Newbie Q - ATI Driver Problem

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi all,

I am completely new to Linux, in fact 30 minutes old. I have openSUSE 12.1 installed. I can only use the failsafe option to get in to it. The other way my screen looks like the Matrix. I assume this is probably a driver issue. I have searched a few threads for information but have to admit defeat.

Is there a guide to easily finding and upgrading a driver? All the threads I have seen seem to be suggesting that I have to be a Linux coding superstar to do it. Download this, run this script, bash this and pray!

I have no knowledge of Linux and have no idea where the command line program is run from or what it is called, nor any idea about the file system or where I find it! The posts I have read say to check logs but I couldn’t find those in the File Manager, Dolphin?

Any help would be appreciated as to what to do to get started with this stuff.

Many thanks,

Stuart.

#2

First of all, welcome! It is your first step into a larger world. :slight_smile: Though I have been using GNU/Linux full time since 2007 I am by no means a coding superstar and I get by. :stuck_out_tongue: I searched for opensuse ati on duckduckgo and I found these links that explain a lot about ati on opensuse.

SDB:ATI drivers - openSUSE
SDB:ATI troubleshooting - openSUSE

Could you tell us what GPU you have? You could try using command line tools like lspci; Or graphical ones like the suse System Information (under computer menu if you are using kde) or the hardware information tool under yast control centre.

An example command (if you are fond of learning commands) to find hardware info is:

/sbin/lspci -vv | less
#3

Many thanks for that advice - I used the first link and it has solved the problem in that I can start without having to use the failsafe option. Next question (!) -

The Display Info in the System Information window shows the GPU Vendor as ATI, no model, and the 2D driver as fglrx. This has updated after clicking the 64bit button on that webpage. The GPU is actually an ATI Radeon 3650.

Unfortunately the screen updating is now painfully slow - I drag a window and it redraws many times before appearing where it was dragged to. My PC has 16GB of RAM and a MD Athlon™ II X4 640 Processor - Speed: 3,000.00 MHz - Cores: 4. I would expect the screen to be zipping along like it did in Windows.

Therefore I am assuming that Linux still doesn’t realise what my GPU is. Is there a way of telling it what it is and assigning the correct driver?

Linux so far seems to be much like Windows but you have to do a lot of stuff yourself which Windows does automatically for you!

Many thanks,

Stuart

#4

[QUOTE= The GPU is actually an ATI Radeon 3650.[/QUOTE]

Actually, according to the script you suggested I try it is actually a Radeon HD 6500!

[Copied from the bash(!) window]
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc NI Turks [AMD Radeon HD 6500] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Hightech Information System Ltd. Device 2308
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 10
Region 0: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at febe0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128]
Region 4: I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
Expansion ROM at febc0000 [disabled] [size=128]
Capabilities: <access denied>[/size][/size][/size][/size]

#5

That is absolutely not true. First of all, manufacturers are responsible for driver support for Windows, not Microsoft. If you have ever installed Windows from scratch without a vendor driver cd, prepare to realize it is not so “automatic” after all.

Windows has the advantage of a lot of official support (being that is has 90% or so of the market share you would go out of business if you refused to support them).

As for ATI, I am sorry to say I only have experience with Intel and Nvidia hardware. Perhaps someone else can assist you that is familiar with ATI support on Linux. I hope you get it sorted!

#6

I take your point about Windows. I did try to install Ubuntu first on this PC but was unable to see anything on screen as it failed so miserably to detect the graphics card. At least openSUSE managed to install I suppose. I have now spent 5 hours without achieving a single productive task. Currently the driver for the graphics card is not properly installed and I am being asked to code the OS to get it to work. Also - I downloaded Chrome a moment ago and ran the installer. It told me Apper was unable to run and therefore it couldn’t be installed! This is really basic stuff that should just work I think.

I am back off to Windows. I know I have to pay for it but then I know that in a minute, when I put the disk in, it will detect the graphics card and just work. Within in an hour it’ll be up and running and I’ll be productive. Also I don’t have to learn an entire scripting language to get the most basic functionality working. Microsoft do the OS work for me.

Linux looks interesting if I had the time and the interest. Unfortunately I don’t, so hey-ho off I go.

Thanks for your time…

Stuart

#7

Thanks for wasting mine. I do not go to Windows forums and troll people to use Linux. Nor do I purposefully exaggerate my criticisms of it.

