Switching from Nvidia to Radeon

daytooner · #1 24th June 2010, 09:24 PM

I have been running F12 w/ an Nvidia board (GE Force 5200) for some time now. I installed and configured that board as per the instructions on this forum (very good ones too!) and have had no problems, other than it would not connect directly to a digital/HDMI port, nor would it do vdpau, since it was an older card.

But now, I have a Radeon VisionTek 1550, that has dual outputs, one of which is DVI-D, and I have an adapter to HDMI that actually works well.

I have managed to remove most of the nvidia stuff from F12, in particular the kernel module. But I keep finding various libs getting loaded that are NVidia based. In particular, with xbmc it is looking for OpenGL rendering, and finds an NVidia version.

Sorry for the long diatribe, but how to I get rid of all of these references completely, without reinstalling fedora from scratch?

Also, another question about the radeon configuration: how do I enable and configure radeon's theatre mode via xorg.conf? FWIW: if I run aticonfig I get "no card found".

TIA

ken

tho.mei · #2 24th June 2010, 09:44 PM

Hallo

How did you install the nvidia stuff?

About radeon read: http://www.fedorafaq.org/f12/#radeon

daytooner · #3 24th June 2010, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tho.mei

Hallo

How did you install the nvidia stuff?

see thread: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=204752

Quote:

About radeon read: http://www.fedorafaq.org/f12/#radeon

will do.

thx.

ken

tho.mei · #4 25th June 2010, 06:37 AM

OK
If you used rpm for installtion. you can remove it with the command:
yum erase kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

leigh123linux · #5 25th June 2010, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tho.mei

OK
If you used rpm for installtion. you can remove it with the command:
yum erase kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

Your command is incomplete and wont remove the 17xx driver

Code:

su
yum erase *nvidia* livna-config*

Edit grub.conf and remove rdblacklist=nouveau

Quote:

I'm RHCT

Can you remove this as I doubt you have this qualification, if I'm wrong just include your certification number.

daytooner · #6 25th June 2010, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tho.mei

OK
If you used rpm for installtion. you can remove it with the command:
yum erase kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

Did that.

One interesting thing: when I reboot, my xorg.conf gets modified - the driver gets changed to fglrx, which won't work for my board, and gdm doesn't start. I can change it, via a tty console, and then start gdm manually and it works. But, again, it gets reset when I reboot. Way weird for me.

thx

ken

leigh123linux · #7 25th June 2010, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daytooner

Did that.

One interesting thing: when I reboot, my xorg.conf gets modified - the driver gets changed to fglrx, which won't work for my board, and gdm doesn't start. I can change it, via a tty console, and then start gdm manually and it works. But, again, it gets reset when I reboot. Way weird for me.

thx

ken

I did say his instructions were wrong and incomplete

daytooner · #8 26th June 2010, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leigh123linux

I did say his instructions were wrong and incomplete

Yes, you did, and I went back and did ALL of your instructions (which I had essentially done originally - I had just reversed the original Nvidia install process). But still no luck.

When I removed livna-config*, it also removed all of the associated xorg-*-catalyst dependencies. So I went back and - via yum - installed those individually.

Still, the same. When booting, the kernel loads fglrx.so, and then enables the catalyst drivers. Sounds okay, but it also changes the device driver in xorg.conf to fglrx (even if the file permissions to that file is set to 400

). In the X log, it sees my board as a an ATI Fire GTX, hence loading the fglrx driver, but then it says something like "falling back to older fglrx ", and then (the gdm) fails to load. If I change the driver to radeon, gdm will load, but neither system-config-display, nor livna-config-display work.

With the radeon driver (xorg.conf changed and gdm started from a tty console), I do get a dual, expanded desktop, each with its own resolution -something like ATI's theatre mode, and xrandr seems happy, although aticonfig says that it doesn't find any supported cards. And if I try to run xbmc, it crashes (core dump, abrt siren flashing

). In its (xbmc) log, it shows that the GLX vender is still NVIDIA. This is from a fresh (uninstall/yum erase, rebuild source/install) version.

