ATI (fglrx) & VIA P4VM800

webterractive · 01-16-2006, 02:25 AM

Everything is working correctly now with the ATI proprietary drivers and kernel 2.6.15.1 but there seems to be an issue with xorg hanging after using any gl appliaction like glxgears, fgl_glxgears, and fglrxinfo. Backspace+Ctrl+Alt does nothing either. This is wierd. I read the dmesg and disabled the lock pages for the agp cause its not supported, and changed the internal agpgart to yes as it asks. Any ideas?

djuhl30 · 01-16-2006, 03:35 AM

NVidia cards are a lot easier, lol...

Dave

webterractive · 01-16-2006, 04:07 AM

Yeah, my success has been short lived cause now it won't work anymore, Linux is shit for hardware support via is gay for anything and ati is bullshit and a good example of a pro windows company. I don't care for it anymore I will just use the stock xorg driver. ATI shouldn't pay people to make crap drivers and yes djuhl30 nvidia is easier very straight forward and committed to opensource, maybe ati should stop sucking on companies like apple and microsoft and help out with some code to make it run on linux like it does on apple. Its not like I downloaded the card.

UnTamed · 01-16-2006, 04:03 PM

Awright, I was bored so I looked into it a little and updated my 2nd box' kernel to see what I could come up with.

I looked at the kernel's source and in fact, for support for "VIA P4M800CE chipset" you'll need at least 2.6.15, support was not in 2.6.14.3 that I checked.

Thing is Ati's drivers never compile successfully on later kernels so I dug up a patch [...community submitted, ati doesn't bother with that!!!] on Rage3d's linux forum.

Code:

--- firegl_public.c.old	2005-12-09 19:21:33.000000000 +0100
+++ firegl_public.c	2005-12-18 14:44:15.000000000 +0100
@@ -2621,7 +2621,7 @@
 
     pMmPage = virt_to_page(kaddr);
 
-#if 0
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= 0x02060f
     // WARNING WARNINIG WARNNING WARNNING WARNNING WARNNING WARNNING WARNNING
     // Don't increment page usage count, cause ctx pages are allocated
     // with drm_alloc_pages, which marks all pages as reserved. Reserved

cp the patch to /lib/modules/fglrx and apply from the build_mod dir just before you run the make.sh script
patch -p0 < ../fglrx-2.6.15.diff

Although I used 2.6.15.1, it brings nothing new for your via-agp that 2.6.15 hasn't got, so either should work the same for you.

Now,
Set your config to InternalAGP "no" [!!!],
modprobe via-agp [...that you built as a module like agpgart ...which will automatically get loaded too ]
and then start your x server.

If that fails to enable DRI, grep your Xorg.0.log for errors (EE) and post that with parts of dmesg you feel is relevant.

Hope that helps.

webterractive · 01-16-2006, 04:31 PM

I tried that patch with kernel 2.6.15 and it kept say that there is a problem with line 3 and then a problem with line 5. I added the 2.6.15.1 patch and it worked perfectly. Then the kernel drivers compiled after the second time cause the first time they didn't for some reason with 2.6.15. I installed them and ran fglrxinfo and saw the ATI information so it worked. But after running fl_glxgears the screen hung. I had to reboot the computer with the button cause X wouldn't respond. Then after changing a couple of things around like no agp locked pages because agpgart doesn't support it and not to force visual samples the drivers seem to have vanished. They didn't work anymore, and I had a really hard time shutting down everything. I had to manually shut down every service but dm in the /etc/init.d/ file because it would just hang. ATI drivers are the problem they are shit, what do you expect from a Microsoft/Apple lacky. I know this because I changed motherboards with someone and the same shit happens drivers compile under the stock kernel and the new one but they don't work. I am trading with a friend who has Windows and I will be getting his Nvidia card, at least I know that works. I am never buying ATI again, and I buy stuff often.

Motherboard 1 Asrock P4VM800
Via P4M800 CE AGP chipset supported buy agpgart on kernel 2.6.15+

Motherboard 2 Asus P4PE2-X
Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Bridge supported by agpgart on kernel 2.6.12+

Video Card ATI 9600 AIW [RV350 AP] [Radeon 9600]

There is no real point anyways they the driver release states that it only supports the business versions of Linux Distribution:

SuSE -Novel's Business Solution

RHEL -RedHat's Business Solution

webterractive · 01-16-2006, 06:18 PM

Whoa I am going crazy, this is the stupidest way to waste my vacation lol, ok I have workig now. Here are the steps that I used:
1. Install kernel source for your current kernel and reboot your system.
2. Go to your /etc/X11 directory and mv xorg.conf to xorg.bak and XF86config to XF86config.bak
3. Go the directory of your ati-driver-installer (68MB file from ATI.com) and chmod x+a it.
4. Compile package
5. After the compile is complete you will get "Installation Complete!" that means that there were no errors, that you know of"
6.This worked for me on Mandriva 2006 with kernel 2.6.12-12 which I used for my test:
cp /etc/modprobe.conf /etc/modprobe.bak and cp /etc/modprobe.preload /etc/modprobe_preload.bak.
7. Run fglrxconfig and follow the questions [] are the defaults. (WW) Don't use the internal agpgart cause it won't work, if you look at the /lib/modules/fglrx/make.your-kernel.log you will see at the end that there are some errors in making the fglrx_agpgart.ko module. At least thats my case. Its not advisable to use agplock but just answer the default and if stuff crashes then re-run fglrxconfig and answear no, agpgart doesn't support it you will see it if you run dmesg | grep fglrx.
8. Add the following to your /etc/modprobe.preload agpgart and your chipset driver. To figure out your chipset driver just harddrake and it will tell you under agp. In my case it is intel-agp. So my /etc/modprobe.preload file looks like this:

hwrandom
rtc <-- I saw this somewhere where they got the drivers to work --
agpgart
intel-agp
intel-agp

9. Then I added alias ati-driver /sbin/modprobe fglrx /bin/true on the last line of my /etc/modprobe.conf file.
10. Then in the /etc/fstab file I added tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 <-- this is needed to make your 3D stuff work.

Here are my outputs:
fglrxinfo:

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9600 Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3.5519 (X4.3.0-8.20.8)

And it doesn't hang X like the my case with kernel-2.6.15.1 with Via P4M800CE

And last not least just reboot after you do steps 1-10

webterractive · 01-16-2006, 09:39 PM

Now I am able to completely install the ATI drivers with no problem but the issue is with the new kerenl's agpgart which now supports my agp chipsets (P4M800CE) from Via. There are issues where I need to shutdown every service before shutting down or rebooting. If I don't then the shutdown process won't be able to shut down the first service. This is an issue with agpgart support for my chipsets.