On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 10:36:31 +0100 Chris Walker <alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk> allegedly wrote:

I have the noarch stuff installed.

I notice though that the accompanying text says "If you only want the files needed to build 3rdparty (nVidia, Ati, dkms-*,...) drivers against, install the *-devel-* rpm that is matching your kernel." So as I am trying to install fglrx, I'm guessing that I should remove that. Yes?

If I select i586 stuff, it tries to install x.x.latest and then there's a conflict so I have to deselect it.

This is the message :- - kernel-desktop-devel-3.12.13-2.mga4-1-1.mga4.x86_64 (due to conflicts with kernel-desktop-devel-3.12.13-2.mga4-1-1.mga4.i586)

The only selection made against a filter of 3.12.13 is this :- Prebuilt dkms binary kernel modules for the virtualbox driver version 4.3.6 built for kernel-desktop-3.12.13-2.mga4.

So I'm lost now!

Chris You are clearly trying to install from source (probably from a tarball you have obtained from amd). But the reference I found (and gave in my intial response) points to a binary installer. I have just downloaded that package and run it and it opens an installation front end which asks you to select from two options "Install driver 8.97.100.7 on ..." or "Generate Distribution Specific Driver Package". Before we go any further, are you using the same tool as me? I think the binary installer may save you some grief. I do not have either Mageia or an AMD HD card here so I cannot emulate what you are doing (and have not gone beyond opening the installer to the stage quoted). What I can say is that compiling any driver from source will require you to have installed, at the minimum, the kernel header files and the *-dev or *-devel packages (which contain headers for dependent packages) and not just the dependent package files. So for example, if driver foo depends on package bar, you need to have installed the "bar-dev" package containing the development files for package bar, and not just the "bar" package. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 16:47:36 +0100 mick <mbm@rlogin.net> wrote:

On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 16:32:33 +0100 mick <mbm@rlogin.net> allegedly wrote:

...

the reference I found (and gave in my intial response) points to a binary installer.

And of course I should ask whether you have tried the OSS radeon driver before using the proprietary fglrx driver. Given that you seem to have a card which is fairly old, that driver may support it. I don't know that, but maybe someone else on the list has an old HD card and can give advice.

I haven't tried it, no. I'd be happy to try anything that works ;-) -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 18:43:11 +0100 mick <mbm@rlogin.net> wrote:

On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 17:39:19 +0100 Chris Walker <alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk> allegedly wrote:

...

mick <mbm@rlogin.net> allegedly wrote:

...

And of course I should ask whether you have tried the OSS radeon driver before using the proprietary fglrx driver. Given that you seem to have a card which is fairly old, that driver may support it. I don't know that, but maybe someone else on the list has an old HD card and can give advice.

I haven't tried it, no.

I'd be happy to try anything that works ;-)

I've just checked the apt repository for the "xserver-xorg-video-radeon" driver and it says:

"This package provides the 'radeon' driver for the AMD/ATI cards. The following chips should be supported: R100, RV100, RS100, RV200, RS200, RS250, R200, RV250, RV280, RS300, RS350, RS400/RS480, R300, R350, R360, RV350, RV360, RV370, RV380, RV410, R420, R423/R430, R480/R481, RV505/RV515/RV516/RV550, R520, RV530/RV560, RV570/R580, RS600/RS690/RS740, R600, RV610/RV630, RV620/RV635, RV670, RS780/RS880, RV710/RV730, RV740/RV770/RV790, CEDAR, REDWOOD, JUNIPER, CYPRESS, HEMLOCK, PALM, SUMO/SUMO2, BARTS, TURKS, CAICOS, CAYMAN, ARUBA."

So if your HD4670 uses one of those chipsets (it may be the RV730) it looks like you are good to go by simply installing that driver from your (RPM) repo. It may not give you 3D acceleration, but at least you should get a working system again.

I'd suggest that you try that before going further down the fglrx compilation rabbit hole.

