GIMP Version: Gimp-2.8
Operating System: Linux
OS Version: Fedora 17
GIMP Experience: Advanced Level

List any relevant plug-ins or scripts:
Fedora 17 OS

List any ERROR messages you received:
EDID checksums error ... 135 remaining?
And a black screen with all white letters and numbers.

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Okay so i go to login to my os today and it boots, loads the icon and then i get this black screen with white numbers.
And it says something about EDID checksums are wrong 135 remaining or something?

So this is the 3rd time i have installed Fedora from my USB flash drive (thank God i have that), and gotten this crash.Does anyone know whats going on?

You might be better off asking at the Fedora User Forum.

This is for F16, probably the same for F17
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=272333

You have to remember being a Fedora user = beta tester for Red Hat

Have you needed to reinstall Fedora because after the error the system can not be used anymore?

Another report:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=838265
What is your video card?

Using free video drivers or proprietary?

Run the command "dmesg" and see if you find error messages about it (as in the RedHat report)

Also try updating the kernel (if that is possible in Fedora)

Thanks Yafu.I think i am just going to leave my computer on
That seems to fix the problem.
Also unplugging the monitor works.I guess i will have to upgrade to better video drivers.
I did download and replace with free ones when i was running windows.But those drivers should no longer exist as i wiped the entire windows drive with this install.

Sad thing is i lost all my information on my F drive this time.

I really feel bad for you Rod that this is happening. Did you not make a live disk on a DVD? or did you put it onto a USB? I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

But that's an annoying solution
The kernel has modules that read certain information from Hardware to choose the best system configuration. EDID is the information that digital dispay provide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_ ... ation_data
Then the problem can come from many places. May be that your display has a corrupt EDID. It may be a bug in the Kernel. Unlikely but can also be the video drivers.
You as first step do a system update just in case Fedora to correct the problem. And try to get a newer Kernel version that you have.
I'm seeing that there are problems when your card is an ATI:
https://www.google.com/search?q="kernel"+"edid"
Is your video card an ATI? See the previous order I have given you for know that

Yes that is the display driver that i installed ATI

Rod, the video drivers for Windows won't work in Linux.

Most people are running nVidia or AMD/ATI video cards. Both of those companies provide proprietary video drivers specifically designed for Linux. Never manually download and use the drivers from nVidia or AMD/ATI's website because you'll be redoing it everytime there is a new kernel update. If you do decide to go with either of these proprietary drivers, they are already packaged for Fedora and are available in the rpmfusion repos you have already enabled. Using akmod will automatically rebuild the kernel mods each time a new kernel is released and will fill the time gap between the new kernel and the kmods being pushed out to the repos.

You can determine which video card you have and which kernel module driver is being used by issuing the following from terminal as root.

lspci -vk

Would you post the output of that command back to this thread (or send it to me in a PM)?

Once you determine which brand/model of video card you have, you can install the correct proprietary drivers. Specific and exact steps need to be followed when installing the drivers. If you use nVidia, there are two drivers. One driver is for newer cards and one driver is for legacy cards.

If everything else is working properly with the open source drivers, I highly recommend you stick with them and don't bother installing the proprietary drivers.

Btw- The EDID checksum error doesn't have anything to do with fact that you chose to use Fedora as your distro. It's not limited to any specific distro and it is not limited to ATI video cards. If unplugging your monitor fixes the problem, that suggests there is corruption occurring with your display's EDID and powering it off and back up corrects the problem. My guess is that the Windows drivers you've been using ignored the checksum or just didn't use EDID, which is common in Windows.

I recall in Ubuntu that there was a command line fix similar to chkdsk that fixed a client's (had an illegal OS license and I told him I would put Feisty Fawn on his system {yes, way back; lol} and he said that's cool. I got it back a few months later and repaired it and found out he really was using Ubuntu for images and music and such and that brought a smile to me. I asked him how he liked Linux and he said he was extremely pleased with the OS) Ubuntu build (did some research to find the solution as I recall; lol) so I know there is such a command if you are getting kicked out to the terminal Rod. Just don't remember it since I don't use Ubuntu that often. Assuming the same command for Fedora since Linux is probably the same at the terminal level.

Here is the information you requested Tux.

Thanks Rod. I see you are using the open source Radeon driver. That's actually the same driver I'm using. It works pretty well, perhaps not quite as fast as ATI/AMD's proprietary 'catalyst' driver when running OpenGL stuff, but the Radeon driver does perform fairly well.

