing the driver as “radeonhd”. It does good 3d desktop effects so I suppose it’s working OK. Now I’ll try the catalyst 911 driver, building the RPM. I think folks are having problems doing that.
Nothing there for me…[/QUOTE]
Now you have me curious.
I note on my openSUSE-11.1 PC with an ATI Radeon 3450HD (which is running a proprietary ATI driver) the information is under /proc/ati/name. It may be somewhere else for the vesa or openGL.
Maybe my Linux knowledge is rusty, but its always been my view that this sort of information is somewhere to be found under /proc … One just has to dig for it.
I don’t think the grep will work, as most these files require root permissions to look at the content. But if a visual search does not find anything, then its not there. … could be another characteristic of the move from 11.1 to 11.2 with the information no longer under /proc.