The card uses RV710/RV730 but if I check the list of installed software, it shows this 'x11-driver-video-ati' as already being installed. But I still can't persuade the system to display the correct settings. While checking the software list, I did notice that the the firmware for the Radeon card wasn't installed so I've added that and have rebooted, just in case. It hasn't made any difference though. I can set the desktop settings by means of an icon on the task bar. If I go to that, it says the Window Manager isn't running. So I ran kwin and now most of the icons on the taskbar have gone to be replaced by crosses. The next thing I think I'll do is a backup. The last one I have is just before I did the upgrade from Mageia3 to 4. Once that's done, I'll investigate what's gone wrong and see what I can do about it. I have to confess that I'm giving serious thought to getting rid of Mageia altogether in favour of something else. It wouldn't solve the issue of the Radeon card directly as it won't change the hardware but it might at least be better supported in another distro. Anyway, enough chit chat. I have to take my grandson swimming now so computing will have to wait. Thanks very much for your help. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:00:38 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:

TBH, I'm not convinced it's a driver issue. Is there such a thing as a live cd for Mageia? If so, I'd be tempted to try it and see if the graphics card performs. I have a suspicion that it may be a corrupted configuration, and I'm not convinced that a new graphics driver will cure it. Maybe create a new user and log in to that user and see if their desktop works OK - if so, it's not the driver. That's just a hunch though - I've got nothing to support it.

Yes there is a Live iso and following your idea, I've just kicked off a download. I chose the 64 bit KDE version as that's what's running at the moment. I also have a copy of the 64 bit full install though just in case! I have in the past had configuration problems with Mandriva having done an upgrade and I never got to the bottom of the those. I gave up in the end and that's when I went to Mageia. I *thought* the upgrade from 3 to 4 a few weeks ago went well but perhaps there was something lurking, just waiting to bite me. It's more likely to be finger trouble on my part though ;-) -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

On Tue, 8 Apr 2014 16:59:11 +0100 mick <mbm@rlogin.net> wrote:

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:00:38 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk allegedly wrote:

...

TBH, I'm not convinced it's a driver issue. Is there such a thing as a live cd for Mageia? If so, I'd be tempted to try it and see if the graphics card performs. I have a suspicion that it may be a corrupted configuration, and I'm not convinced that a new graphics driver will cure it. Maybe create a new user and log in to that user and see if their desktop works OK - if so, it's not the driver. That's just a hunch though - I've got nothing to support it.

That's a good point. It might also be worth trying a live cd from another distro entirely.

I've got lots stored from previous experiments for somebody else so I'll give the Mageia 4 Live DVD a go first, then some of the others like Fedora, Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Debian. Plus if I get really desperate, I can try the DVDs from a couple of recent issues of Linux User! If nothing else , it will help me decide which distro to replace Mageia with ;-) Having said that, I see that I also have a copy of Mageia 3 and that always worked, graphics wise, and as I now have a full backup - it finished while I was out swimming - I can happily overwrite everything safe in the knowledge that I can get it all back. A notification has just overwritten the screen saying that the Live DVD of Mageia 4 has just finished. I'll let you know how I get on! -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

On Tue, 8 Apr 2014 19:05:52 +0100 Chris Walker <alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk> allegedly wrote:

I ran the Live DVD and that works fine! It displays at full screen resolution with all the normal taskbar icons.

Good oh.

I ran one or two checks on the Live DVD. For example, I looked at what kernel stuff was installed and also graphics. It had lots of NVidia stuff in there so for me, it's not something I can easily transfer over. I also ran the same graphics test I do here and although it got further than this (faulty) one does, it didn't get to a full screen display (the bit where it says 'do you want to accept this'.

I'm not at all sure what you are doing here. /What/ exactly had lots of nvidia stuff in it? Your xorg.conf file? (unlikely since you are using an ATI/AMD card). What graphics test were you running?

So what can I learn from that? How do I fix the mis-configuration on the machine using the Live DVD or do I bite the bullet and re-install Mageia 4 (I have to admit, that does sound the normal way to fix Windows problems!)?

Re-installing is a bit drastic. We shouldn't need to do that. Xorg is normally smart enough to auto configure without an xorg.conf file. But it looks as if you might need to give it some help by supplying one of your own. Mageia is RPM based I believe. On a debian/*buntu type distro I would suggest running "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" in order to dump a new xorg.conf file based on: the skeletal default; your supplied answers to questions; and some probed results. I have no idea what the RPM equivalent of that would be. Maybe someone else on the list can help here. If X is not running you could dump an xorg.conf file by running (as root) "Xorg -configure". You can then use that as the initial config file. You would need to check in the "Device" section that you have the Driver set to "ati" or "radeon" of course (and not fglrx which you know is not working) You should take a look at the Xorg.0.log file (in /var/log) on both the working system (from the live distro) and the non-working system. Those files tell you which configuration is used as the starting point (if an xorg.conf file exists anywhere), and which modules are loaded and initialised. A study of those files, particularly the one from the working live distro, should tell you what would work in the xorg.conf file you are trying to build. Beyond that I'm not at all sure what to suggest (except perhaps using Mint......) Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 21:43:57 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:

On 08/04/14 19:05, Chris Walker wrote:

...

