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Problems with Slackware 13.1 KDE Desktop Effects on ATI Radeon HD 4850

I'm having a lot of problems with Slackware 13.1 32-bit and the KDE desktop effects.

My graphics card is listed as follows.

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4850]

The ATI driver installed is "ati-driver-installer-10-5-x86.x86_64.run". I had to build the Slackware specific package in order to get it to install.

The driver works with XFCE4 compositing and does appear to speed up the display considerably. However, when I try to enable KDE desktop effects I get various errors, all saying that some or all of the desktop effects cannot be enabled.

I verified that I am using the same settings in "xorg.conf" that worked for Slackware version 13.0.

I am also having problems with KDE (apparently) crashing and returning me to the logon prompt.

Any suggestions will be appreciated. This seems to be an ongoing problem with Slackware and ATI drivers, since I've run into installation and reliability problems in the last three releases.

I did manage to get Slackware 13.0 working well, with only occasional crashes but it took many months of experimenting. I'd rather not go through that process again.

On a positive note, the Slackware specific build of this ATI driver installed without any patches, though the generic package would not install.

If you go in and try to enable desktop effects now, what's the specific error you get?

For what it's worth, I've had issues getting the latest versions of KDE4 to enable compositing when using recent versions of fglrx on both Slackware and Ubuntu. Since opengl compositing works just fine with compiz, though, I've always considered this to a bug in KDE4 (and, typically, just stick with compiz when I want to use compositing with fglrx).

Adam

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamk75 (Post 3994868)

I seem to get different results every time that I try.

Sometimes (infrequently) everything works OK and all the desktop effects work until I either log out or reboot. After logging out or rebooting, the settings dialog indicates that compositing has been disabled. If I click the button to enable compositing, it appears to work but compositing still does not work.

If I actually un-check the box for desktop effects and then re-check the box I get an error popup saying that desktop effects could not be enabled. That is either a single pop up in the middle of the desktop or sometimes a notification at the right of the panel bar listing all the specific desktop effects that could not be enabled.

xorg.conf

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"

        Identifier    "X.org Configured"

        Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0

        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"

        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection



Section "Files"

        ModulePath  "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/local"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/misc"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/CID"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"

        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"

EndSection



Section "Module"

        Load  "extmod"

        Load  "dri2"

        Load  "dbe"

        Load  "dri"

        Load  "glx"

EndSection



Section "InputDevice"

        Identifier  "Keyboard0"

        Driver      "kbd"

        Option            "XkbModel" "pc101"

        Option            "XkbLayout" "us"

EndSection



Section "InputDevice"

        Identifier  "Mouse0"

        Driver      "mouse"

        Option            "Protocol" "auto"

        Option            "Device" "/dev/input/mice"

        Option            "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"

EndSection



Section "Monitor"

        Identifier  "Monitor0"

        VendorName  "Monitor Vendor"

        ModelName    "Monitor Model"

EndSection



Section "Monitor"

        Identifier  "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"

        Option            "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"

        Option            "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"

        Option            "DPMS" "true"

EndSection



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    "AccelMethod"                # [<str>]

        #Option    "offscreensize"              # [<str>]

        #Option    "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]

        #Option    "ignoreconnector"            # [<str>]

        #Option    "forcereduced"              # [<bool>]

        #Option    "forcedpi"                  # <i>

        #Option    "useconfiguredmonitor"        # [<bool>]

        #Option    "HPD"                        # <str>

        #Option    "NoRandr"                    # [<bool>]

        #Option    "RROutputOrder"              # [<str>]

        #Option    "DRI"                        # [<bool>]

        #Option    "TVMode"                    # [<str>]

        #Option    "ScaleType"                  # [<str>]

        #Option    "UseAtomBIOS"                # [<bool>]

        #Option    "AtomBIOS"                  # [<str>]

        #Option    "UnverifiedFeatures"        # [<bool>]

        #Option    "Audio"                      # [<bool>]

        #Option    "HDMI"                      # [<str>]

        #Option    "COHERENT"                  # [<str>]

        Identifier  "Card0"

        Driver      "radeonhd"

        VendorName  "Unknown Vendor"

        BoardName  "Unknown Board"

        BusID      "PCI:2:0:0"

EndSection



Section "Device"

        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"

        Driver      "fglrx"

        BusID      "PCI:2:0:0"

EndSection



Section "Screen"

        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"

        Device    "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"

        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"

        DefaultDepth    24

        SubSection "Display"

                Viewport  0 0

                Depth    24

        EndSubSection

EndSection

I noticed that my device is listed twice in "xorg.conf". That is the same as the working "xorg.conf" from 13.0. However, one thing that I want to try is removing the "radeonhd" device definition. I'm wondering if two drivers are being initialized for the same device. If I understand correctly, the "fglrx" driver is the proprietary ATI driver and the "radeonhd" is the generic driver included as part of X-Windows. I will post the results after I test with the extra device definition removed.

I have the HD3200 and all effects work right off the bat.

Try without the ATI driver first.

did you do

Code:

aticonfig --initial

after installing the driver and then reboot? it seems you have an xorg.conf configured for the ati/radeon/radeonhd drivers, not for fglrx. fglrx creates its own xorg.conf file which needs no additions for the 3D acceleration to work correctly.

His xorg.conf file is fine. In the ServerLayout section he's using the aticonfig-Screen[0]-0 Screen which, in turn, uses the aticonfig-Device[0]-0 which is using the fglrx driver. There is nothing wrong with having other Device sections, as long as they aren't being used by the ServerLayout section.

Having said all that, if the OP's primary goal is to use KDE desktop effects, I would recommend the open source 'radeon' driver over fglrx.

Adam

I'll give the open source driver another look. It has apparently improved a lot since I last tried it.

More important to me even than the desktop effects is to make VirtualBox work with 3D graphics to run Windows guest operating systems. The VirtualBox software has not reached that point yet, though 2D graphics does now mostly work with KDE on the host Linux OS. I do development on a Windows XP guest OS running on a Vista host OS. I would like Linux as an alternative host OS.

I was able to work around the problem by changing a setting.

In the Desktop Effects System Settings, Advanced tab I checkmarked the box for "Disable functionality checks". So far that seems to have solved the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik_FL (Post 3996127)

Thank you for sharing this Erik!

"Disable functionality checks" worked for me too!

compose effects again yay!

As of today I was able to get desktop effects to work after updating to "current".

Please refer to this for solving problems with a missing "liblzma.so.o".
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4159771

I also could only get my desktop effects to work from root. I copied my "kwinrc" from root to my user's directory and then desktop effects worked. I'm not sure exactly what was wrong in "kwinrc" for my normal user account.