ATI configuration (UNsolved)

[InTheWoods]

I have an ATI Radeon 9250 PCI video card. After install running fglrxinfo is supposed to give something like this:

Code:

display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON 9700 Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.5804 (8.25.0)

Instead I get this:

Code:

display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.4.1)

I find this problem again and again in various wikis and forums including this one. What I don't find is an easy solution. I've tried changing libraries, the driver in my xorg.conf file (ati, fglrx, radeon) and various other fixes. All with no luck.

Previously I got movies to run successfully in both Xine and Mplayer by running

Code:

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

but this is supposed to be a no no for games (slows them down).

I am looking to get direct rendering running.

In truth I didn't even know the card wasn't working properly until today. But now that I've spent several hours on it I'm getting kind of disappointed in ATI.

Has anybody here solved this problem?

[InTheWoods]

Update.

It appears that the 8.28.8 driver although the latest one available for my card, was written before the 2.6 kernal came out. Therefore it lacks the support required for direct rendering in Vector 5.8 standard. The best hope therefore is for an improvement in the open source drivers for this card. I don't know where to look for one more recent than the one packaged with Vector 5.8 standard. This one does work. Tt does not work well for me however and eventually it fails totally.

I plucked this from another forum

How to build ATI 8.28.8 driver on kernel 2.6.18.

(Issue is that UTS_RELEASE define has moved from include/linux/version.h to the (new) include/linux/utsrelease.h)

1. sh ati-driver-installer-8.28.8.run --extract your-dirname
2. cd your-dirname
3. edit common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/make.sh with:

# src_file=$linuxincludes/linux/version.h

src_file=$linuxincludes/linux/utsrelease.h


4. Apply the source patch (SuSE and Fedora patches are the same)

cd common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod

patch < ../../../../../packages/SuSE/kernel-2.6.18.diff


5. cd back to your-dirname and, as root:

./ati-installer.sh 8.28.8 --install

and followed it through except for step 4. I wasn't sure about SuSe or Fedora patches, nor where to get them.
NOTE: the line in the makefile refered to in step 3 which I changed is around line 208.

I didn't kill any thing but I had to run:

Code:

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

to get movies running again

If someone could shed some light on what is happening in step 4 this might be the most promising lead I have encountered.

[JohnB316]

What happens in step 4 of the previous post is that the source code is being altered  so that it will compile under a 2.6.18 kernel. Without the patches, the 8.28.8 ATI driver won't build on kernel 2.6.18.

HTH,
John

[InTheWoods]

1. Is that the source code of the Linux kernel that is being altered?

2. How would you go about doing that in Vector?

and

3. How advisable is this?

I've been reading a bit about Beryl which apparently has a stable open source driver for my card. This may be easier and give more spectacular results than I was originally looking for.

[Darin]

I would be very interested in the patch set...right now the latest drivers the build on the 2.6.18 kernel are the 8.30.3...I would even like to be able to include older ati drivers to get better ati support in the SuperVL edition

[JohnB316]

1. Is that the source code of the Linux kernel that is being altered?

No. The ATI driver source is being patched.

2. How would you go about doing that in Vector?

You would probably use the same patch command as was mentioned earlier in this thread. ;-)

and

3. How advisable is this?

I've been reading a bit about Beryl which apparently has a stable open source driver for my card. This may be easier and give more spectacular results than I was originally looking for.

It depends on whether you really need the proprietary ATI driver.

HTH a bit,
John

[InTheWoods]

It depends on whether you really need the proprietary ATI driver.

Unfortunately I do. When I run without the proprietary driver X eventually fails. I can recover with VASM but eventually that fails also. When I run with the proprietary driver (even though as I now know it is not working correctly) the system is stable.

I was looking into Beryl as the OSS driver is supposed to work well with it. Unfortunately most of the HOW TO's are missing from the forum right now and I am getting a little confused by various other sources of info on it.

I did however get Xorg 7.2.0 installed.
Did that ever screw up the old unpatched proprietary driver!!!
I attempted to change the screen settings and down went X!!!
I still can't recover the settings for that user.

For now I am running on the OSS driver. But I forsee a re install in the near future.

[InTheWoods]

Total unrecoverable X failure on OSS driver and Xorg 7.2. As expected.

Reinstalled Vector 5.8 standard with patched ATI proprietary driver. I still have no direct rendering

Code:

fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.4.1)

But glxgears now gives me 550 to 560 rpm as opposed to 520 to 530 rpms.

Movies required me to resort to this again.

Code:

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

[InTheWoods]

Success... with the radeon driver not the proprietary ati driver.