I remember you saying that you were having some issues with display resolutions, which is an EDID issue. Perhaps, powering down your system and power cycling your display to clear the EDID corruption will allow your PC to grab the correct EDID information and allow you to choose the higher screen resolutions. If that is the case, I'd stick with the Radeon driver and avoid the hassles of using the proprietary catalyst driver. I'd only go with the catalyst driver if I really needed that extra speed in OpenGL or if the open source Radeon driver was not working well.

If your problems are related to EDID corruption in the display, there is a good chance that installing the catalyst driver won't help anyway.

In cases like this read the log:

Ten to one it contains info on the problem.
Gerard.

After further research, the ATI Xpress series, (you have an integrated ATI Xpress 200 chip on your motherboard) is no longer supported by ATI/AMD's proprietary catalyst driver. You are stuck with the Radeon driver, which isn't really a bad thing. I see that catalyst support was dropped in 2009 for that video chipset. So, here we have a case where the proprietary commercial software support was dropped for the card, yet it lives on in FOSS.

Like mine, your PC must be a few years old.

I have found that some people solved the problem by starting the system with the kernel parameter (boot optiom) "nomodeset":
https://www.google.com/search?q="edid"+"drm"+"nomodeset"
I do not know where they should be placed the kernel options in Fedora. In Ubuntu can be done by editing the Grub configuration.
I'm not sure if after booting the system with this parameter, you need to set in xorg.conf the driver and screen configuration for proper operation.

Adding nomodeset tells the kernel not to use KMS (kernel mode settings) and to revert back to UMS (user mode space/settings) on Radeon (or VESA resolutions in the case of Nouveau/nVidia/Intel). Radeon has plans to drop UMS in favor of KMS but I don't know if that has happened yet.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTEyOTg

Heck, it's worth a try. Power cycle your display first. You can then test nomodeset by hitting the "e" key when the grub menu which lists the available kernels appears. Use the arrow keys and navigate to the end of the line that has 'rhgb quiet' at the end, Just after 'quiet' add a space followed by nomodeset , then hit F10 to boot. This will use nomodeset only for the current boot. If you determine you need nomodeset, you can make the change permanent.

Using nomodeset might keep you from getting higher resolutions and might very well place you into VESA only resolutions so you need to check that out. If you can power cycle your display and boot with all the proper resolutions without nomodeset, that might be a better option but you can always test nomodeset to see what happens.

For kicks, I just tested the nomodeset switch (I have an ATI X700 card using the Radeon driver) and it reverted me back to VESA only resolutions. Not only that, but it killed hardware acceleration in OpenGL, making my system so sluggish, it was practically unusable.

That is why I said maybe you should configure a xorg.conf.
A very basic /etc/X11/xorg.conf for ATI Radeon using free drivers might be:


Of course it is very likely that you need to properly configure the refresh rates and resolution of your monitor.

We must be grateful to KMS has made us forget about having to configure the xorg.conf

As far as I know, when using the nomodeset switch, the VESA resolutions used are fixed in the video card's firmware and adding a xorg.conf can't overcome that.

However, you might be right. In the case where the nomodeset switch NOT being used and EDID is corrupt, perhaps an xorg.conf could force the display into higher resolutions.

If the EDID info is being corrupted in the display itself, that is the problem we face and recycling the power might be the the only thing that will fix that. Rod can confirm all this when he gets a chance to test it out and let us know if he can select higher resolutions than standard VESA provides, when he cycles the display power on and off and boots fresh to Linux.

@GnuTux, Do you verified that with the "nomodeset" option the system has successfully loaded the "radeon" driver and not the generic "vesa" driver? (See xorg log)

I think you have to specify the driver "radeon" in xorg.conf.
Anyway you can also try the xorg.conf I have written before. If you have problems and are unable to start the system with that xorg.conf, remove the xorg.conf from LiveCD or entering in console mode.

According to the info from lspic -vk Rod posted, the kernel module in use is Radeon.

Actually, you don't even need an xorg.conf in Fedora anymore. I haven't had the need to use an xorg.conf in a long time.

"Custom configurations in the xorg.conf should be moved to the back end. In most cases, the back end will be HAL and the configuration location will be the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory."

Most customization can now be done using xorg.conf.d but I do believe that Fedora will still use an xorg.conf if you add one.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Input_de ... org.conf.d

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fed ... .conf.html