Linux is NOT Windows

#8

On 2012-07-26 23:36, acedev wrote:

> It
> told me Apper was unable to run and therefore it couldn’t be installed!
> This is really basic stuff that should just work I think.

The popular advice here is to remove apper, and use yast package manager instead.

> I am back off to Windows. I know I have to pay for it but then I know
> that in a minute, when I put the disk in, it will detect the graphics
> card and just work. Within in an hour it’ll be up and running and I’ll
> be productive. Also I don’t have to learn an entire scripting language
> to get the most basic functionality working. Microsoft do the OS work
> for me.

Why would you need to learn scripting to use Linux?

> Linux looks interesting if I had the time and the interest.
> Unfortunately I don’t, so hey-ho off I go.

I will not try to convince you to use Linux if you are not already convinced. Linux is not for
everybody. Use what works for you.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

#9

AMD recently dropped support for HD Radeon series 2000x, 3000x and 4000x. This is neither Linux nor openSUSE’s fault.
This “sticky” thread would have told you not to update the driver - which also means not to install the latest version: dont update ATI proprietary driver on Radeon HD 4000, Radeon HD 3000 or Radeon HD 2000!. This is the reason why it didn’t work for you under Ubuntu (it would have 2 months ago).

This guide ATI driver with atiupgrade (new version) would have shown you how to install the proprietary driver by installing a script from my repo (like you would install any other package) and running this simple command:

atiupgrade

However, it wouldn’t have work in your case - if you have a Radeon 3650 - for the reason mentioned above. You would have had to type

atiupgrade 12.4

to install the latest driver still supporting your graphics card, or use this version of atiupgrade - which is not in repo yet - to install the 12.6 legacy beta driver for your graphics card: Upgrading ATI driver with atiupgrade - by following the link at the bottom of this post to download the script. Further anyone here would have been glad to tell you how to make a script executable and run it.

It might not be as simple as Windows, but some of us try to make it simple for people like you … and since we are not asking for your money, I would suggest you do not complain if it doesn’t work in such and such a case and try to help us help you and others better. If you don’t like or don’t share this philosophy, that’s fine with me. Therefore I’m not writing this post for you but to anyone reading your story and experiencing a similar problem.

#10

Linux is NOT Windows… i think that should have been then 3 letter recursive… not GNU :wink: Might have saved everyone here a bit of time… including Stuart.

#11

Thanks for all the feedback - I haven’t gone back to Windows on this machine - that was said as I was struggling to figure anything out, and ready to throw the box out the window! I am still openSuse’ing. The graphics issues have gone away, I don’t know why, and I am slowly getting my head around this environment. Interestingly, the reason I put linux on this box is because Windows was crashing every couple of hours! It is the first non-intel box I have owned. I have figured out that Yast seems to be the way forward with installing stuff thank you!

The thing I am still struggling with is the command stuff. In a post above I am advised to use a ‘repo’ and type ‘atiupgrade’. Unfortunately I still have no idea where to type this or where to find a repo. I also tried to install Eclipse which didn’t work through Yast. It had lots of instructions about using zypper. Now here’s my problem. I can see when I search in the kickoff application launcher that there is a menu option called ‘Run Zypper’ but when I click it nothing happens! I would expect a command line window to appear. When I search for “How to run zypper” all I get is pages on how to run commands in zypper, not any help on how to actually get a zypper interface up to be able to type a command in. Can anyone help? I am obviously missing something simple but crucial…

Many thanks for all your time and patience with me,

Stuart

#12

[quote="“please_try_again,post:9,topic:81675”]
AMD recently dropped support for HD Radeon series 2000x, 3000x and 4000x. This is neither Linux nor openSUSE’s fault.
This “sticky” thread would have told you not to update the driver - which also means not to install the latest version: dont update ATI proprietary driver on Radeon HD 4000, Radeon HD 3000 or Radeon HD 2000!. This is the reason why it didn’t work for you under Ubuntu (it would have 2 months ago).

Thanks for your reply above - I was at my wits end when I made my comment. I suppose what I was trying to say was that when I have installed windows, on whatever box, *the graphics always worked! *What I couldn’t understand is why Ubuntu didn’t load a default simple driver to enable me to get through to a point where I would be able to fix the driver, as Windows does. What it meant was that I was unable to continue with Ubuntu in any way as I literally could not see anything on screen and had no linux skills to preconfigure it.

I didn’t give up though - I found openSuse and it at least got me through so I could use the failsafe option after making some BIOS changes. And here I am now looking at a decent screen, although I don’t quite understand how!

