Is there Driver support for Radeon or a way to use a default driver?

[erv]

I have a laptop that I was using on centos 8 until a recent update ...
When startx runs I end up with a gray screen with som blocks were dialog boxes should be and what should be text are lines (unreadable)...
I can move mouse will and I actually can select my login and type my password in and the screen changes ...So I believe the GUI is working but not talking to the video card correctly ...

I figured I had to update the laptop anyway so I installed a basic server for centos 9 stream ...So I could get a cli prompt and did a group install for "workstation" and manually invoke it (GUI). And yes I get the same result....

From the cli I can see that I have a Radeon HD 7730M .. Does any one have a driver for this or perhaps a know of default workaround that will help so I can use gnome?

[jlehtone]

Disclaimer: The last time I've seen "Radeon" on Linux was two decades ago (ATI Radeon 8500 and 9000) and with commercial X11 (drivers).

From the cli I can see that I have a Radeon HD 7730M ..

From cli, do run: lspci -nn

The '-nn' should add something like [1002:682F] for the Radeon line. The exact number that you get will help searching for solution.

[TrevorH]

Also, last time I looked, Red Hat were saying that startx was no longer a supported method of using it! Try systemctl isolate graphical.target and see if there is any different result.

[erv]

Thanks, that is exactly what I got [1002:682f]

and just could not thing of the systemcll isolate command and no differnt than before sytom wise when the distorted GUI comes up...

any other thoughts .. I stumped at this point .. How can I tell what driver is being set

when I run "journalctl -xe|more"
I get for the Radeon HD 7730M under "Capabilities: <access denied>"
and next line says" Kernel Driver in use : radeon"
then "Kernel modules: radeon , andgpu

[TrevorH]

You could perhaps try blacklisting the radeon driver and seeing if it will then work with amdgpu. To do that you would add a *.conf file to /etc/modprobe.d containing 'blacklist radeon'. That stops it from being loaded automatically. It may also be required to rebuild the initramfs after that change so that it gets picked up during boot - use dracut -f --kver $(uname -r) and it will rebuild the initramfs for the running kernel.

[erv]

Well that was interesting... I created noradeon.conf with the txt blacklist radeon in it.....there was no apparent need to use dracut ..
Now the size of the blocks is bigger appears it changed the resolution but still no real text and detailed graphics...

if I lspci -nn|grep -i vga
it reports "VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advance Micro Devices , Inc. [AMD/ATI] Chelsea LP [Radeon HD 7730M] [1002:682f]"

[TrevorH]

You could try blacklisting amdgpu instead (not at the same time as radeon!). Or you could try both at the same time (can be two separate lines in one file) and see if it will work with the vesa driver (will need xorg-x11-drv-vesa.x86_64 installed).

Also, does the effect you are seeing look like you're just missing a font? Might be worth a photo to show the effect.

[erv]

so i was going to give the vesa driver a try and tried "dnf install xorg-x11-drv-vesa.x86_64"
and got no match for argument .... Are the depercating X11 ?

[erv]

Also tried blacklistig amdgpu ... and when I started with "systemctl isolate graphical.target" it failed right off and referred me to a log
it said "polkit-agent-helper-1 :pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failure".... "failed to start target :Access denied.... see system logs... for details

So I removed/renamed file calling it "norad2old"

and went to look at var/log/messages tried "greping" messages on graphical.target came up with nothing
then tried radeon got 3 pages nothing obvious it does mention that enabling PCIIE gen 3 link speeds , disable with radeon.pcie_gen2=0
then "WB enabled" mentioned fence drivers on rings 0-7 and gives addr for each ..then it says MSI limited to 32 bit
and "radeon :using MSI" then initializes it radeon as primary device

[erv]

removed noradeon.conf but have copy on diff names so it won't execute in case we come up with different mod...

What control's the text in the graphical target is that part of the driver or is there some module it depends on ...