[plug] ATI fglrx drivers

[Caleb Duggan]

At one o'clock in the morning, i figured out that i had to compile  
something after finding a tutorial at  
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation_Guide#Method_2:_Generating.2FInstalling_Ubuntu_packages_for_the_newer_8.24.8_drivers_in_Ubuntu_Dapper

Thanks for your help.


On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:04:24 +0800, Hendrik Strydom <hns1 at iinet.net.au>  
wrote:

> Some hours late for the meeting yesterday my brain seems to have finally
> come online to some extent.  (I'll blame it on the fact that I generally
> use nVidia hardware which have much less subtle hints :-)).
> The ati binary driver, fglrx needs a kernel module (also named fglrx) to
> support 3D graphics, but 2D works quite well without it.
> The advantage of this is that your X keeps working after a kernel
> upgrade (unlike nVidia), so you still have a gui to browse the net etc.
> The disadvantage for a mostly nVidia user is that the problem and
> resolution is more subtle, and generally the ati drivers keep their
> inability to compile the module to themselves.
> It is however possible to manually compile the module for the currently
> running kernel.  In this way you know with reasonable certainty whether
> it is going to work or not.
>
> For background, I run 64 bit FC4 on a Turion64 notebook with an ATI
> Radeon XPRESS 200M graphics controller (the low end of ATI).
> These instructions are for the binary driver supplied by ati, either the
> generic .run package or the .rpm. I see no reason why the .deb will
> behave differently, but have not confirmed this.
> The source for the fglrx module is stored in /lib/modules/fglrx (at
> least on my FC4).  Somehow you need to perform a two stage build and
> install from different directories.
> To attempt to compile the module do:
> cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
> then
> ./make.sh
> If the script reported no errors the fglrx.ko symlink in the same
> directory should point to a real file, nowadays typically 2.6.x/fglrx.ko
> In this case install it with:
> cd /lib/modules/fglrx
> ./make_install.sh
>
> and after (re)starting X 3D acceleration should work.
> Note that glxgears mostly crawls without 3D acceleration, whereas the
> ati supplied fgl_glxgears does not run at all without the module
> present.  It is also quick to see if the module is loaded with:
> # lsmod | grep fglrx
> which returns something like
> fglrx                 537596  7
> if it is loaded.
>
> Also note that the ATI driver does not work for Fedora kernels beyond
> 2.6.15-1.1833_FC4, i.e no later 2.6.15 or 2.6.16 kernels.  This may not
> affect stock kernels since Redhat patches kernels extensively, or there
> may be some patches out there to fix this. I have seen hints of debian
> patches, but have not followed up since I have no debian on ati
> hardware.
>
> Regards
>   Hendrik
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
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