Problem installing with GUI (subject edited for relevance)

[suvayu ali]

2009/5/4 Rob Campbell <robmcsa at gmail.com>:
> Hope I do this right.
> I have tried to install Fedora 10 on my system and get white screen
> My system,
> ATI 4870X2
> Intel Core i7
> 6 Gig DDR3 1600
> Dual 750 Gig WD Black Drives
> (1) Blu Ray
> (2) DVDRW
> 850 Watt Corsair
>

Nice rig. :)

> I have been trying for about a month now to get any Linux with the NON Free
> ATI Drivers installed. I want to try out the current KDE 4.2 and to get all
> the goodies you need 3D enabled of course.
> My question is how to get Fedora installed and once installed will the 3 D
> drivers install?
>

You are up for a rocky ride ahead. But once its all done, its pretty
rewarding. Your graphics chip is not supported by any of the free
drivers that ships with fedora. I have the little brother of that
card, HD4870 (single GPU).

The way to get things installed is to pass the argument "linux text"
(without the quotes) before the DVD boots. This will take you to a
text mode install. Don't get scared, its just console graphics, you
would need to know any command line tools to proceed.

Now once you are done with that, comes the more difficult part of
getting the GUI working. If you have a wired connection you are in
luck. (hopefully) All you have to do is use rpm / yum to install the
rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree repositories. Then use yum to
install these packages.

$rpm -qa \*fglrx\*|sort
akmod-fglrx-9.3-1.fc10.x86_64
kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.15-170.2.24.fc10.x86_64-9.2-2.fc10.x86_64
kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64-9.2-2.fc10.1.x86_64
kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.x86_64-9.3-1.fc10.x86_64
kmod-fglrx-9.3-1.fc10.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-9.3-2.fc10.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-devel-9.3-2.fc10.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs-9.3-2.fc10.x86_64

I am expressing my doubt here because F10 uses NetworkManager as
default to manage the network and it doesn't work from text mode. I am
not at ease with NetworkManager so someone else will have to help
here.

Now if you use wireless like me, then your work becomes much more
difficult. You have to download these rpms (and some others) manually
from the rpm fusion repo and the fedora repo, use a USB drive or CD to
transfer it and install using

$rpm -ivh /path/to/directory/with/the/rpms/*

Here is the list of the extra rpms you might need. (might not be exhaustive)

$ rpm -qa \*kmod\* |grep -v fglrx|sort
akmods-0.3.3-2.fc10.noarch
kmodtool-1-15.fc10.noarch

$rpm -qa \*display\* |grep -v fglrx|sort
livna-config-display-0.0.22-1.fc10.noarch
system-config-display-1.1.1-1.fc10.noarch

(all except the livna-config-display package are in the fedora repos)

Now once you have done all this, you need to change the default
runlevel to runlevel 5 if you don't want to boot to runlevel 3 every
time you boot. Edit your /etc/inittab to look like this, (Ignore the
lines with # 's in them. They are just comments. Read them if you want
to learn. Comments are so awesome, teaches you so much :) )

id:5:initdefault:

Now reboot and install whatever you want to and enjoy F10. I don't use
compiz so can't say much about that. But just for fun I sometimes turn
on the cube, and it is usually stable enough and fun.

PS: you might want to install the yum plugin called version lock.
yum-versionlock-1.1.19-1.fc10.noarch It is very helpful to test a new
driver release in a controlled environment before you move to it for
good. I would also suggest keeping all the rpms for the stable
versions around on your disk, just in case.

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.