everything went so smoothly last time, it does indeed seem if i can just get rid of those pesky mesa drivers i might be in business. i'll bet a zillion dollars that even when the ati drivers were loading, it was the mesa libs that was still messing things up as some sort of conflict. </uninformed guess> i'll search around tomorrow, see what i can come up with for removing them. thanks again, i wouldn't even have gotten this far without your and DaOne's help!

Yes. I had a whole 285 frames per second with Mesa loaded. It was a mess'a alright. So yes, I think even though it doesn't appear so, you have made progress and your kernel config seems fine. We just need to focus on making sure that the Mesa lib is completely removed.

Good night. Your welcome. We'll get it working one way or another.

Update:

I decided to update my kernel to 2.6.1. I did just that, did a reinstall of the ati drivers and from the prompt without rebooting did a modprobe fglrx. Upon doing a glxgears found 140fps. Then a glxinfo showed Mesa running.

That's correct. Mesa.

Bewildered at why this even shows up I rebooted to see if my configuation would solve the issues. It did. It works.

I still believe that Mesa is an issue. I thought I had solved this by removing the previously named mesa lib files, but I guess I had not. Upon reboot I ran glxgears and to my amazement I had reloaded the ATI drivers and everything was working fine.

So.... Here is my take on it.

1) Mesa is a problem as we have been discussing.
2) Even though I removed the previously posted libs, Mesa is still a problem.
3) I have messed with my rc.modules conf and possibly other configuration files previously that must have fixed the issues with the situation with loading the fglrx drivers.

Bit tired now, but I have it working fine. This is where you are csynaptical
with your situation of Mesa loading up again after recompiling the drivers. Same happened here just now.

Try a reboot and glxgears again. If this doesn't work for you, we can go over the modules.conf, xfreeconfig, any other files I've changed and see what we have different.

As of now, 2.6.1 and the ATI drivers are humming along nicely.

Sorry it took me awhile to get back...I lost a hard drive lastnight. Lucky for me it was the Windows XP drive...but unlucky for me that it had alot of stuff that I didn't backup. Oh well, live and learn.

I am going to try some ideas here on my end. I think Hooper is on to the problem so far. I'll check back when I get a chance.

sorry to hear about your hard drive, DaOne, that's gotta suck.

i'm still searching around this morning, reading the mesaGL site mostly. i tried installing the latest 5.1 version thinking that might overwrite any old version, and then i'd be able to remove it cleanly, but it didn't work. i'm glad to see you still have mesa showing up, though! (glad in a roundabout kind of way )

out of curiousity, what DRI and GLX settings do you have in your XF86Config-4? (edit > i.e., are they loaded in that beginning section? i wasn't sure if they should be loaded or not.) i am going to start looking through config files, see if with my limited knowledge i can spot anything that looks suspicious. l8r

Sorry about the hard disk DaOne. I had an IBM go out just a couple months ago. Replaced it with a Western Digital. Years ago the drives were garbage, but I must say, this one is doing quite nicely with this 8MB cache. Can't complain.

This is the very top of my config.

========================
Section "dri"
# Access to OpenGL ICD is allowed for all users:
Mode 0666
# Access to OpenGL ICD is restricted to a specific user group:
# Group 100 # users
# Mode 0660
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "speedo"
Load "glx" # libglx.a
Load "dri" # libdri.a

EndSection
======================

synaptical,

Why don't you try this. /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

### AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) GART support ###
# This module takes care of programming the GART (part of your motherboard's
# chipset that handles gathering data from memory and passing it to the
# card) and enables faster AGP transfers. The AGP GART module is required
# to use AGP features of your 3D rendering video card. You'll need this to
# use XFree86's direct rendering support, for example.

