Problem with Radeon 9600pro and Nforce2 chipset
 

Dual boot of WinXP and Redhat 9

Kernel 2.4.20-8
Athlon 2500+
Aopen Mk79G-N Mainboard (Nforce2 chipset)
Retail ATI 9600 Pro

I installed Redhat 9 without any problem, it used the vesa driver as I expected. The sound already worked with the base install, but the ethernet did not.

I downloaded the NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0261 source rpm, ran rpmbuild --rebuild etc... and installed the resulting rpm file. After that, the ethernet worked.

With a working network connection (Yay!), I installed apt-get and let it upgrade what it found. Things seemed to be working fine still, X was starting with the default driver.

So I downloaded the ati binary for my x86free version (4.30) and installed it. Ran the frglxconfig and copied the resulting file to XF86Config. I brought the system back up to run level 5 (telinit 5) and X started fine. Rebooted just to see, and it started fine. The only problem is no hardware acceleration.

The ATI driver was configured to use the internal agpgart, I see from reading most of the boards that I should be using the external one with some options set to try unsupported.

I'm not exactly sure how to go about it. No agpgart shows up when I list the loaded modules, though one does show up when I do a find in /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/char/agp/agpgart.o.

I also attempted to load the Nvidia agpgart kernel patch but that just sat there (no activity for hours).

So help? Let me know if anyone wants to see the conf files or any logs, I'd be happy to post them.

I think i got tell you, body. There should be a few people who got there radeon card working with kernel-2.4.20-8. but most just upgrade there kernel like me.
Here is the setup how you check the problem was.
Go go System Log and clikc XFree86 or you could just look at the xfree86 log file. it's the same. The major thing was to check did it says something about Fail to initialize the kernel modules stuff like that which caused you to run in 2d mode. if you found it. then you got to use external agpgart.

What you need to do was run "fglrxconfig" again and says use external agpgart and what it basicly means to me was an option which let you do all the modules stuff by yourself.
After you configure it as agpgart external. then add "/sbin/modprobe agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1" and "/sbin/modprobe fglrx" to your /etc/rc.local file. then just restart and it should be working well now.

Ok, I just tried what you suggested. Ran the config and placed those lines into the rc.local file.

Looking in the XFree86.0.log file I have the following:


(EE) fglrx(0): [agp] unable to acquire AGP, error "xf86_ENODEV"
(EE) fglrx(0): cannot init AGP
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] unmapping 8192 bytes of SAREA 0xe090a000 at 0x40026000
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *

What kernel upgrade are you using that has this sort of thing working? I'd be willing to upgrade/patch the kernel should someone provide a few pointers.

ok, you got it.
This is what i got when i was using your kernel. now, what you need to do was to go to www.kernel.org and download the 2.4.23 kernel and compile your kernel to get it working . Because the default kernel was kind of old and it doesn't support agp properly.

So my next step is to then download the 2.4.23 kernel? What about the nvidia agpgart patch, have you used that?

after you download kernel-2.4.23. don't add any patch to it. It was all perfect under your need for 3d. the only thing you need make sure was to compile /dev/agpgart and other radeon card support as modules and nvidia support as buildin or *. don't worry about other patch. they don't do good for you under my concern.

also, the most important thing was DON'T YOU DARE TO COMPILE DRM SUPPORT!!!!!!
That's also one of the thing that keeps you from getting 3d.
If you don't want to go through all the modules stuff. just co the old configuration at /usr/src/`uname -r`/kernel/i386/. and chose the one that's related to your cpu. things like AMD or Pentium.....
then copy that file to your new kernel's directory, but rename it as ".config" and after you cd to your kernel-2.4.23 directory. do "make oldconfig" then don't do "make deps" but do "make menuconfig" to make sure all the thing i mentioned was right. then compile it.