[SOLVED] ATI Radeon X800 and Hardy Heron

[przemeklach]

Hi,

New to the forums and new to linux. I've installed Hardy Heron on my virutal machine running on Windows Vista; Sun xVM. Installation of Heron went without a problem.

I want to change my resolution but the default driver only allows 800x600, so I assumed that I need the correct drivers for my video card. I've tried several different ways of doing this as suggested in the forums but to no avail.

I did a clean install and followed the steps as outlined here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI for 'Instructions for Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) and Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)'. There where no instructions for Heron so I just used the most recent. I fail when I get to the part that tells me to "Open the restricted drivers manager in "System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager"" There is no Restricted Drivers Manager.

I'm seriously at a wits end here. I come from the windows world so maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. In windows I download the driver, install it and reboot, done. Here there are various ways to do the same thing and non of them seem to work.

Please help. Below is some information about settings on my Ubuntu install:

Command: lspci -nn | grep VGA
Output: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH VirtualBox Graphics Adabpter [80ee:beef]

Xorg.conf
From what I understand there should be something in here about my device but there really isn't. Only thing remotely close to my video card is this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

[Yellow Pasque]

I fail when I get to the part that tells me to "Open the restricted drivers manager in "System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager"" There is no Restricted Drivers Manager.

In Hardy, it is named "Hardware Drivers".

[przemeklach]

I thought so but didn't want to assume. Nothing appears under Hardware drivers, so I'm assuming it didn't install.

Thanks.

[Yellow Pasque]

sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

[przemeklach]

No luck, still not showing up.

[przemeklach]

Things have gone from bad to terrible.

I followed yet another set of instructions that didn't work. I did the first method as indicated at this link: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide.

All the steps went fine but when I rebooted Ubuntu told me that it could not recognize my graphics adapter. I clicked on configure and I found my monitor in the list of devices. I selected my monitor and the resolution I wanted and rebooted. Now I have three desktops, non of which I can see anything on; see attached screenshot.

Now I'm reinstalling Ubuntu for the 5th time. Can someone please help, all I want to do is run ubuntu at a higher rez. I still don't understand why this is so difficult to do.

[st0nedpenguin]

I had to manually input my horizontal and vertical refresh for my monitor into my xorg.conf, none of the GUI tools would work even if I selected my monitor from the list.

You should be able to get the frequencies from one of the GUI tools though if you select your monitor model (No idea which I used, running Windows currently), then slap them in your xorg.conf monitor section a little something like this:

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Generic Monitor"
	Option		"DPMS"
	Horizsync	31-100
	Vertrefresh	50-160
EndSection

Once that was done I was able to select my resolution and refresh rate using the default Ubuntu screen resolution app and all worked fine.

[Yellow Pasque]

You can also get mode lines from the cvt tool. (Example: 1680x1050@60Hz)

dan@harvest:~/Desktop$ cvt -v 1680 1050 60.0Hz
# 1680x1050 59.95 Hz (CVT 1.76MA) hsync: 65.29 kHz; pclk: 146.25 MHz
Modeline "1680x1050_60.00"  146.25  1680 1784 1960 2240  1050 1053 1059 1089 -hsync +vsync

Change the '_' to a '@' and paste into the monitor section.

[przemeklach]

Thank you sir that made a big difference. I still don't have all the possible resolutions that my monitor can do. Is that because of a bad setting in my xorg.conf? or is it something else?

[Yellow Pasque]

You can add more resolutions in a similar manner.

In the Screen section, you can add the resolutions too.
Here's part of my xorg.conf

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Generic Video Card"
	Driver		"fglrx"
	BusID		"PCI:1:5:0"
	Option	   	"VideoOverlay" "on"
	Option	    	"OpenGLOverlay" "off"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"VX2025wm"
	Option		"DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"Generic Video Card"
	Monitor		"VX2025wm"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes		"1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier	"Default Layout"
	Screen		"Default Screen"
	InputDevice	"Generic Keyboard"
	InputDevice	"Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode 0666
EndSection