My video card continues to plague me. Despite the countless tutorials and troubleshooting guides I've read through over and over again, I can't get direct rendering to work. I look through the logs and it says "Acceleration: enabled" "Direct rendering: Enabled". For some reason though, when I'm actually using X, Direct rendering is disabled.

What might cause it to suddenly shut down?

Any help is appreciated.

-Thank you in advance

What drivers are you using (kernel, or proprietary)?

Why do you feel that DRI is disabled when you're actually using X, if it's listed as enabled in the logs? I only ask because 3D hardware acceleration is not needed to run X per se, it's needed to run OpenGL applications that require 3D hardware acceleration.

Do any of these run? Start any such from a terminal so you can see any output if it exists. Do they try to run and then fail due to some 'crash' of the video drivers?

Make sure to run

glxinfo |grep 'direct rendering'

before running the program, and then again immediately after. Do you have DRI both before the program starts, and still have it after you exit the program ?

When I run glxinfo it says that direct rendering is disabled. This is how I know that direct rendering is disabled even though the X logs say it's on.

I'm using the DRI driver to try to run the card because I can't get the new ati drivers to work. I downloaded the install program from ati's website, but instead of presenting me with a gui allowing me to install drivers, the program shows nothing and on the command prompt, say
"verifying integrity"
"Uncompressing"
{uncompressing}
"Deleting temp folder"

It looks like it tried to start but just didn't and deleted the folder containing the things it was going to install.

the standard radeon driver with dri can give 3d acceleration with an ati radeon7000.
can you post the relevant parts of your xorg.conf file. ?
( modules-; device-section )

egag

...
Section "Module"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "dbe"
Load "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libdri.a"#"dri"
Load "GLcore"
Load "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.a"#"glx"
Load "xtrap"
Load "type1"
Load "speedo"
EndSection
...
UW PICO(tm) 4.8 File: /etc/X11/xorg.conf Modified
UW PICO(tm) 4.8 File: /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Section "Device"


### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac8Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "ForcePCIMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPPIOMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPusecTimeout" # <i>
Option "AGPMode" "4" # <i>
#Option "AGPFastWrite" # [<bool>]
#Option "AGPSize" # <i>
#Option "RingSize" # <i>
#Option "BufferSize" # <i>
#Option "EnableDepthMoves" # [<bool>]
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoBackBuffer" # [<bool>]
#Option "PanelOff" # [<bool>]
#Option "DDCMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CloneDisplay" # <i>
#Option "CloneMode" # [<str>]
#Option "CloneVRefresh" # [<str>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
...
Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

i miss ...

Load "glx"
Load "dri"

in the modules section.
add these two and try again.

egag

I had that, I took it out and replaced it with the path to the modules where #dri and #glx are.

Uhhhh, no. You replaced it with the path to the modules where #dri and #glx are???

First of all, why?

Second of all, how was that supposed to help? If the config couldn't find the modules using the default setting, it wasn't going to find them using some custom setting including a full path that the config probably can't even recognize as a setting.

Third of all, it's a PITA, because the location of the modules changes every time you upgrade your kernel. Really, any configuration setup that demands you to be fixing it every time you change an "unrelated" program is inherently flawed, frankly, and should be avoided if possible. Certainly you shouldn't set it up that way yourself.

And last of all, you didn't take out the comment marks ("#"), in front of #dri and #glx, which cause them to be ignored, whether there's a path there or not-- and there need not be a path at all, if the comment marks are not there. X.org is supposed to know where the modules are.

So try the setting exactly as egag has provided it:
In the modules section, and see if that works. It should, since your kernel seems to be set up correctly.

I read on ubuntu forums that replacing the name of the module with the location would make dri work. I don't know wh but someone said they got results. Changing it back to the old xorg.conf with
load "dri"
and
load "glx"
did nothing for the 3d acceleration

well...not as easy as i thought...
can you post the output of :

dmesg |grep drm

and

dmesg |grep agp

also, can you try with the line ' Option "AGPMode" "4" ' commented out ?
( that line gives prob.'s here with my 9200se )

egag

[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925
[drm] Initialized radeon 1.14.0 20050125 on minor 0: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]


...


Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected VIA KT400/KT400A/KT600 chipset
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 564M
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe8000000
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 4x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode


Commenting out the AGP section did nothing.

Have you also added,

Section "DRI"
mode 0666
EndSection

at the end of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file? This sets the DRI driver up so programs can use the driver.

neofax--he posted the relevant sections in post#5 of this thread.

slackwarefan--do you have agpgart as a module ?
i think that agp is not working ok.
also i read on the dri site that your card only patially supports direct rendering.
see :http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/DriTroubleshooting

egag

I think I've got agpgart compiled in not as a module.

you could try to recompile and choose agpgart and
the agp driver for your mobo-chipset as modules.

and btw : what fps do you get when you run " glxgears " ?

egag