[CentOS] ATI video driver problems

[Ned Slider]

On 15/04/13 17:57, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Hi, Ned,
>
> Ned Slider wrote:
>> On 15/04/13 16:57, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> User got upgraded to 6.4. Graphical mode video fails.
>>>
>>> It's an AMD (nee ATI) RV620 (FirePro 2260).
>>>
>>> So I finished upgrading everything, including kmod-fglrx. Based on the
>>> xorg.conf's on there, it's been using the fglrx. Now, in Xorg.0.log, it
>>> tells me "no supported AMD display adapters were found". I've been
>>> on-and-off googling for hours, and can't figure out if the "legacy"
>>> kmod-nvidia from elrepo will work: their info *ONLY* lists Radeon cards,
>>> and I can't figure out what this damn thing is. Oh, lspci -v tells me
>>> it's "ATI device 2343".
>>>
>>> Anyone know what this card is like (AMD shows three different models of
>>> the same name, and I have no idea which it is, and none uses a Radeon
>>> name), and what driver I might use, or do I have to downgrade X....
>>
>> It is no longer supported.
>>
>> The current AMD driver [v13.1] ONLY supports Radeon HD 5000 series and
>> above, with the legacy driver [v13.1 legacy] supporting older Radeon HD
>> 2000, HD 3000 or HD 4000 series cards (I assume yours is a 2000 series
>> card) *BUT* the legacy driver does NOT support X server ABI 13 in the
>> version of Xorg shipped with RHEL 6.4. So your card is not supported by
>> AMD as the version of Xorg server in RHEL 6.4 is too new.
>
> That's what I was coming to think - the one thing that had me stopped was
> what it *was*. Do I understand you to be saying that this is a Radeon HD
> 2xxx (and why *three* names, two from ATI?)?
>

"FirePro 2260" leads me to believe it's a 2000 series card. Having the 
Vendor:Device ID pairing would help clarify, but looking at the pci id's 
database I'm guessing it's either 1002:95ce or 1002:95cf.

> Also, it appears that you're saying I need to downgrade his X (all of
> it?), and remove the kmod-fglrx, and install the legacy (is that the
> kmod-fglrx93?
>

You have a number of choices:

1. Use the v13.1 legacy driver from AMD and downgrade xorg\* to the last 
release that came with RHEL 6.3 and exclude future updates. If you wish 
to use the elrepo package it's called kmod-fglrx-legacy / 
fglrx-legacy-x11-drv (currently version 13.1-2) and is currently in the 
testing repo. Obviously downgrading xorg packages has potential security 
implications.

2. Uninstall the AMD proprietary drivers and use the distro kernel driver.

3. Ask AMD when they will update the legacy driver to support Xorg ABI 13.

4. Buy a new (supported) card.

A fifth option is to use el5 which uses an older supported version of 
Xorg (I do find it kind of ironic that RHEL6 ships with such a new 
version of Xorg that some proprietary drivers don't support it - more 
the kind of thing you expect to run into on Ubuntu or Fedora than 
Enterprise Linux).