TorHarry

I have reached a point of near total frustration in trying to install Fedora. Brief history is as follows.

System

Intel Motherboard D101GCC
Western Digital WD2500JS 250gB SATA Hard Drive
Award BIOS GC11010N.86A
ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Video (On motherboard)
Microsoft wireless USB mouse and keyboard.
Realtek ALC861 audio codec (On motherboard).

1. - Tried to install Fedora from a DVD (Sams). This resulted in complete failure after this message was displayed - "Disabling IRQ 11", The system just locked up at this point.

2)- After several attempts at the above I decided to download Core 4 and try it assuming that whatever problem I was having might be solved in Core 4. Unfortunately Core 4 failed in exactly the same way as in (1).

3)At this point for no scientific reason other some vague commentary in the logs I became suspicious of the mouse/keyboard combination. I replaced the wireless mouse and keyboad with a PS2 style conected mouse and keyboard and voila got past the point where it was hanging up. Unfortunately it did not recognize the video chips and set up a "Vesa Driver (Generic) with the monitor (which it did recognize by mfgr and model) set to 800x600. If I tried to change this to anything higher with the desktop configurator I ended up with a blank screen.
After some research I decided to download and install the ATI drivers specifically
ati-driver-installer-8.22.5-i386.run. Running this program to install got these messages in the log.
Message Kernel Module - Trying to install a precompiled kernel module
Message Kernel Module - Precompiled module version mismatched.
Message Kernel Module - Found kernel module buld environment, generating kernel module now.
Message Kernel Module - Failed to compile kernel module please consult readme.
(Haven't found the readme yet.).
Decided to try and run aticonfiganyway. When it ran it produced this message -
"error while loading shared libraries. libfglrx_pp.so.1 cannot open shared object file. No such file or directory."

4)At this point I decided to fall back and re-try Core 3 version. It however failed to find the hard drive and ask me to specify drivers to which I felt like replying "based on what". Trying what I thought was the driver that flashed past in Core 4 simply resulted in it hanging up with "No hard drive identified" a little further on.

5)At this point neither Fedora version has recognized the sound card. I was focusing on trying to get the display working properly and I still have the issue of the wireless mouse / keyboard.

Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternate distribution that will do a better job of diagnosing the hardware and configuring the software / drivers.
At this point I feel like getting Fedora to work is like pushing a bulldozer up a hill with a rope. ( The above is a precis of my diary notes). I have floundered down other blind alleys since I am new to Linux

dothacktsukimoto

Using bleeding edge technology? ATI and nVidia is a headache under Linux ! Fedora Core 4 is doing good about drivers but it's not the most complete one, try SuSE or Mandriva, this ones has a larger hardware support (specially SuSE).
Maybe Ubuntu, but even the most recent version (5.10) have some trouble with video drivers, I heavily reccomend to try Ubuntu since it's easy to install and very stable with PC's.

I'm terrible sorry you just can't install FC4, at least for me it works great !

aazad

hi,
regarding this point i can suggest you one thing...

3)At this point for no scientific reason other some vague commentary in the logs I became suspicious of the mouse/keyboard combination. I replaced the wireless mouse and keyboad with a PS2 style conected mouse and keyboard and voila got past the point where it was hanging up. Unfortunately it did not recognize the video chips and set up a "Vesa Driver (Generic) with the monitor (which it did recognize by mfgr and model) set to 800x600. If I tried to change this to anything higher with the desktop configurator I ended up with a blank screen.
After some research I decided to download and install the ATI drivers specifically
ati-driver-installer-8.22.5-i386.run. Running this program to install got these messages in the log.
Message Kernel Module - Trying to install a precompiled kernel module
Message Kernel Module - Precompiled module version mismatched.
Message Kernel Module - Found kernel module buld environment, generating kernel module now.
Message Kernel Module - Failed to compile kernel module please consult readme.
(Haven't found the readme yet.).
Decided to try and run aticonfiganyway. When it ran it produced this message -
"error while loading shared libraries. libfglrx_pp.so.1 cannot open shared object file. No such file or directory."

If linux was not able to identify ur video chips, u configure manually with the nearest chipset that is closely compatable with, what ur actual chipset is...
for example my Monirot is Samsung 56v which is not detected by FC3 or FC4, and hence i configured my monitor as Samsung 55v and it is working fine...

Regarding the drivers u installed may be they dont match with ur kernel version..
get the drivers that matches ur kernel version...

Regards
Chandra Sekhar.T

TorHarry

Thank you for your suggestions. From your input I decided to give SuSe Linux a try. A power failure in the middle of a DVD download is a bit of a bummer but the second time it made it. SuSe didn't set up the video directly out of the box. I had to download a driver package from ATI, create a package, install it and recompile a kernel component all at the command level in an unfamiliar environment without a browser to access most documentation in html format. Rate of progress varied between slow and stopped but I persevered and finally got it set up properly. I'm very impressed with the desktop and the range of function available in the applications.
Now all I have to do is sort out the sound card and the keyboard/mouse and all will be in place.