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pbsastro

Member

Registered: 2024-06-30

Posts: 3  

Installer with AMD Graphics

Hi, I am a Linux noob. I have been using Debian testing, and now am trying to move to Excalibur. But it is not being easy.
First the USB stick would not boot. After some search on this forum I found that I need to enable CSM on the BIOS.
Now, I get to the installer menu which displays fine and functions fine. But after I select Install (or Expert install or Rescue mode) the screen goes wild (lines and dots move around for some time and then stop moving. We can see the installer is working beneath the corrupted image. But as nothing can be read, I cannot proceed.

This happens both with my Ryzen 5750G system and with the Ryzen 5800 + Radeon 6800.
So it seems this is a problem with AMD graphics, but only in some modes, as the menu screen appears fine.

Do I need to install AMD driver at installer start? How do I do that? How to get to command line, what to type and how to resume?
Thanks for any help.

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,269  

Re: Installer with AMD Graphics

At the boot screen, push TAB for editng the boot command line, then left-arrow to move to the vga=788 parameter and change that to a vga=785 parameter, then push enter to start booting the installer. By that you have changed the VGA mode from 800x600 to 640x480 which is the old, traditional default resolution for VGA monitors. You may also search the web for other VGA resolution codes that might possibly work for your monitor, if it's wort the trouble. There is also the possibility to use the parameter vga=ask although that typically dumps too many screenfulls of codes to be useful.

pbsastro

Member

Registered: 2024-06-30

Posts: 3  

Re: Installer with AMD Graphics

Thank you very much for your detailed reply. It works perfectly. In fact I went straight into vga=ask and there are only 31 entries, most higher res than 800x600, which I ended up using.

Unfortunately I stumbled on another blocking issue further ahead:  Debootstrap Error: Unmerged /usr is not compatible with excalibur.
I have read Devuan announcement about usr merge, and the linked Debian wiki page, but I got the idea that the issue only applies when upgrading, not on fresh install. And in fact I could not find anything about it on this Installation forum. I don't really know what to do now, except going for Daedalus instead.

pbsastro

Member

Registered: 2024-06-30

Posts: 3  

Re: Installer with AMD Graphics

After all I found the solution.
Although on an unrelated topic, I found this Guide  https://files.devuan.org/devuan_excalib … README.txt
which suggests using Expert install, which I went to try, and chose Yes to "/bin and /sbin be symlinks" , and finally the installation completed succefully.
Some issues I found:
1. Selecting items on the Software Selection. Pressing Enter on any option continues to next page, even though <Continue> is not selected, selection is on one of the options. I had to repeat the install a couple of time to get back to that stage, until I found that SPACE is the key to use for that.
2. With the default Xfce the DE starts automatically as normal. But with (only) Cinnamon installed or (only) KDE installed, boot stopped at command prompt, and I had to do startx.
3. After the DE (either Xfce or KDE or Cinnamon) starts, I go to Display settings, and it shows "Unknown Display" so its resolutions are also not identified and there is no way to choose resolution. Note I chose non-free firmware and non-free software.