# /sbin/modprobe agpgart
/sbin/modprobe fglrx


I know this sounds a bit strange. But after last night having mesa come back to rehaunt after the new compile, I think the issue might be that mesa is getting in the way of fglrx loading. As mentioned, upon reboot ATI was working. Thus means some changes in my rc scripts loaded the drivers properly. dmesg confirmed this.

that's where i've always had /sbin/modprobe fglrx. how are you doing agpgart? i've got it both as a module, and into the kernel, and it's not working.

btw, the new mesaGL broke something with 2.6.0, so i recompiled 2.6.1 from the complete source instead of the patch, and the fglrx drivers installed okay this time. that might also have had something to do with me using the correct method for that this time. anyway, i am now using 2.6.1, but no matter what i do, i get the mesas.

sero@homer:~ $ 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

i'm getting this at the end of dmesg -- a few things look messed up, and that mtrr message looks very suspicious. maybe i should try compiling with that disabled?

Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- char-major-10-134. error = 256
mtrr: 0xe0000000,0x4000000 overlaps existing 0xe0000000,0x1000000
[fglrx:firegl_addmap] *ERROR* mtrr allocation failed (-22)
[fglrx:firegl_unlock] *ERROR* Process 582 using kernel context 0
atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x7a on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x7a on isa0060/serio0).

Check out THIS ...there is alot of good stuff there that may work in this situation. I am looking for more info on how to kill those mesa libs...

Hmmm. Ick. The all to infamous mtrr error. If I remember right, wasn't there a patch for this on the Athlon DaOne? I know this has to be an Athlon/ATI issues coupled with the mesa issue.

I believe I read where someone disabled mtrr within the kernel compile. I wouldn't jump on that yet though, there may be a patch.

We can try the AMD patch...it can be found HERE.

What you'll want to do is this from the console...
remove the /lib/modules/fglrx directory (just to make sure we are dealing with a clean directory)
rmmod fglrx (to remove the fglrx module if loaded)
If you have the fglrx-drivers.tgz package (hopefully you've converted them from an rpm to a tgz), copy the .tgz package to /.
tar xzvf fglrx-drivers.tgz
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
save the patch to this directory then run patch -p0<fglrx-3.2.8-fix-amd-adv-spec.patch
run ./make.sh
cd ..
./make_install
fglrxconfig

Reboot, then see what you have from lsmod. If the modules (agpgart, nvidia-agp, and fglrx) don't load right away...just startx...then lsmod again to see if they loaded. If not, or if x doesn't start...

From the console, load them as appropriate...nvidia-agp should load with agpgart. Then try again to startx.

By the way...I wonder how waever made out with 2.6.1??? I believe he was stuck somewhere around this point also.

hi everybody, thx for helping me so far ^^
I just got through my problems, now glxgears is giving me 2000+ fps, nice
I resolved the problem after upgrading to kernel 2.6.1 and applying the AMD patch
The problem so far was caused by the "incomplete" nvidia-agp module in the 2.6.0 kernel; the 2.6.1 has the fix.
ok, that's about it.. again thanks for all your help ^^

PS:
for everybody using nforce board and AMD and tired of getting the mtrr allocation error, I suggest you try the 2.6.1 kernel. I think it is the only way. It is a bug in the kernel, not in the fglrx. everything else about the config, you can follow from the pages in this thread. Good luck...

i've been using that patch all along, along with the other fglrx-2-vmadder-whatever one. i tried the other fglrx driver version from that thread you linked to, but that wouldn't even patch. so i just went back to the original and redid everything. i just can't bypass the mesas, and now apparently there's this new problem with the mtrr and failed modprobe (?) -- i am usually pretty persistent, but i think i am giving up on this one!

to make matters worse, all the recompiling and lilo-ing has messed something up in my MBR, and now i am getting a mismatched geometry error when running lilo, and a hang-time delay before the lilo screen comes up -- if it even does. sometimes it doesn't even come on screen, it's just black, and i have to guess at when it's up and scroll down blindly if i'm using the test kernel, and hope i've booted to the test. so that is making me kind of nervous, and i think i will have to try to fix that if possible before it breaks even worse and i can't boot into my system anymore.

what an ordeal! i don't even do 3D gaming, etc. -- i just wanted the increased performance in 2D. now i'm not even sure it's worth all this! i might just get a cheap matrox card on ebay or something and get rid of these radeon problems forever.