I do appreciate all your help and everybody else’s too. I was complaining about the awkwardness of getting things done i Linux rather than the help I was given, which I appreciated and did acknowledge.

Kind regards,

Stuart

#13

the command line is in integral part of the *nix OS. many linux distros of late have provided graphical tools for system administration, but i feel there is no replacement for solid shell knowledge. fire a few searches on google about ‘linux shell’, ‘bourne shell’ and you should get a decent introduction

atiupgrade and zypper are programs which are meant to be invoked from the command line. you will need to fire up a terminal program (ie. konsole in kde, xterm, etc) in order to interact with these applications and perform the steps the folks here have suggested. you may think of konsole or xterm as *nix equivalents of the windows powershell or windows command prompt.

hope that helps to get you started.

#14

Yes. How to open a “terminal” under Linux, something similar to what is called a “Dos Box” under Windows. Once you are in a terminal, you can type any Linux/Unix command, use a tool like “zypper” to add repositories and install programs under openSUSE, or even start any other program by just typing its name.

There are many terminals available under Linux. The most common is called ‘xterm’ and exists on all Linux and Unix like OSes. Each desktop also has a terminal application, such as for example gnome-terminal for Gnome and “konsole” for KDE. There is usually a menu entry or a button to start the terminal program or a search box (like under Gnome3) where you can enter “gnome-terminal” or “xterm”.

You should be very careful when typing commands in a terminal, especially when you perform tasks as administrator (root).

#15

Thanks for that! I opened Konsole, typed Zypper and got the help for it which makes sense.

I also typed atiupgrade but it said “You have to run this script as root” which doesn’t, yet!

Also - rhetorical question - why have a menu option “Run Zypper” which does nothing? grrr…

Stuart

#16

To add some comments to @mr0z’s post, the terminal is the window in which you type and the “shell” is the language you “speak” with the system. The shell is both a command line interpreter (you type a command and the system does immediately what you ask) and a programming language - which can be used to perform many tasks based on the result of many others. The most popular and default shell on all Linux is called “bash”. atiupgrade is a script written in bash.

#17

Wait! Wait! Wait! …** Don’t use the version of atiupgrade that you could install with zypper with your graphics card!** I explained why.
Or if you do - you have to explicitely install an older version of the driver by typing:

atiupgrade 12.4

if you just type:

atiupgrade

you will be in trouble.

#18

On 07/29/2012 10:06 AM, acedev wrote:
>
>
> The thing I am still struggling with is the command stuff. In a post
> above I am advised to use a ‘repo’

“repo” is short for software repositiories…openSUSE owns and operates
several that you can attach to with zypper, or YaST Software Management
and YaST Online Update to keep your machine healthy, up to date and
running smoothly…

you can add or delete the repos your YaST using YaST Software
Repositories (or zypper)

read this entire thread, but especially the paragraph beginning with
“IMPORTANT” in this post: http://tinyurl.com/33qc9vu

and, when you get ready to not follow that paragraph (because you have
decided you are expert enough) then, knowing i’ve been using openSUSE
about ten years, consider how mine looks today
http://paste.opensuse.org/83273901

> and type ‘atiupgrade’. Unfortunately I still have no idea where to type

you have not yet (where i can find it) told us if you are using KDE3,
KDE4, Gnome3, Gnome2, LXDE, Xfce or other desktop environment…and, the
specific help you want now varies across desktop environments…

so, i will assume you use what i do (KDE4) and say:

press and hold the left Alt key and then press F2, a popup blank you can
type in, type


konsole

and press enter… a “terminal” (Command Line Interface [CLI]) will pop
up where you can type all sorts of “terminal commands” or just “commands”

one real easy one is


zypper lr -d

will show you all repos that YaST/zypper has and if they are enabled or
not, and automatically refreshing or not…

yes Stuart, you are missing a lot of the basics but, you can still get
where you wanna be…with a lot of reading and patience…

–
dd http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat

#19

This post describes the command you have to type to install the atiupgrade version which can install the latest driver for your graphics card (assuming we can agree about the model):

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/other-forums/development/programming-scripting/449058-upgrading-ati-driver-atiupgrade-18.html#post2473397

#20

And these two commands will provide useful info about your graphics card (that you could copy/paste and post here):


# hwinfo --gfxcard
# lspci | grep -i vga
  • Notice that you never type the first character (# or $).