Hi guys, ive spent the entire day reading through posts on this board and trying to get my radeon 9600 mobility to work on my laptop. I'm using Mandrake 10 powerpack and have followed at least 3 methods to get the ati drivers installed and working and am just about ready to burn my laptop and the ati drivers. I think im really close to getting it working but there is something small that im just not doing.

I've only been on linux for about a week and am in way over my head....compiling kernels and having no idea what im doing..

Anyways, i will tell you where i am at with it

from a fresh install i have done these steps only

installed mandrake 10, installed the right source code along side it and installed the latest ati drivers succesfully on my system with no errors during installation.

i have added the lines

/etc/modprobe.conf
install fglrx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install fglrx && { /sbin/modprobe nvidia_agp; /bin/true; }

/etc/rc.d/rc.modules
/sbin/modprobe fglrx

as the tutorial says to do, as far as i can see what that does is tries to get the ati driver connect to the agpgart module, which is loaded and is running.

my lsmod shows these lines


[root@localhost stu]# lsmod
Module Size Used by
md5 4864 1
ipv6 251392 8
sg 40028 0
sr_mod 18116 0
snd-seq-oss 33568 0
snd-seq-midi-event 8704 1 snd-seq-oss
snd-seq 55696 4 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq-midi-event
snd-pcm-oss 53316 0
snd-mixer-oss 19008 1 snd-pcm-oss
snd-intel8x0 34440 0
snd-ac97-codec 59588 1 snd-intel8x0
snd-pcm 97440 2 snd-pcm-oss,snd-intel8x0
snd-timer 26660 2 snd-seq,snd-pcm
gameport 5664 1 snd-intel8x0
snd-page-alloc 12996 2 snd-intel8x0,snd-pcm
snd-mpu401-uart 8320 1 snd-intel8x0
snd-rawmidi 25248 1 snd-mpu401-uart
snd-seq-device 9032 3 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq,snd-rawmidi
snd 55492 12 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq-midi-event,snd-seq,snd-pcm-oss,snd-mixer-oss,snd-intel8x0,snd-ac97-codec,snd-pcm,snd-timer,snd-mpu401-uart,snd-rawmidi,snd-seq-device
soundcore 10560 1 snd
af_packet 22632 2
raw 8640 1
ide-floppy 19776 0
ide-tape 36752 0
ide-cd 41764 0
cdrom 38272 2 sr_mod,ide-cd
floppy 61620 0
ds 16452 2
yenta_socket 17344 0
pcmcia_core 70112 2 ds,yenta_socket
sk98lin 161576 1
tsdev 8160 0
ohci1394 35684 0
ieee1394 290480 1 ohci1394
joydev 11264 0
evdev 10496 0
usbmouse 6208 0
hid 55360 0
nls_iso8859-1 4896 1
sd_mod 17920 0
ntfs 87532 1
supermount 39856 3
intel-agp 18364 1
nvidia-agp 8380 0
agpgart 32460 2 intel-agp,nvidia-agp
fglrx 167722 0
usb-storage 74596 0
scsi_mod 117744 4 sg,sr_mod,sd_mod,usb-storage
ehci-hcd 25572 0
uhci-hcd 31856 0
usbcore 103228 7 usbmouse,hid,usb-storage,ehci-hcd,uhci-hcd
rtc 13640 0
ext3 114216 1
jbd 61976 1 ext3

i see that fglrx has 0 next to it which means nothign is connected to it, i think thats bad?

before i added the lines of text to those two files earlier the agpgart showed only intel-agp connected to it......

however fglrxinfo still tells me this

[root@localhost stu]# fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 4.0.4

and i get dismall glxgears scores......

can anyone see what im doing wrong or any advice on what to do to make this work, id really prefer to do this without recompiling the kernel and i've read posts of others being able to do it as well, i tried to put as much info here as i could.....any help is greatly appreciated

post up /var/log/XFree86.0.log

there will be some useful information in their as to what is going wrong.

I never needed to edit moundules.conf as you did.

edited: super long config file removed

edited: super long config files removed part 2

im guessing this is important but i dont know what it means or more important how to fix it



): Desc: ATI Fire GL DRM kernel module
(WW) fglrx(0): Kernel Module version does *not* match driver.
(EE) fglrx(0): incompatible kernel module detected - HW accelerated OpenGL will not work
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] unmapping 8192 bytes of SAREA 0xe0b27000 at 0x40257000
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *

When you installed the ATI driver package it should have installed fglrxconfig. Just run it from a command line and answer the questions. When it's finished it will write the file as XF86Config-4 (that's the default). You should rename your old config file to .bak so that you'll have a backup if something goes wrong and to make sure that X uses the new config file. Also it looked like your ATI kernel module was compiled against different headers, you may need the -f option to force it to load. NOTE: You must use a color depth of 24bits.

oh yes, sorry i forgot to say that i had run fglrxconfig and answered all the questions according to several guides on this forum, still no luck




i don't understand what that means, and where should i add -f to force it to load?

bump, can someone tell me is it really possible to install an ati card on mandrake 10 without recompiling the kernel?? because if it is then i thinkim going to give this the boot......way way too much just to get a video card to work

i fixed it, it appears that my linux install ad installed a bunch of ATI packages which were screwing things up. I just went to the system config where you install/remove the packages and search for ATI and removed every package to do with ATI, then rebooted and from the command line i reinstalled the latest ATI drivers and everything worked fine!!!