On Tue, 8 Apr 2014 17:36:10 +0100 Chris Walker <alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk> wrote:

...

A notification has just overwritten the screen saying that the Live DVD of Mageia 4 has just finished. I'll let you know how I get on! I ran the Live DVD and that works fine! It displays at full screen resolution with all the normal taskbar icons.

I ran one or two checks on the Live DVD. For example, I looked at what kernel stuff was installed and also graphics. It had lots of NVidia stuff in there so for me, it's not something I can easily transfer over. I also ran the same graphics test I do here and although it got further than this (faulty) one does, it didn't get to a full screen display (the bit where it says 'do you want to accept this'.

To answer Mick's question here, I was looking at the list of installed software from Mageia Control Center.

...

So what can I learn from that? How do I fix the mis-configuration on the machine using the Live DVD or do I bite the bullet and re-install Mageia 4 (I have to admit, that does sound the normal way to fix Windows problems!)?

Off the top of my head:

On your existing faulty system. Create a new user. reboot and log in as this user in the normal desktop environment. If the display works OK, then this means there's something wrong with your user's configuration files (Situation 1).

I created a new user, logged out and into that user but it's the same as what I get here.

If on the other hand the display still doesn't work, then it's more fundamental and it may be a system configuration file like the x11 config file. (Situation 2)

Mick has suggested deleting that, and indeed how I find it. So I'll reboot with the Live DVD in place, check what's configured and what isn't. The log says that it's using /etc/X11/xorg.conf So far, I've done this :- mkdir -p $HOME/plasma-config/ mv $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/config/plasma-desktop* $HOME/plasma-config/ plasma-desktop & That gave me a better desktop display but the icons at the bottom of the screen are missing in the test account. It was trying to find a reason for that problem that lead me to the above solution. It didn't fix all the problems but it went some way to fixing some. But after a reboot, the reduced size desktop came back. If I switch off the automatic start of the X server and log in as root, and then startx, I get a full size desktop but still with the white cross on a red background on some of the icons on the taskbar. I rebooted into the the live distro again and copied the xorg.conf from there to a USB stick. I then overwrote the running version with that and tried again but with the same result, reduced size desktop. In the Mageia forums, it suggests putting xdriver=radeon in the grub boot file. I did that but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Mick also suggested that I run Xorg -configure. That fails with "Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices". I haven't investigated this yet but it's approaching the time when I stuff a DVD in and re-install the OS. I have a full backup which I write yesterday using rsync (I made a note of the commands to use when I asked the question here several months ago) and which I can look at successfully. I'm prepared to give it a few more goes to fix it as I'd like to know what went wrong, in case it happens again but I suspect I will have it working one way or another by the weekend. Thanks to both of you for sticking with it this far. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 20:25:05 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:

On 09/04/14 19:48, Chris Walker wrote:

...

I haven't investigated this yet but it's approaching the time when I stuff a DVD in and re-install the OS. I have a full backup which I write yesterday using rsync (I made a note of the commands to use when I asked the question here several months ago) and which I can look at successfully. I'm prepared to give it a few more goes to fix it as I'd like to know what went wrong, in case it happens again but I suspect I will have it working one way or another by the weekend. Thanks to both of you for sticking with it this far.

I'm thinking it's almost time to trash it and start again. Be absolutely sure you've got all the files backed up first though!!!!!!!

I bunged in the latest 64 bit DVD and told it to re-install. I found one reason for a problem I'd had in the past and that's the choice of language. I think I must have selected American (British) rather than Europe (British).

Also, just make sure you don't restore all the display config files otherwise you could restore the problem.

I did another rsync so have a full copy of all the important files. In rsync I excluded dev,proc,sys,tmp,run,mnt and media.

I think you've reached the limit of how much I can help as I don't know your distro, and haven't played with xorg config files for ages. Good luck!

If you do decide to trash & reinstall, make a list of all packages that you've installed. This can save some time when you reinstall, as you can install all (or most) of the packages in one go. Depends on your packakging/install system though.

That bit was easy. I fired up kmenueditor and made a couple of changes. That then saved a file applications-kmenuedit.menu in /home/chris/.config/menus/ But having done all that, it's just the same! So it's time to bite the bullet and wipe the thing and start again. I thought that re-installing would clear out the rubbish but I guess not. I think from this that I can say it *is* something in *my* config somewhere that's doing this rather than the system config. But I've had enough of trying to fix it and just want to get back to using it. So I'm about to press the button. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|