Cool. Exactly the type of stuff that some people need. I know there's still alot of them floating around out there. Any chance of updating it to better help those with newer kernels?

And anybody with ATI happy/horror stories will be appreciated.

Hey all:

I've been reading the main post on this thread, and I think I'm going to have to do some editing/reorginizing on it, mostly to add stuff about Nvidia, ATI, and make it a little more easy to read/understand. Might take a couple of days...

But when it's done, I'll leave a copy of the original on my website (address will be posted for it when it happens) just in case I miss anything...

I may also add a poll on this to see how much it helps people..

Webpage is up.

www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/dri

Let me know how it works for you

OK....Don't know why, but when I formatted/reloaded my laptop (Had a real bad blonde moment, so I thought I'd start fresh), my glxgears went from 1100 to 2400....Wow

Hi CW,

I'm going to be trying my hand at installing the ATI proprietary drivers on my desktop pc.

Sorry if the post is long I'm just putting relevant items in here so you don't have to go wandering out on the net to see my refereneces.

If you recall, you helped my getting slackware installed and updated and fix mouse issues on my laptop. All is well with that laptop and I was even able to load up a really old one with slackware for a friend of mine. Both laptops are now successfully running the "testing" kernel of slackware 10.2

That being said, I want to get the wireless going on my laptop and use the 2.6 variation kernels so I can allways just plug in the external mouse and use it. If you recall 2.4 kernel doesnt seem to support my laptop and an external mouse.

So i tried to upgrade the kernel; after a few hours of it trying to compile I got errors just after the "make" part. I threw my arms up, said a few choice words, then dumped the hard drive and restored from an image.

So I figured, well I want to get slackware up on my desktop and I can use that to learn how to compile the kernel there, as that pc is much faster.

So now I have slackware 10.2 with the "testing kernel" on it the desktop pc as well. Now I'd like to install the ATI Radeon drivers which in my forum search brought me to your thread.

I can totally help to document my experience, etc for your cause from the ATI side of things. I see you have much info here with respect to nVidia but not so much for ATI and I'd like to help.

Only thing is, as I'm new I'm kind of confused and was wondering if you might shed some light on a few items.

First the desktop pc info:
-ASUS motherboard A7N8X-E deluxe latest bios revision. This is an nVidia nforce 2 based motherboard.
-Proc: AMD Barton Core 2500+ w/512 cache that has stock 333 mhz front side bus but it is overclocked to 400 mhz front side bus.
-Ram: cheap 400mhz centon's 2.5,3,3,6 timings.
-VGA: ATI Radeon 9600XT (built by ATI not a third party board).128mb RAM.
MOBO Specific Settings: write cache on, AGP 8x, AGP Gart 64mb, video bios not shadowed.
So the pc is running at 2100 mhz (e.g. like a 3200+ at 400 mhz front side bus) dual channel mode.

The slackware resides on a partition that is also imaged so I can crash this boy over and over and it only takes me 5 minutes to restore from an image.

The slackware is fully updated to latest in terms of slapt-get and security. No other software at all has been installed. Just a default full install, then added in the "testing" kernel.

I ran the 'glxgears' and I'm only getting around 500 frames/sec. Now I had mepis on here before with the proprietary drivers that they install and I was well over 2500 fps. But I really don't want to use Mepis for various reasons; and only want to go slackware. Which I have an image of that as well if I need to restore to the hard drive to get any config info you might need.

The glxinfo shows that dri is not enabled. Which is no surprse, my card is not supported in the version of the Radeon Drivers issued with slackware

xorg.config has this for my install right now:

Section "Device"
Identifier "vgacard"
Driver "radeon"
#VideoRam 131072
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate

No other options are "un-commented" for it.