First I was reporting this

...glxgears now gives me 550 to 560 rpm....

when it was actually 550 frames per 5sec.
I am now getting approximately 3000 frames per 5sec. or 600fps. That's a little less than a 6 fold increase.

Although I tried many many possibilities, this
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=558746
is the discussion that got it going for me. For anyone reading this it seems to have been successful on a ATI Radeon 7000/VE. So perhaps it will be useful to others as well.

Here,s what I did:

ran

Code:

xorgconfig

to get a new xorg.conf. It produced a very different file than either the original install or the aticonfig. Then I compared it to a working xorg.conf. I started cutting away a piece at a time and changing things like monitor refresh rates to match the old file until I figured I had a minimum working xorg.conf file. With each cut I restarted X ctrl-alt-backspace to verify I had not cut something vital.

Here is my final result.

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"
    ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"   # make sure this line is not commented out

EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load        "dbe"  # Double buffer extension

   SubSection  "extmod"
      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection


    Load       "type1"
    Load       "freetype"
    Load       "glx"
    Load       "dri"

EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier "Keyboard1"
    Driver "kbd"
    Option "XkbModel"    "microsoftinet"
    Option "XkbLayout" "us"

EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "Auto"
    Option "Device"      "/dev/mouse"
    Option "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5 6 7"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "samsung"
VendorName   "SAM"
ModelName    "1058"
HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
Option     "DPMS"
EndSection


# Device configured by xorgconfig:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "radeon 9250"
    Driver      "radeon"
    Option      "EnablePageFlip" "on"
    #Option      "AGPMode" "4"
    #Option      "VBERestore"    "true"
    #Option      "AGPFastWrite"  "true"
VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName   "RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO]"
BusID       "PCI:1:12:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "radeon 9250"
    Monitor     "samsung"
    DefaultDepth 24

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection



 Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
 EndSection

If you need your PCI bus (for some people this seems to help)run:

Code:

/usr/X11/bin/Xorg -scanpci

I kept getting a blank screen loading dri until I uncommented the module path. I also added

Code:

/sbin/modprobe radeon

to my /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

From there I had different results than the LinuxQuestions thread. My card has far less options enabled than almost any other I have read about. I would like to note that many other users of this card had to  have AGP options enabled even if they had PCI cards. The "AGPmode" also sometimes required a different numerical value. Other cards had to have options I haven't listed here. So my only advise after 11 days of on and off trying, is to try them one at a time restarting X between changes until you are successful.

Another oddity I encountered was that fps is supposed to go up when you cover glxgears up because the card is not actually drawing on the screen. In my case fps plunged down below the original levels. I Don't know if that is significant.

I also have had trouble with long term stability running this card with the OSS driver so if it fails I will post my result here again.

[InTheWoods]

X did eventually fail with the open source driver.

This does not negate the fact that direct rendering has been enabled. Rather it seems to be a seperate issue with X.
I will persue that problem under a seperate post in the section of the forum dedicated to X issues.

[InTheWoods]

Well I've been pursuing this in another thread believing it to be X related because I had direct rendering enabled. But it is just the driver.

I am back to the proprietary driver and believe I have located the source of the problem with it.

Code:

modprobe fglrx
FATAL: Module fglrx not found.

some more bungling around revealed that I need to make the fglrx module so:

Code:

lib/modules/fglrx
root:# sh ./make_install.sh
*** WARNING ***
Tailored kernel module for fglrx not present in your system.
You must go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod subdir
and execute './make.sh' to build a fully customed kernel module.
Afterwards go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run './make_install.sh'
in order to install the module into your kernel's module repository.
(see readme.txt for more details.)

As of now you can still run your XServer in 2D, but hardware accelerated
OpenGL will not work and 2D graphics will lack performance.

and because there is no kernel module as above

Code:

lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
root:# sh ./make.sh
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
cat: /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version-*.h: No such file or directory
Error:
kernel includes at /usr/src/linux/include do not match current kernel.
they are versioned as ""
instead of "2.6.21.1".
you might need to adjust your symlinks:
- /usr/include
- /usr/src/linux

but repeating
lib/modules/fglrx
root:# sh ./make_install.sh
gave the same result.

How do I build the kernel module for fglrx?

[rjregenold]

I don't know if you've found an answer to this yet, but I just installed VL 5.8 Standard and ran into the same problem. You can compile the module by following these steps:

• Use Gslapt to install the kernel sources (open Gslapt, type kernel-src into search bar, and install)
• Then go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and run make.sh.
• Then go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run make_install.sh
• Restart X and everything should work