I tried running the instructions in this faq: http://www.fedorafaq.org/f12/#radeon, but apparently new-kernel-pkg had some issues. I could run dracut manually though. But still no luck.

I know that I have had this particular board (ATI chip R515) running in F12 w/ the radeon driver, as well as other ati boards (R300, and R100 chips) in the past, but that was before I installed (via your instructions

) the Nvidia board.

Since this is not a production machine - only a HD-DV player - I am tempted at this point to re-install from scratch F12, or maybe even F13 (although that brings with it - from past experience - a whole slew of side effect problems - which is why I am still running F11 on my production systems). But I would like to figure this out first, just so I know what's going on - maybe to offer help for some other poor soul in this position.

Sorry again for the long diatribe. I just wanted to give as much detail as I could. Also, since that machine is not on this network, I couldn't cut-and-paste log entry lines here.

thx as always for the help (especially leigh123linux). It's nice to know that there are people out there listening who know what's going on

.

ken

Totally OT: not being superstitious, but why did they use Fedora 13? Couldn't they have just skipped over to 14, or maybe use 12+?

**AdamW** · #9 28th June 2010, 09:35 PM

if the fglrx driver isn't going to work with your adapter, and radeon seems to work well, i'd recommend just ditching fglrx entirely. remove all those catalyst packages, and livna-config-display . also, post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf ; it may be what's still pointing at a bit of nvidia stuff.

**AdamW** · #10 28th June 2010, 09:39 PM

the superstition about the number 13 is not universal; it's pretty specifically British / American. As Fedora is an international project it'd be a bit silly to pander to irrational British tradition superstitions, but not anyone else's. Other cultures have all sorts of different number associations...4's a terribly bad number in Japan, for instance, 8 is very lucky in China...it goes on and on.

daytooner · #11 29th June 2010, 05:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamW

if the fglrx driver isn't going to work with your adapter, and radeon seems to work well, i'd recommend just ditching fglrx entirely. remove all those catalyst packages, and livna-config-display . also, post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf ; it may be what's still pointing at a bit of nvidia stuff.

The problem is that fglrx just won't go away! I can't just "yum erase" it. And I have removed livna-config-display and all of the catalyst packages. But what happens, is that when booting, something is getting loaded by the kernel that decides fglrx is the way to go, and re-writes my xorg.conf file to put "fglrx" as the device driver. So when gdm tries to start, I get blink-blink-blink...; use ALT-F3 to get a tty; change xorg.conf driver back to radeon; then run "gdm" from the tty prompt.

I have played around with this enough at this point. A reinstall is now a much less painful solution. Unfortunately, I thought I'd try F13 to see if there was anything useful to me that was improved (eg, my radeon board). BAD idea. Too many other gotchas left in the basic install, and I can't find any support for radeon/catalyst. So I'm back to putting on a fresh F12

thx for the help tho.

ken

---------- Post added at 09:23 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM CDT ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by daytooner

The problem is that fglrx just won't go away! I can't just "yum erase" it. And I have removed livna-config-display and all of the catalyst packages. But what happens, is that when booting, something is getting loaded by the kernel that decides fglrx is the way to go, and re-writes my xorg.conf file to put "fglrx" as the device driver. So when gdm tries to start, I get blink-blink-blink...; use ALT-F3 to get a tty; change xorg.conf driver back to radeon; then run "gdm" from the tty prompt.

Okay, I finally got a little smart and figured this part out: catalyst had created an init module (in /etc/init.d) that would load fglrx, then modify xorg.conf to load the fglrx driver. Remove the init module, gdm boots fine, keeping the radeon driver.

So apparently there is no fglrx for my board (r515 chipset).

Still can't find any reference to nvidia anywhere, though.

And still trying to figure out how to get ati's theater mode working.

thx to all.

ken