CentOS

Hi all!

I have a socket A test server (for PHP web apps) consisting of:

CPU: Athlon XP 2600+ Barton, at stock speed (with GlacialTech Igloo 2470 Light)
MoBo: Matsonic 8147C (VIA KT400A chipset)
RAM: 1280 MB PC2700 synchronous (512+512+256)
CRT @ 1024*768 px
Hard disc: WD800 (80 GB ATA100)
Samsung Combo drive (DVD & CD-RW)
C-Media CMI8738LX PCI soundcard (onboard sound works but sound is a bit choppy, probably due to VIA PCI bug)
onboard LAN
PSU FORTRON 350PNF and normal size case (midi tower)

Until today I was using a Geforce2 AGP video (with 64MB SDRAM) card on that machine.
Now I need the machine for occasional multimedia use (WinXP + VLC et al) so I threw in an old RADEON 9250 I had gathering dust for ages. It's AGP 8X version with 128 MB, 128 Bit.

The 9250 works great under XP, it has some sorta video acceleration (like all members of R200 Radeon family) so I can watch HANDBRAKE-encoded X.264 videos (Mi-HD) with no problem - CPU load is around 50% in VLC.

However, as I switched my video adapters from nVidia to ATI, now my Centos 5.7 setup now just works in a console mode, I can't start X server.

Please advise me on what version of driver should I download (free, non-free, etc.), how do I do that from the console (no GUI = no package manager) and how do I edit (or rewrite?) my xconfig?

Thanks in advance.

PS: is this tutorial of any use, considering I can't access GUI?
http://madathilunni.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/installing-ati-catalyst-driver-10-6-fglrx-in-cent-os-5/

PPS: I'm quite happy with this machine overall, but if you notice that this system could be improved by changing something (especially if it doesn't require much cash), by all means please do tell.

As a stop-gap try "X -configure" as [url=http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/BecomingRoot]root[/url].

I'd recommend the [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-fglrx]ELRepo kmod-fglrx[/url] drivers. Install with yum from the command-line. For older hardware you may need the [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-fglrx93]kmod-fglrx93 legacy drivers[/url].

Edit: Perhaps even the legacy driver does not go back that far. Lists R300 but not R200. Seems it should still work with the [b]radeon[/b] open-source driver.

Thank you, your post was very useful - when you told me to use the free "radeon" a.k.a. "ati" driver I knew what to look for.
Found a step-by-step tutorial on it here:

http://technotes.twosmallcoins.com/?p=146

so I did all that Ryan said, found out I already have "xorg-x11-drv-ati" then ran:

[code]yum info xorg-x11-drv-ati[/code]
[code]yum update xorg-x11-drv-ati[/code]

found out my ati was already latest version available but no harm in checking - better safe then sorry.

Then I edited xconf (always backup first!)

[code]nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf[/code]

using nano replaced the device from "nv" to "radeon"
then started X manually

[code]startx[/code]

From that point on everything worked fine! Then I ran update manager and rebooted the system.

I dunno if I'm supposed to edit xconfig manually, but "X -configure" didn't work right (dunno why) and after using Nano everything works great.

Thanks for reporting back. Marking this thread [SOLVED] for posterity.

Not sure why "X -configure" failed but your fix is valid as far as I can see. Can't argue with success.

I agree, thank you.