all been looking all over the place to try get these ATI drivers working on my computer and after going through all the relevant information i decide to write a short little how to for the ATI driver to work with an Nvidia nForce2 board, this is the easiest way to do it for us n00bs as i have been told that the nvidia motherboard module is a little faster than the one that comes with the kernel but my experience with the patch wasn't very good so i built it into the kernel.
OK here goes.
Firstly this is written for nForce2 Motherboards only but there are about seven or eight different chipsets you can compile into the kernel so if you have one of those this may help you too.
First thing that we've gotta do is install our source code, as i was running a fresh install of MDK10 i just used the code on the CD which you can select in the software packages.
once we have done that we need to open a terminal window and
If you are not using the source on the CD you will have to setup your own link by doing
Code:
ln -s /usr/src/your_kernel_version_here linux
we need to edit the makefile, do this with this command
you should see the following at the top of the file
VERSION = 2
PATCHLEVEL = 6
SUBLEVEL = 3
EXTRAVERSION =
NAME=Feisty Dunnart
make sure the "EXTRAVERSION" space is blank and dosn't have a reference to a custom or somthing like that. Press i or insert to edit the file, then press esc and next press :wq! this will write to the file and quit
Now we're going to recompile the kernel if your are like me and are new to linux the easiest way to do this is to copy your existing config file into the linux source directory so that we only have to change two or three things (it's also a lot quicker if u r busting to get 3D acceleration)
Code:
cd linux
make mrproper
cd /boot
cp your_config_file_here /usr/src/linux/.config
I prefer to use menuconfig but if you don't like that you can run xconfig from a terminal running from your Gui
You must make the following changes. Make sure that the MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) support is enabled under the "Processor types and features" menu, now make sure that you have enabled Agpgart under the "Character devices" which is a sub-menu of "Device drivers" and also support for "NVIDIA nForce/nForce2 chipset support". Now a little further down we have "Direct Rendering Manager" Disable this. I always think it's a good idea to save an alternate copy of the config file you can do this if you want, but it will also save on exit.
now we need to compile the kernel make sure you type the I in UPPER case or it wont work.
next we have got to compile the modules , once you start this you might wanna go make a coffee or something takes a little while to do.
Code:
make modules modules_install
Now we have to make an initrd image which helps the kernel load the modules it need on boot.
Code:
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION_HERE.img KERNEL-VERSION
And also copy the kernel, system map and .config files over
Code:
cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION_HERE
cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION_HERE
cp /usr/src/linux/.config /boot/config-YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION_HERE
OK now you have you kernel compiled and your boot files in the right place there is one more thing we need to do, this only applies to ppl that use lilo (most n00b i would think). We need to go into the /etc folder and edit lilo.conf
Code:
cd /etc
vi lilo.conf
Edit the file and at the bottom add the following entry
image=/boot/vmlinuz-VERSION
label=ATI_TEST
root=/dev/hda2 # your boot device and partition number
initrd=/boot/initrd-VERSION.img # Just in case you need it, sometimes you don't
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"
read-only
I find it's easier to copy the append from kernel you normally boot that way you know it should work, if you have a kernel panic add the following line in the append field it sometimes helps devfs=nomount. Now the last thing we have got to do after edit lilo.conf is to run lilo simply do this by typing lilo in a terminal and it will update itself.
Driver Installation.
Right now you should have a bootable kernel that has the right options on it to allow us to proceed with driver installation. This is probably the easiest part to do. Once you have downloaded the correct version of the drivers from ATI (if you don't know what version of XFree86 you have simply
will give you the version you are running)
Now once downloaded open up a terminal an cd into the directory that you saved the ATI driver into.
Code:
rpm -Uh --force fglrxblahblahblah.rpm
that will install the drivers and next we need to run
most of the options should be pretty straight forward, you need to know your monitors refresh rates both horizontal and vertical a good place to look is to open up another terminal and look at your old XFr86config file which is located in /etc/X11 open it with the vi command and the values should be in there somewhere. The last thing is that you MUST say yes to use the external AGPgart module, as that is what we where creating by recompiling the kernel.
Now restart you computer and open up a terminal in X and type fglrxinfo, you should see some stuff about ATI drivers and probably will list your video card in there somewhere aswell.
Well thats it, it's worked for me on about 3 different computers all with nforce 2 mobos and all with mdk10 and an ATI video adaptor.
If you have any questions just ask, i had a lot of errors on the path to 3D acceleration so i may be able to help.
N00BS Guide make ATI Agp + Nvidia2 mobos for mdk10
