problems with graphics card driver installation

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Dear all,
Greetings! I am a linux newbie, (I used SuSE 9.0for a while, but that was for a very short while,and I am hopelessly out of touch.). I recently installed SuSE 11.1 (64 bit) on my system

AMD Phenom II 940 3.0 Ghz;
Biostar TA790GX 128M Motherboard with ATI Radeon HD 3300 Graphics card built in;
4 Gb (2*2 sticks) DDR2 800 MHz RAM

The installation went smoothly, But on first restart and login (and subsequent ones too!) I get a light purple screen with a skyblue box at top left corner, with xconsole written on it. when I Left click anywhere on the screen, I get a popdown with a number of options, of which only XTerm (bash shell) and exit (logout) options work. Now I know the HD 3300 graphics card drivers are not built into the SuSE 11.1 distribution, and I have already downloaded them (Linux ones)from ATI website. I login as Superuser, and type init 3 to go to a very basic screen,login as user, change to superuser again and then run the following file i downloaded from ATI:

sh ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run

The result/output at the command prompt:

Created directory fglrx-install.ubanI5
Verifying archive Integrity… All good.
Uncompressing ATI proprietary linux driver-8.602…
…(lot of dots)…
ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run: line 295: ./ati-installer.sh: Permission denied Removing temporary directory: fglrx_install.ubanI5

Once again, i tried everything in superuser login.

Also I tried making changes via sax2 command, it doesnt seem to work. A window opens where I see that my graphics card has been detected but thats about it. nothing else in that option, everything is greyed out (nothing to be selected)
Could anyone please point out what am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!

nmp.

2

ATI
Always a pain
I’m nvidia but here, have a look
ATI - openSUSE

3

Can you give us an ls -l ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run ? And post results here?

Try booting with ‘init 3’ on the option line, log in on the console as normal user and issue command like this:

su -c ‘sh ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run’

This should avoid any issues with privileges.

4

Thanks Caf4926 and Knurpht for replying.I will try out the things suggested and get back to you.

Cheers!
nmp

5

Dear Knurpht and caf4926 i have tried out the following things.I managed to get the very latest driver from the ATI website for my gfx card. I am sorry to post so late, but this is what I got.

After trying the above command, the result that I get at the command prompt is:
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 93655957 2009-06-21 22:34 ati-driver-installer-9-6-x86.x86_64.run

*Now I dont know what, or I am missing out a few detailss in how I did things, but the first time I tried the above command, it would give the same output, i.e. the *

“ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run: line 295: ./ati-installer.sh: Permission denied Removing temporary directory: fglrx_install.ubanI5”

I think it was probably because the ati-driver …x86_64.run file was in the C drive of my pc. when I copied it to home, and ran the above command i.e.

su -c ‘sh ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run’,
I wa prompted for root/su pwd which i keyed in and then I got the following output:
Created directory fglrx-install-cdajTh
Verifying Archive integrity…All good.
UNcompressing ATI Proprietary Linux driver 8.62…

ATI Technologies Linux Driver INstaller Packager

Detected configuration :
Architecture: x86_64 (64 bit)
X Server: X_Org 7.4 and later releases 64 bit

After this a blue screen comes along with the title
ATI Proprietary Linux Driver 8.62 Installation
A popup saying im running an x86_64 machine with glibc-2.1
and OS: Suse Linux 11.1
After this comes the license…(blue screen in background stays)
Then it asks whether installation in automatic or custom. I select automatic.

then it runs a process window ehere the bar moves indicating completion of process.
Finally I getback to the command prompt with the following message.for advanced configuration of driver please run aticonfig from a console window or AMD CCC:LE from Desktop manager menu

Okay I have to admit something here…
Prior to running the above command using booting with init 3,I tried the same (inadvertently) in the regular console. TO my delight the I got an output (same as in the init 3 bootupp case)and like a miracle it opened a window asking me to proceeed with the ATI Proprietary Linux driver 8.62 installation. Now this window had a penguin pic on it with the ATI logo, so I know i did something right here. The thing is I proceeded with the installation and it gave me the same steps as in the init 3 bootup way, only thing is that at the end it mentioned that installation is complete, and also said that

log file is saved in /usr/share/ati. The driver will now be configured in basic mode.For advanced configuration please run aticonfig from a console window or AMD CCC:LE from desktop manager. If the X server fails to load in the next attempt, please run ‘aticonfig --initial -f’ from console.
(Note: This will remove all device/monitor/screen sections in your X server configuration file
I rebooted the pc with hopes of getting the graphics screen and the GUI (KDE) but after this too the results are the same, i.e I am stuck with a console after I login.

PLease tell me what to do next.I figure I have to run the aticonfig command, but it has a lot of arguments / options and maybe you could help me…
Thanks a lot!!

6

@n-m-p Thanks for you PM which I quote below:

Hello CAf4926!
I posted this problem, to which u replied:
http://forums.opensuse.org/install-b…tallation.html

I have tried out a few things that were suggested, and one of them probably even worked, but i am still stuck with the same problem. Could you please check my final post in that thread?

Thanks and regards,

nmp
I’m far from knowledgeable with ATI, I have never owned an ATI graphics card. (Some careful planning on my part).

This page should have all the info you need: ATI/The Hard Way - openSUSE

Looking at it I would say you need to check this section:

After the install is finished, you need to launch the aticonfig utility
# ldconfig

aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Note: if you have attempted before to install any ATI drivers the rpm remove command will not always remove the install files from the above directories. In which case you must manual remove them or enter the full filename otherwise you will encounter lib errors with conflicting files… –davetharrison 10:44, 25 April 2007 (GMT)
Driver is installed, now to step 4.
Step 4 - Configuring the newly installed ATI driver

After the driver has been installed it now needs to be configured. Run this command after you have installed the driver.

sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

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You have this problem because you don’t have permission to read and write in your partition, you can set it by: yast2->partitioner, select your partition (ex: sda1) click edit->fstab options, delete all line in arbitrary option value and write by: default -> finish and try install again