Ubuntu

xserver doesn't start (Feisty, 6.06 and 5.10)

Bug #77565 reported by ThorbjørnTux on 2006-12-31

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #28925: X fails to start in dapper, edgy with ati X600/X700/X800 (control not delegated to "radeon" driver, "ati" complains about Mach64).. Edit Remove

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	Ubuntu	Invalid	Undecided	Unassigned
Nominated for Feisty by ThorbjørnTux

Bug Description

I have searched for this bug, but not found it reported (but it might be - I am not sure)
I decided to report it since this problem has been there since the first time I tried (k)ubuntu (5.10)

The problem is that when xorg.conf gets configured like this (both in boot and install). In feisty also in "safe mode".

Section "Device"
  identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. R430 UM [Radeon X800 XL] (PCIe)"
  busid "PCI:4:0:0"
  driver "ati"
  screen 0
EndSection

I can't say it is exactly like above, but the main point is driver is "ati" and it does not work for that card. (It is a PCI-express Club 3d 800XL). There are probably many solutions to that problem. In (Kubuntu) Feisty I used F6 and manually changed driver it to vesa and ran startx. Alt+Control+F2 (or something like that used to work before but not in Feisty). (K)ubuntu does not report a error-message it just seems frozen (but is it not).

Vesa is slow, but it is better at least suggest vesa than giving users a problem. This problem is a showstopper for first time users of Linux. I am sorry to say that they will simply laught at it and throw it away...

Hopefully the discussed binary fglrx-drivers will make it into ubuntu ... and the installed driver will be fglrx otherwise I would like it to use vesa in "my situation". That can be done in several ways.

The best way would be to detect if xserver failed e.g. searching for "No screen" in std-output (?) In that case modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use "vesa" in stead of ati .... and try again. Secondly if it should fail again do not make it fail silently ....

Could "vesa" not be a user-option e.g. in safe mode ?

Details:
When I try using the ati-driver from text-mode I get.

(==) log file: blah
(==) using config file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(EE) No devices detected

Fatal server error:
No screens found
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
after 0 requsts (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

NB : The above is not copy/paste - it might contain errors ...