Configure old AMD/ATi video card under Rocky Linux 8.7

General
1

Hi,

I just installed Rocky Linux 8.7 on an old iMac. So far EFI, partitioning, booting and the NIC are managed OK. Next thing on my list is the video card. Here’s what lspci spews out.

# lspci | grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630/M76 [Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT/2700]

Unfortunately X won’t start.

Now I vaguely remember having setup these old AMD cards under CentOS 5 using the fglrx driver. But I haven’t done this for about 15 years or so.

Apparently I’m now supposed to use these old cards with the free radeon drivers. Only it won’t work.

Any suggestions ?

2

SWAG:
video=vesa on the grub commandline

swag=Scientific Wild-Assed Guess

2 Likes
3

Actually, it works now. I just had to generate /etc/X11/xorg.conf like in the old days and explicitly configure the radeon driver. Works like a charm now, even with KDE desktop effects enabled (magic lamp, wobbly windows and all).

Sometimes having started out on Slackware 7.1 helps when you have to catch that bear with your bare hands. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
4

Indeed.

One does not actually need entire config explicitly, just the device section.
Those “bits and pieces” can be as separate /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf files. For example:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-kovacs.conf 
Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "radeon"
EndSection

The rest of config comes from defaults.

RPM’s of NVidia’s proprietary driver seem to add:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf
Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
    Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes"
    Option "SLI" "Auto"
    Option "BaseMosaic" "on"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "intel"
    MatchDriver "i915"
    Driver "modesetting"
EndSection

That looks like conditional: “for NVidia cards do use ‘nvidia’ with options …”
rather than explicit: “we have device …”

I wanted to remap mouse buttons, so I stole the idea:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-mouse.conf
Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "Mouse Remap"
 MatchIsPointer "true"
 MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
 Option "ButtonMapping" "3 2 1 4 5 6 7 2 2"
EndSection

(Could narrow the match to mice that actually have buttons.)

1 Like
5

Thank you very much for that detailed explanation.