problem with radeon drivers at installation [SOLVED]

[pindar]

Hi,

I'm having a problem which may not be solvable, but wanted to try asking here nevertheless. I installed the latest version (2012.08) to my external hard disk; installation worked without difficulties. However, I can't boot the installed system to get to the configuration stage. My computer has a Radeon HD 6600M video card. Because of some special circumstances in the way it boots up, it will work

• with fglrx drivers and very new kernels (>= 3.5) or
• with the free radeon drivers.

My problem is that pclinuxos comes with kernel 3.2.18, so no fglrx for me, and in the kernel config, it has

Code: [Select]

# CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS is not setso the free radeon drivers won't work. So I'd have to either recompile the 3.2.18 kernel with RADEON_KMS set, or compile and install a brand new kernel, both of which is difficult if I can't boot into the system... Can anybody think of any solution? Is there any generic video driver I could try? Or any other workaround?

Thanks pindar

[DeBaas]

You are in a black terminal screen I think ?
drakxconf
as command could be the solution.

[pindar]

No, I don't even get to a terminal since the system is installed, but not configured (so no passwords set, etc.). Besides, it's a kernel issue, so drakxconf is unlikely to help.

[DeBaas]

What about starting wth VESA as extra in the command line ?
In the Grub boot screen:
From LiveCD F6 > Default > Boot options > type VESA and enter
From installed version F3 > Default > Boot options > type VESA and enter

(If memory serves well)

[Yankee]

If you can boot up in safe mode, install do-vesa from
Synaptic, run do-vesa from terminal, reboot, you should get
to a full graphical boot, and use that until the right
driver is found.

[dynosis]

Hi, excuse the intrusion, but the main page of PCLinuxOS states that for the KDE DESKTOP it supports:

Video card

nVidia, ATI HD 4000 or better, Intel.

I too tried installing PCLinuxOS 3 times before giving up. It installs correctly but can't get back in to finish the installation.

[DeBaas]

At the end of the install you have to wait a little to get the Grub bootloader installed.
Some people I met rebooted to early, so no correct Grub and no boot.

[sling-shot]

installation worked without difficulties. However, I can't boot the installed system to get to the configuration stage.

From your posts, I understand that you have a good grasp of things in Linux.

So you are able to get a live system running. Try booting with live media again, then use PCLinuxOS Control Centre to configure your system to use VESA for boot up. Or avoid graphical boot altogether if that was what was causing this trouble.
Now go for reinstallation. Your settings should be carried over to the installed system.

Reboot and check.

[dynosis]

thanks your suggestions. i will try and report back to let you know if it worked.

[dynosis]

thank you but it is a problem between grub and grub2.
i will start a new topic.

[pindar]

I'm aware this thread is quite old and stale, but nevertheless I wanted to mention it: I had given up on pclinuxos on this machine because the setup was just too unusual: an apple iMac (hence I need to boot in EFI mode), booting from an external firewire disk. The combination of radeon graphics and EFI booting meant that I couldn't get fglrx to work and needed the open source radeon driver. This weekend, I gave pclinuxos 64 bit a try, and after some struggling, I'm now writing this from my installed system. I installed it onto an external USB disk on my laptop, booted into the system, then

• compiled kernel 3.8.1 (because 3.2.18 is too old for this hardware), enabling radeon kernel modesetting and firewire support (found out this had to be in the kernel, not loaded as a module)
• removed the fglrx dkms packages
• reinstalled the xorg and xorg-ati packages

and then copied this system to my a partition on my firewire disk. Now, after adjusting the screen resolution, it works wonderfully. So I'm looking forward to using pclinuxos once again! (And if I may pronounce a wish or two: would it be possible to have a somewhat newer kernel as default? 3.2 is pretty old now. And would it be possible to have DRM_RADEON_KMS enabled in the kernel config? I don't think it would interfere with fglrx if radeon.modeset=0 is set, and it would at least allow users to try the open source drivers).