FC3 Graphical Boot and Install Problems - SOLVED!

[Richard Duncan]

So this may sound odd, but my graphics are now working:

After trying the vesa, radeon, fglrx, and vga drivers, and recompiling 
a custom 2.6.9 and 2.6.8 kernel as well as updating FC3 via yum, I 
could only get a non-scrambled screen when using the vga driver in 8 
bit color.  Even then, though the system thought (in "Display" under 
System Settings) it was in 1280x1024, all I saw was a "zoomed in" 
picture of the upper right hand corner.  I kept trying to think what 
had changed since I had last booted FC2 (been a while, unfortunately, 
as school gets in the way of my linux messings), and only could think 
of two things: I bought an ATi HDTV Wonder, which made no sense if it 
screwed things up; and when Doom 3 came out, I played with my AGP 
Aperture settings.  As little as I thought that would make a 
difference, after hunting through my Xorg.0.log file and paying better 
attention on boot (those messages flying by are hard to follow), I 
finally noticed that there were some random memory allocation errors 
and PCI probe warnings regarding PCI:01:00:0 (my AGP graphics card).  
It said it "fixed" them, or they were only warnings, but when I 
switched the AGP Aperture back down to 64MB from 128MB, sure enough, 
all is now well...


> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 22:21:27 -0500
> From: Jim Cornette <fc-cornette at insight.rr.com>
> Subject: Re: FC3 Graphical Install and Boot Problems
> To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <41B3D037.4000802 at insight.rr.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Richard Duncan wrote:
>> This is a double send to correct me forgetting to change the subject
>> line on the last email...sorry about that.
>>
>> On Dec 4, 2004, at 6:42 PM, Richard Duncan wrote:
>>
>>> Tried changing driver to "vesa", same result.  I get a very scrambled
>>> screen (I can barely make out the "Fedora Core" logo a couple times
>>> across the middle of the screen) at all color modes and resolutions.
>>> I also tried getting the proprietary ATI drivers on a flash drive and
>>> rpm'ing them in, just to see if even in 2-D the fglrx driver would
>>> work, but same result once again.  Would changing the VendorName and
>>> BoardName have an effect, or are those just to make the configuration
>>> keep track of what kind of board you're using so you can access that
>>> info later?
>>>
>>> I had trouble back in RH9 getting the DVI output on my old nVidia 
>>> card
>>> working right, but haven't had any trouble since until I tried
>>> upgrading to FC3.  Could it be the new xorg not liking my setup?  The
>>> Xorg setup that went in FC2 didn't give me any trouble though.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 07:22:53 -0600
>>>> From: Randy <toucan at tropicalrain.us>
>>>> Subject: Re: FC3 Graphical Install and Boot Problems
>>>> To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>>>> Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.0.20041204072137.01d5da90 at 192.168.0.2>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>>>>
>>>> At 11:03 PM 12/3/2004, you wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Well finally after getting it to boot in runlevel 3 I was able to
>>>>> modify inittab to always do that.  I've narrowed the problem down 
>>>>> to
>>>>> the radeon kernel driver.  If I go into xorg.conf and change the 
>>>>> driver
>>>>> to vga, I can get X to start properly and display things mostly 
>>>>> right,
>>>>> but with oddity: it only works in 8-bit color mode (since that's
>>>>> apparently all vga supports), and no matter resolution I set it 
>>>>> to, I
>>>>> get this 640x480 screen "zoomed" in on the upper left hand corner 
>>>>> of
>>>>> the screen (i.e., only showing the upper left quarter of the 
>>>>> desktop).
>>>>> Its odd that the kernel radeon driver won't work, since it did for 
>>>>> me
>>>>> in FC2.
>>>>>
>>>>> New problem.  Any new ideas anyone?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Try the VESA driver?  I had to change mine also.
>>>>
>>>> /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>>>>
>>>> Section "Device"
>>>>
>>>> Section "Screen"
>>>> #       Driver      "via"
>>>> #       BoardName   "S3 UniChrome"
>>>>          Identifier  "Videocard0"
>>>>          Driver      "vesa"
>>>>          VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
>>>>          BoardName   "VESA driver (generic)"
>>>> EndSection
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> I had similar problems trying the vesa driver on an 815 video card.
> (scrambled screen). Could the falure be similar to the i810 causing the
> scrambling? (needed to add option noaccel to xorg.conf.)
>
>
> Since your card states that it is an s3 Unichrome, have you tried using
> the s3 or s3virge drivers?
>
> Rough ideas is all I can think of. Have you read man via for different
> options using the via driver?
>
> Jim
>
> -- 
> When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four.
> 		-- S. Johnson
>