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Linux - Laptop and Netbook Having a problem installing or configuring Linux on your laptop? Need help running Linux on your netbook? This forum is for you. This forum is for any topics relating to Linux and either traditional laptops or netbooks (such as the Asus EEE PC, Everex CloudBook or MSI Wind).

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Old 07-20-2003, 04:26 PM   #1
Bebo
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Smile Mandrake 9.1 and graphics on the Dell Latitude D600


I got myself a Dell Latitude D600 laptop about a month ago and installed Mandrake 9.1 on it. It has been running pretty smoothly - as long as one is satisfied with skipping the agpgart module. The D600 has the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 32MB DDR video card, aka ATI Radeon M9, and I thought I should share my success in installing the fglrx driver with agp. For more info on this video card and the D600, look at

http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/learnm...ry_details.htm

Anyway, let's take it from the start.

In the installation of Mandrake 9.1 (kernel 2.4.21-0.18) I had to choose the graphics driver by hand. The second try it worked with the ATI Radeon driver and the Generic Flat Panel 1400x1050 display. However, with this driver - which I guess is XFree86's own - I can't get the agpgart module working. There were lots of error messages in the logs of the type:

Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 816M
agpgart: Unsupported Intel chipset (device id: 3340), you might want to try agp_try_unsupported=1.
agpgart: no supported devices found.

I tried the agp_try_unsupported=1 option by appending the line

options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

to /etc/modules.conf (and ran depmod -a), but then I could not log out without freezing the screen. Since then I've been using

alias agpgart off

in the modules.conf to just disable the whole thing and get rid of the error messages.

After reading this and this post I finally got a driver that supported the XFree86 4.3 version that MDK 9.1 has. The drivers provided by ATI themselves only support XFree86 4.1 and 4.2. The driver compatible with XFree86 4.3 can be downloaded from

http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html

It's the glx1_linux_X4.3.zip file =) The Check.sh in the package did not work for me, so I downloaded the Check.sh that ATI provides at the URL mentioned above.

To avoid screwing everything up I tried to follow the advice in this post, but Mandrake does not seem to have the rpm2tgz tool, so I did

rpm -i --force fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-2.9.13.i586.rpm

which worked ok after removing the radeon module with "rmmod radeon". The only problem was that the drmP.h patch was rejected - which apparently doesn't matter. Don't forget to have the kernel source linked in /usr/src/linux when you do this.

Now you can do an "insmod fglrx", or even better, "modprobe -v fglrx" to see that the module is loaded properly.

Next thing is to run the fglrxconfig, but alas, there you have to know the horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates, which I couldn't understand where to get. (It is not written in Dell's specs.) However, this is written loud and clear in the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file! Or at least, the configuration that has been working for me with the XF86 radeon driver is there. In the Section "Monitor", it says:

HorizSync 31.5-90
VertRefresh 59-75

Aha! Be careful with this, however, as wrong settings can cause difficulties and/or damage to your display, but this setup works in my case. Or at least, my display hasn't shown any sign of falling apart - yet =] (Is there anyone here who knows what they really are?) In the XF86Config-4 file there are also the mouse and keyboard settings that the fglrxconfig asks for. My choices for the display mode were

"1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" for 24-bit

All of these are probably not needed, but hey, what do I know? =)

In the fglrxconfig I also chose to use the built-in agp support of the fglrx module instead of loading the kernel agpgart module.

...restarting the Xserver...

Oh no! Mouse isn't working! Lucky me that I had put the old XF86Config-4 somewhere. Just change the erroneous mouse setup in the new file to the old settings. Also, I noticed that the sound in xine didn't work in the configuration that fglrxconfig made. Looking in the old config file - load the module v4l in the Module section.

If there are any other problems, they can probably be fixed in the same way since the old and new XF86Config-4 files are very similar - the only real difference is the Device section that now defines the fglrx module instead of the old radeon module. Now you can also disable the kernel radeon module by putting an "alias radeon off" in /etc/modules.conf. I noticed that my module was loaded but unused - use lsmod to check this - so this posed no problem. It's anyway XF's driver you're using and not the kernel module.

It might be that the DRI isn't enabled, which can be checked by the issuing "glxinfo". In that case, this might be to some help - worked for me.

In hindsight, I've had some problems with X freezing, but since I changed my XF86Config-4 to the old "default" file but with the Section "Device" changed to the one set up by fglrxconfig this seems to be fixed.

The DRI project now seems to have appropriate drivers but I haven't tested them.

I hope this will make life easier for some of you.

Cheers,

Stefan

Last edited by Bebo; 08-14-2003 at 09:00 AM.
 
Old 08-20-2003, 10:14 AM   #2
gt2690b
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wow.. good post.. i'll try it when i get home... i've done all that stuff except i didnt have my kernel source linked before i did the rpm force install.. (plus i don't know if i have the right kernel src).. but this helps.. thanks
 
Old 08-20-2003, 10:14 AM   #3
gt2690b
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also..i'd like to add.. what a pain in the ass linux is
 
Old 08-20-2003, 10:51 AM   #4
Bebo
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No no, it's ATI that's the pain in the ass
 
Old 08-20-2003, 11:53 AM   #5
gt2690b
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i dunno, man.. not only did my radeon 9500 and games work within 5 minutes of stickin it in on xp.. but i was able to use a hacked driver and it performs like a radeon 9700 pro (enabled 4 more pipelines)
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:02 PM   #6
gt2690b
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ok... when i run
rpm -i --force fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-2.9.13.i586.rpm
it says
*** WARNING ***
Tailored kernel module for fglrx not present in your syst
You must go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod subdir
and execute './make.sh' to build a fully customed kernel
Afterwards go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run './make_insta
in order to install the module into your kernel's module
(see readme.txt for more details.)

As of now you can still run your XServer in 2D, but hardw
OpenGL will not work and 2D graphics will lack performanc

failed.
*** Error: no kernel module build environment - please co
Installed: qt3 (gcc 3.2) based control panel application


So What am i doing wrong? anyone?
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:05 PM   #7
gt2690b
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oh and when i do the run ./make.sh like it says.. i get:


ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
Error:
kernel includes at /usr/src/linux/include do not match current kernel.
they are versioned as "2.4.21"
instead of "2.4.21-0.13mdk".
you might need to adjust your symlinks:
- /usr/include
- /usr/src/linux
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:15 PM   #8
gt2690b
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o ok.. i'm downloading 2.4.21-013mdk src now.. don't know if i could have just changed a name but oh well
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:16 PM   #9
gt2690b
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i'm answering my own questions to help myslef and anyone else that may have these problems.. i'm bored now while this downloads too
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:48 PM   #10
gt2690b
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no i guess i dont have a complete kernel souroce.. i downloaded an rpm and when i extract it, it says its not complete..wtf
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:50 PM   #11
Bebo
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I think ATI should/could write a driver for XFree 4.3 too

Anyway, I got the first part of the "*** WARNING ***" too, but not the thing about the 2D stuff... So how's it going with the kernel?
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:52 PM   #12
gt2690b
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o i guess i got the kernel and not the source kernel.. dam dam dam
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:54 PM   #13
gt2690b
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ok..download the SOURCE kernel now.. which is bigger.. it must be on my cd somewhere but i'm not home.. o wait.. i can still get it, huh
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:55 PM   #14
gt2690b
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sweet..i left the cd in the drive
 
Old 08-20-2003, 12:56 PM   #15
gt2690b
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o no.. the source kernel is on cd2
 
  


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