Now my questions:

Although I'm using slackware, I see alot of people in their threads refer to this gentoo post at:

http://odin.prohosting.com/wedge01/g...l#2_kernelopts

in that page it says to load the drivers you have to have:

# Loadable module support -> Enable loadable module support: ENABLED
( I have no idea how to verify loadable module support )

# Loadable module support -> Module unloading: ENABLED
( I have no idea how to verify module unloading)

# Loadable module support -> Automatic kernel module loading: ENABLED
( I have no idea on auto kernel module loading)

# Bus options (PCI, PCMCIA, EISA, MCA, ISA) -> PCI Express support: ENABLED (only if you have a PCIe card)
( I know I have PCI on this computer and no ISA)

# File systems -> Pseudo filesystems -> Virtual memory file system support: ENABLED
( I have no idea about pseudo files.)

# Processor type and features -> MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) support: ENABLED
( i think this is taken from ""cat /proc/cpuinfo" )

Device drivers -> Character Devices -> /dev/agpgart (AGP Support): ENABLED OR MODULE
( I believe the "testing" kernel built AGP support into the kernel)

Device drivers -> Character Devices -> (pick the correct AGP chipset option from the list, depending on your motherboard): ENABLED OR MODULE
Examples:
Motherboard: nVidia nForce2 based ---- NVIDIA nForce/nForce2 chipset support
(this is me here; I see in the "dmesg" that my pc loads support for this. the nvidia is my motherboard and on Mepis it loaded AGP modules.)

So until I know how to verify if the "testing" kernel does these items above, the only alternative is to compile a new kernel and make sure that I compile the kernel in accordence with the above.

I'm guessing but most likely I have to compile a new kernel so I can load these video drivers in and get the DRI going.

I assume that those items above are options in the "make config" part of a kernel. I can't remember I only went throught it once; and didn't do it right before.

I'm using this page here as my guide for the kernel:

http://www.slackersbible.org/node/42

So I downloaded the latest / stable version kernel (not the patch) which is kernel version 2.6.16

The slackersbible site lists two ways to untar the file in the usr/src:

1.) way is If you downloaded a file ending with .tar.bz2, extract it with:
tar -jxvf linux-2.6.X.tar.bz2

or (2): Alternative commands to extract the source code are:
For a bzipped file "bzip2 -dc linux-2.6.X.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -"

Do I need to do it the 1st way or the way with the source code? I don't know.

Now I downloaded the latest version of the ATI drivers posted on 03/08/06 they are version 8.23.7

In the readme file of the drivers ATI claims to want:
-kernel source code and kernel headers.

Are the headers included with the file I got at the kernel.org site. It's only about a 40meg download. Do they extract automatically?

Do you need any other info from me to help with your DRI page? Any comments or suggestions from you or others is truly appreciated.

As far as kernel compile goes:
When you compile, it makes everything (headers,etc)

My way of doing a compile: (Everybody does it different, also, I like to use KDE for the beginning part)

• Download sources from kernel.org (You already did that)
• Login as root
• Code:

  mkdir /usr/src/linux-2.6.xx

  where xx is your version
• Right click on downloaded kernel, 'extract to', and extract to the dir you just created
• Code:

  make xconfig

  This makes a X menu config that, to me, is easier to use. In 'options', enable all options.
• Add in support for all the stuff you need, and remove all the junk you don't (ie. appletalk network if you don't use it, etc..Remember to add support under processor for yours, and under filesystem for your root filesystem as builtin, not module, unless you like using initrd or kernel panics!) NOTE: Unless you actually have PCI-X, don't add it. PCI is already enabled. The rest of the options you listed look ok.Save the config,and exit
• Get out of X (Only for speed. You can stay if you want)
• Code:

  make

• Code:

  make modules_install

• Now I make links to stuff in my /boot directory. Example: vmlinuz is a link to my working image, vmlinuz-2.6.15.
  Code:

  cp /usr/src/linux-2.6.xx/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.xx

