Ati Driver Freezes X on start

[Angus]

I have OpenSuse 10.3 64-bit, and an ATI HD2600Pro PCIe graphics card. The VESA driver does not work with my monitors full resolution of 1680x1050. Whenever I try to install the driver (8.471), X freezes before it can start. I found an Xorg.0.log that might shed some light on what's going on. Here's the end of it:

(II) fglrx(0): driver needs X.org 7.1.x.y with x.y >= 0.0
(II) fglrx(0): detected X.org 7.1.0.0
(EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *
(II) fglrx(0): FBADPhys: 0xc0000000 FBMappedSize: 0x10000000
(WW) fglrx(0): Failed to set up write-combining range (0xd0000000,0x10000000)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM initialized for area (0,0)-(1728,8191)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM auto alloc for area (0,0)-(1728,1050) (front color buffer - assumption)
(II) fglrx(0): Largest offscreen area available: 1728 x 7141
(==) fglrx(0): Backing store disabled
(II) Loading extension FGLRXEXTENSION
(II) Loading extension ATITVOUT
(**) fglrx(0): DPMS enabled
(WW) fglrx(0): Textured Video not supported without DRI enabled.
(II) LoadModule: "glesx"
(II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so

[bridgman]

Are you running 4GB of RAM ?

[Angus]

No, 5GB. ;

[bridgman]

OK, more than 3 anyways

IIRC that error seems to be related to SBIOS memory management with over 3GB of RAM, and seems to be quite BIOS-specific. If you felt like experimenting, it would be really interesting to see if the problem goes away when running with only 1 or 2 GB of RAM.

[Angus]

OK, more than 3 anyways

IIRC that error seems to be related to SBIOS memory management with over 3GB of RAM, and seems to be quite BIOS-specific. If you felt like experimenting, it would be really interesting to see if the problem goes away when running with only 1 or 2 GB of RAM.

Well, it might be interesting, but it wouldn't be acceptable, since I'm running VMware sometimes with 2 virtual machines.
I'll see if I can find time to try it on Monday. In the meantime, feel free to come up w/other solutions.

[bridgman]

Thanks. Just to be clear, I'm only proposing this as a way to help diagnose a problem we don't see in-house. Not suggesting that you actually run this way.

[Angus]

Well, it looks like you were right: I pulled all but 2Gb out of my machine, and for the first time I was able to see 1680x1050. So now that we know what the problem is, do you have a workaround that doesn't involve losing half my memory? Is there any *other* way to get 1680x1050, or at the very least, a 16:10 aspect ratio? Is it worth giving ATI driver feedback on this?
I don't remember installing nVidia's driver being a cakewalk either, but at least things got done.

[movieman]

What motherboard are you using? I had a similar problem with the on-board graphics on my Asus M2A-VM where the system would boot but lock up when fglrx started running, unless I restricted the RAM usage to below 4GB.

That went away when I upgraded the BIOS; as far as I could figure out it appeared to be telling the OS that it had remapped 512MB of RAM from 3.5GB to 4GB, but not bothered to tell the hardware the same thing.

[Angus]

I haven't been able to figure out what the motherboard is, but it's the one that comes with the Asus Aspire M5620. I've looked for BIOS upgrades, but come up empty. I remember a setting in the BIOS that has something to do w/"remapping". Disabling it didn't help the problem.

[movieman]

As a short-term workaround you could try putting mem=4095M on the kernel boot line, and that should give you around 3.5GB of RAM. But you'll still be missing 1.5GB that way.

Another possibility is a duff RAM DIMM. I presume that if you have 5GB you're probably using something like 2x2GB and 1x1GB?