That's great! I am just about to install Mandrake 10 on my laptop with a mobility 9600, and a while ago I gave up and figured that the Mobility series was unsupported. So at least it's possible. I'm using the Community version, so could you just tell me something, where did you get the drivers that you ended up using from? Did they come with mandrake, or did you download them?

After further investigations, XFREE actually has a fglrx driver for the mobility M10 radeon 9600, when you install and you setup your video you choose R350 (fglrx) in the ati menu. This driver actually benchmarks nearly the same as the latest ATI driver, however being the "have to have the latest drivers" person that i am, and just feeling like the driver installed with mandrake......wasnt right(even though it benchmarked just about as good in glxgears) i got the newer ones.
So the driver i used is here CLICK ME

get the one for 4.3.0


are you new to installing linux?? if so, let me know if you want me to write a little how to for your install(the way i did it anyways)

I'm planning to take a shot at doing exactly what you've done and I'm also very new to Linux. So if you are willing to write up a little how-to on how you got your driver installed and working, I would appreciate that very much. So far I've downloaded the driver from the ATI Technologies page that you indicated and also printed out the "HOWTO: Installation Instructions for the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver" instructions that are posted on the same page.

Hi there,
I would not say that I am new to linux, but i'm having great difficulty gettin this driver to work. I have installed the drivers, they compiled themselves, I ran fglrxconfig, and started up X, but instead of only getting 2d acceleration, I get a blank screen and a frozen computer. I think I will start another post for this. Thanks anyway though

Ok i will make my little faq here rather than making a new post so others can maybe read this.

I'm assuming you've got mandrake 10 installed and are using the 2.6* kernel.

First thing to do is make sure that your source code is installed for your kernel, its available on cd 3, but a really easy way to install this is to goto Mandrake Control Center and goto "software management" then goto install, the package name is "kernel-source-2.6.3.7".

Second, im not sure what graphics system you installed during mandrake installation but this step was key for me to get this working, i had to go and remove anything to do with already installed drivers, for me i just went to the control center and went to remove and searched for packages with "ati" in the name, there was a few and i selected to remove them all.
(note: it has come to my attention that mandrake 10 powerpack installs the radeon drivers fine for X, and it did during installation. I'm not sure if this will work for all radeon cards but it did for mine. The driver that it picks up during installation is "radeon fglrx" and thats why there was already ati kernel modules installed on my system effecting the driver update and why i had to remove them for this to work. The drivers worked fine for me and i got onlya few fps increases with the newest ati drivers).

Third, i downloaded the ati drivers and put them in my home directory

Fourth i restarted my pc, now i had to rely totally on the command prompt here as X wouldnt start because id removed the driver module it was using to run but it wasnt that hard, i switched to root, went to the folder that the driver was in and type this "rpm -Uh --force fglrx-4.3.0-3.9.0.i386.rpm" this install went through fine, not a problem at all. Then as soon as that finished i ran fglrxconfig and i used the exact same settings as described in

THIS THREAD
(aside from the monitor resolutions and the refresh rates, which i set my own for my monitor and dont take notice of his steps, the make.sh etc, they are not necessary anymore just take note of the settings he used for his fglrxconfig)


and rebooted and all went well. I know there are a few other FAQ's around about how to make this work, but most are old and the info in them is not right anymore, you dont need to recompile your kernel with modules etc etc, the newest ati driver does it all for you.


PS: i'm not sure if you can install the drivers while you are still in KDE, you might be able to but im not totally sure, and if you uninstall the modules that X is using for its display and reboot to the command prompt and somethign goes wrong then i have no idea how to ge back into KDE, i think step two might depend on what graphical module you are using for your card, if your using some generic version then im not sure if it willl intefer with the ATI installation but i know that having an already installed ATI module and trying to install the newest one on top did not work for me until i removed it.

i'm not very good at writing faqs but i hope this helps, let me know if you need any more info and post your reults

Just a little hint for anyone reading that, If you don't have the powerpack then you shouldn't find any ati drivers already installed, and if you do, It won't stop you from getting into graphical mode. So to change to text mode (which you should do at step 4, open up a console, type 'su' to get to root, then type in 'telinit 3'. This will change you to text mode. (And to get back to graphical mode, type in 'telinit 5'