Required patch for the Radeon driver ?

Biased turkey · 08-25-2004, 01:23 PM

I just installed Slack 10 out of the box on my triple boot system.
Installing the ATI radeon driver ( in order to get 3D acceleration ) with the Fedora Core2 distro requires the application of a patch after installing the fglrx RPM package supplied by ATI.
Is there a similar patch required for the Slack distro ? if yes, where can I get it ?
Of course, if someone can point me to a link datailing complete the ATI driver installation with Slack 10 that'll be very appreciated.
tia

m0rt3r · 08-25-2004, 06:01 PM

You only need to download the driver, you would need the patch if you got the 2.6.xx kernel. Since you say you install slackware 10 out of the box then you won't need the patch.

To install the driver follow these steps:
1.Download the driver
3. go to text mode

Code:

init 3

2. Conver thepackage as follows

Code:

rpm2tgz fglrx-4.3.0-3.x.x.x.tgz

3.install the package,

Code:

installpkg fglrx-xxxxx.tgz

4.

Code:

cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod

5. Make sure the make.sh file is executable, if not make it executable

Code:

chmod 755 make.sh

6.now do

Code:

./make.sh

7. go to:

Code:

cd /lib/modules/fglrx

8.make sure the make_install.sh file is executable, if not do

Code:

chmod 755 make_install.sh

9. after that you will probably get a warning saying the kernel is tainted, just ignore the warning.
10. Make sure the modules is loaded by doing

Code:

lsmod | grep fglrx

if you get something like this

Code:

fglrx  somenumber

then de module is loaded, if you don't get that then do

Code:

modprobe fglrx

. NOw make sure the module is loaded.
11. do

Code:

fglrxconfig

12. answer the questions according your hardware, when it asks you something about xfree-dga and external agp gart say yes. ( when i said no the external agp driver didn't work for me)
13.do

Code:

startx

14. do

Code:

fglrxinfo

you should be getting something like this

Quote:

display: :0.0 screen:0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL rederer string: RADEON yourcardnumber
OpenGL version string: the drivernumber

14a. if when you do fglrxinfo you get mesa instead of ati, the driver did not load, what you need to do is add the following line to either /etc/module.conf /etc/modprobe.conf or /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

Code:

/sbin/modprobe fglrx

m0rt3r · 08-25-2004, 06:04 PM

One more thing before you do all of that make sure the size of the package you've created after doing rpm2tgz is the same as the .rpm package. For some reason lately i can't convert any .rpm package to tgz, i always get a smaller size of what i'm supposed to get. Let's say the fglrx.rpm file is like 500,000mb big, and when i do
rpm2tgz the fglrx.tgz is like 10mb big. I really d on't know how to solve that problem. What i do i either boot into knoppix std and do alien -to--tgz fglrx.rpm, or boot into slax and do rpm2tgz fglrx.rpm and that works.

Skazi · 08-25-2004, 06:18 PM

In my xorg.conf file, I have the Device Driver set to "radeon". I changed it from the default of "vesa" to run at higher resolutions.

Do I need to change this after installing the ATI patch?

Thanks

Cheiron · 08-25-2004, 06:38 PM

Please excuse me butting in on this thread but why wouldn't you just want to download the Xfree86 4.3 driver rpm from ATi's site, make sure your kernel headers package is installed, then, as root:

#rpm -ivh --force --nodeps fglrx*.rpm

..and watch it build itself ?

I also find that disabling the ATi agpgart when configuring X and using stock module instead improves stability of the X server and 3d apps.

m0rt3r · 08-25-2004, 11:06 PM

Skazi after you installed the ATI driver and followed the instructions you don't need to change anything to the xorg.conf file
But at the end of the installation it will gives you some options where to save the file say no like twice, then it would ask you where to save it, and say /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

If you want to install the driver as a .rpm file that is ok, i have actually done that once, but i prefer to have it as a .tgz file since that is the package that is supported by slackware. Well i hope this helps, but like i said you can also installed it as a .rpm package.

Biased turkey · 08-26-2004, 08:45 AM

First, thanks to all the nice people who took some of their time to reply.
I'm at work so I,ll report tonight about my ATI drivers installation trial(s)

To m0rt3r:
Your procedure looks almost exactly like the one for Fedora Core2, but without
installing thae patch. As you mentioned, the patch is required for the 2.6 kernel.
Of course, Slack being Slackware, there is an additional step to unpack the RPM
supplied by ATI ( rpm2tgz ..... ).
So I shouldn,t have too much problem tonight wit the installation.
Question: If I upgrade Slack to the 2.6 kernel, where can I download the patch
for ATI driver ?
Is it the same patch as the one for Fedora ? at
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/att...achmentid=3340

To Cheiron: I don't get it , I didn't know that with Slack one can use the rpm command !!
I'm a complete Slack newbie ( but I have 3 years of Redhat- Fedora under my belt )
I always thought that the reason so many people are "pimping" Slack is precisely
because it doesn,t use RPMs

Final note: The Fedora ATI installation mentions that the xorg.conf should be edited in
order to fix a mouse problem: the device must be changed from /dev/mouse
to /dev/input/mice is it correct ?

I'll post again later on from home

m0rt3r · 08-26-2004, 03:54 PM

I went to the ati site to see if the patches were still there, but i could not find them. However it seems the current drivers now can be install in a 2.6.xx kernel. I was reading the release notes and it says that fglrx kernel modules are now compiling properly on 2.6.6 and later kernels.
Here's a link to the release notes:
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/Linux_3.11.0_IIRC.pdf

I don't think the patch i was talking about is the same as the one for fedora. Yes you can install RPMs but i don't like installing rpms, i rather look for applications at linuxpackages.net, or install from source code. Actually in order to use rpms you must have installed the rpms package that came in cd1.

When i installed the driver in my computer i didn't have to edit xorg.conf. I still have /dev/mouse and it works for me.
Hope everything will work out

Cheiron · 08-26-2004, 05:52 PM

Quote:

To Cheiron: I don't get it , I didn't know that with Slack one can use the rpm command !!
I'm a complete Slack newbie ( but I have 3 years of Redhat- Fedora under my belt )
I always thought that the reason so many people are "pimping" Slack is precisely
because it doesn,t use RPMs

Correct. Use of rpm packages on Slack is unsupported however, as with everything Pat builds, you can be sure that if he decided to include it on stock cd... it works. I'm not a fan of "rpm hell" fan myself and I wouldn't go grabing every rpm out there and trying to install it on slack, but I do use it sometimes to save time on converting, modifing and rebuilding. I made this suggestions 'cause I know this perticular rpm works as it's supposed to

Yes, I also heard that Ati packages now build properly on 2.6 series kernels. Not sure if they changed their X config utility to detect kernel version and make proper changes. It be easy to find out though once you have the X config file ready.

Biased turkey · 08-26-2004, 08:47 PM

I said I would report tonight, so here it is:
Hardware 3D acceleration works fine: glxgears run at 1987 fps.
The result is almost exactly the same as with Fedora Core2.

I didnt have to edit the mouse device in xorg.conf like I did with fedora.

One more time, thanks for the helping hand.
Slack will be my second Linux distro and maybe replace Fedora on my firewall router.