• Code:

  ln -s /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.xx vmlinuz

• And so on. Copy .config and System.map to /boot, and link to them like the vmlinuz above. While you're at it, make a link to /usr/src/linux-2.6.xx as /usr/src/linux
• Redo you boot manager to use the new kernel AND THE OLD ONE, and reboot. If/when it doesn't work, you can always boot to the old and try again...and again....

thank you cw. i'm going to try this right now.

as ridiculous as this may sound, I have to ask because the ATI readme/release notes' verbiage is confusing me.

they say:

"Note: In order to use the fglrx internal AGP support, you have to make sure that the kernel agpgart support is not active, i.e. it is not compiled into the kernel and the kernel modules are not loaded. If the fglrx kernel module detects that the kernel agpgart support is active, it will automatically use that even if its internal AGP support is requested in order to avoid conflicts that can cause problems under some circumstances."

so does that mean I should NOT load the nforce chipset AGP support at all?, either built-in to kernel or module for that matter. are they telling me to leave this out totally?

ugh!

I cannot get a compile right, or reboot right.

I briefly explain. I went thru your comments CW as well as compared them to the slackersbible. It seems easy ..sigh

So I go in, oh by the way the graphical compiler you recommended really is easier.

So I think I did it all by the book. But I think I must be messing up when I select the options, hardware, etc in the make program. or I'm not copying the right items over to the /boot and doing my lilo right.

I was sure to compare my selections to the recommended at gentoo FAQ for AGP stuff, I selected nforce 2 as module, i had ext2 with a check so it's in with the kernel, i also checked off all items with scsi as I have a "promise" technology scsi card in this pc, i disabled DRM,

I selected AMD processor not the 686 as I have a barton 2500 amd, maybe that's it?

I don't know but I go into lilo after all my work, it adds the kernel. I run the lilo and reboot; and all I have is the 2.4 kernel listed and then it just stops.

I've been at this all nite and tried it so many ways, I tried shilo's but no luck.

I wish, they would just have it so it looked at your current confiuration and put it into the make program for you and then you can modify / deselect or add afterwards.

I'm sure this must be one of those things that if I had someone here and seen them do it I'd never mess it up again once I been thru it. But I'm doing something wrong, and I cant tell what.

Oh by the way. I threw mepis lite on my laptop for kicks and giggles as I was loading my desktop up with the new kernel. The 2.6 kernel does work with my wireless cards. I was able to get on the net. mepis is too slow tho I really prefer the slackware on that laptop. Man i gotta get this compile stuff down. Or I may have to just put mepis on that laptop and figure out how to get fluxbox on it; and wait for the version 11 of slackware for both my laptop and desktop. I don't know.

TTYS.

My kernel config for 2.6.15 is here (Change to AMD and the agpgart stuff you need, also my network wireless and intel junk.....)

Here's my xorg.conf too.....

Also, here is my lilo.conf too.....You may need to manually edit it first, look at it, and change as needed

***Note that 'prompt' is commented out. I did that after I made sure the old kernel was not needed any more

Thank you so much cw. I downloaded the files. Moved em' over the network to different pc just in case.

I'm going to give it a try later on tonight.

Thank you so much.

You are very welcome

WOOT! I got 2.6.15.5 kernel...

LOL there is a but tho ...

I rebooted...

hit enter key for 2.6 right.

I see bios data check successful.

then screen has no text, but the hard drive light is going...so I say well let me see what happens.

i get a long pause no HD light...so I guessed,,,hmmm hot plug?

next thing you know I'm in KDE.

i looked at xorg.0.og in /var/log and it said it's missing some fonts, but not sure if that is reason for this or not.

i recall there being somehting in the make menuconfig I'm gonna check it out again

ok i reloaded from pc image.

redid it again, i think i omitted section for console text. works now

i get some errors for sound, but sound is good. gonna have to re-tweak that in the morning.

since i copied over the config to different pc just a few tweaks tomorrow i think on the kernel.

since i'm going to dump this i'm gonna see if i have dri on or not.

g'nite