LinuxQuestions.org - how to get ATI drivers to work?

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how to get ATI drivers to work?

I have the latest ATI drivers installed in Slackware 10.1. I thought everything was working smooth but I realized when I ran "glxinfo" that direct rendering was not on. It turns out that the fglrx driver module is not running on my system. When I do a "modprobe fglrx" it finds the module, but it says that the operation is not permitted..

I am wondering if the reason the module isn't loading is because I have the kernel configured wrong? Originally I had the kernel's own AGPgart built in to the kernel, so I removed that from the kernel and fglrx will still not load. Do I need to do anything with the "Direct Rendering Managment" section of the kernel under Character Devices? My current kernel has Direct Rendering enabled.

Any help is appreciated.

You need AGPGART as a module in the kernel.

Make sure the 3 following lines are uncommented in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Code:

Section "DRI"

    Mode 0666

EndSection

Restart x and it should be working

AGPGART is probably not the issue here - I have it compiled in, and it never causes any bother

Your problem is probably Direct Rendering Manager - disable it in your kernel.

Quote:

Originally posted by glussier
Make sure the 3 following lines are uncommented in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Code:

Section "DRI" Mode 0666 EndSection

Restart x and it should be working

Yeah, those are uncommented. The fglrx still doesn't load. I think there is some kind of incompatibility on my system between the kernel and the driver for some reason, I have no idea.

maybe a stupid Q., but you do have ' Driver "fglrx" ' in your xorg.conf file ?
( in the ' device ' section. )

egag

egag- yeah I have the 'fglrx' in the config file. I just did a Google search, and from what I read (actually an old post on this forum) it says that the fglrx driver and Nvidia Nforce 2 based motherboards cause problems with ATI's Linux drivers. I have an Nforce 2 motherboard so I wonder about that. I am still not sure what to do to fix it.

As I posted earlier, have you tried disabled Direct Rendering Management yet? It is prone to interfere with fglrx, and cannot co-exist with it in newer kernels (2.6.11+).

in your first post you said that everything looked good.
which driver was/is loaded then ?

i got a " not permitted " error when doing a " modprobe fglrx " while the " radeon " driver was loaded.

egag

Quote:

Originally posted by egag
in your first post you said that everything looked good.
which driver was/is loaded then ?

i got a " not permitted " error when doing a " modprobe fglrx " while the " radeon " driver was loaded.

egag

By looked good I mean that the install of the ATI drivers went fine, no errors at all and it properly set up my xorgconf file. But then when I did a lsmod I was disappointed to see that they weren't actually loaded up. So I mean that since the install went fine I had originally assumed that the driver was working so I didn't initially think there was any problems until I tried to install a few 3-d games that just give me pages of errors because of opengl problems.

Right now when I do an lsmod there are no drivers loaded that have anything to do with video or 3d. Just my sound drivers are loaded. I tried to put the following in to rc.local just for experimentation purposes:

modprobe agpgart
modprobe fglrx

but that doesn't start up fglrx either. It just spits out the same error.

I found this thread here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...03/11/4/114078
that is kind of helpful. It references a thread by a poster named "EnigmaZ" but does not link to the thread. I have tried to search for the thread but I didn't turn up anything. Maybe if I can find that thread I will be able to figure out how to fix it.

Problem solved. Thank you cathectic. I compiled a new kernel and disabled the kernel's own Direct Rendering code and fglrx loads up when I do a startx. Also, when I do a glxinfo it says I have direct rendering turned on. I think I owe cathectic somethinig now, I should have tried that right away.

I read all of the ATI documentation about their Linux drivers and they do not mention that. I would wish that they had better information. Yesterday I was reading an OpenGL in Linux site that said you should have the Direct Rendering drivers enabled in the kernel so that was part of the reason why I was stubborn about changing my kernel.