Talk:ATI Driver

From openSUSE

Why is it that every thing in SUSE Linux is broken by default? The ATI Rage Mobility P/M driver does not provide 3D acceleration or Open GL by default.

I believe that it is Novell's policy to exlcude all proprietary kernel drivers as per possible legal ramifications and due to the position of the linux kernel developer regarding proprietary kernel modules. Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy does, immediately after installation).

Wi-FI with a USR 8514 PCMCIA card doesn't work, either. Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy does, immediately after installation).

USR probably does not provide open source drivers for their hardware
so refer to the above statement about proprietary modules. If not report a bug to the Novell Bugzilla.

And the media players won’t play Microsoft streaming audio. What's up with that?

Microsoft holds a potential patent infringment lawsuit against any company that decodes the windows media file format
without paying patent usage fees. If Ubuntu plays this format, it probably means that Canonical is paying microsoft so that they won't be sued. (Same thing with mp3, mp4, etc)

Don’t get me wrong, although there is a lot to like about Ubuntu linux, I am in now way trying to give them a free plug. I am just using it as an example because it works. I actually don’t prefer Ubuntu because it only comes with Gnome desktop, which I don't care for that much, and it has far less apps than SUSE.

And if I have to manually get 3D acceleration and Open GL working with my ATI Rage Mobility P/M, why is it that every How To article I find, including this one, is vague. All of the articles either leave out steps that us newbie’s really need (such as chmod a+x ati-driver-installer*.run), or they do not mention how to handle error messages you might encounter. These error messages might seem simple to a veteran, but us newbies don't have a clue and get stuck.

You are free to update the article with any piece of information that you may find missing.

Get with the times SUSE and provide working drivers for the ATI Rage Mobility P/M and the USR 8514 PCMCIA card.

A much better solution would be for ATI/NVidia to get with the times and provide stable opensource drivers or at least specifications for their cards and hardware.

I guess I will have to move on to Ubuntu, or some other distro that does have working drivers.

You may want to consider looking for hardware vendors that support their products in linux for when you next purchase a machine.
Intel does a pretty good job for most of their hardware if you don't mind not having extreme 3D GFX capabilities.

ATI mobility Radeon 9700

I am a newbie with SUSE and I am trying to use it on my Toshiba laptop and I am not sure if it is a driver problem or not. So I am stating the problem with some questions

The first boot after the installation was complete, the following happened: (either kdm or gdm) i get the blue wallpaper (and sometimes the splash screen) and then the desktop freeze: no toolbars, and no desktop icons. and the mouse cursor can move however. For 1000s reboots after that, the same happens, and inconsistently, it only worked correctly for two times.

When booting and switching to run level 5, i get a failed service related to ati which is "atieventsd"

From the console, fglrxinfo gets the following: Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key Error: unable to open display :0

also OUTPUT of : cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep "(EE)" (display manager = gdm & kdm) : (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) inknown (EE) AIGLX error : dlsym for __driCreatenewScreen_20050727 failed (/usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so: undefined symbol __driCreatenewScreen_20050727) (EE) AIGLX : reverting to software rendering

I added the line: load "rdi" in the modules section of xorg.conf and the error reduced to: (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown

Also, the mouse cursor does not exist on the console

So is this a driver problem or problems ??

Errors + questions

1. This server ftp.x.org does not seem to exist, it is mentioned in the line: xf86 driver's main download location is ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/individual/driver/xf86-video-ati-6.6.3.tar.gz or ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/individual/driver/xf86-video-ati-6.6.3.tar.bz2. But this email refers to the correct place: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-announce/2006-October/000137.html
2. What to do after the open ati driver has been build and installed (after this line: and retry make. just simple :D). Should sax2 be run, or are things automatically using the new driver?
3. This line: Follow the instructions for building a distro specific package as found on the install instructions (about 4/5ths down the page): http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html. Refers to rpm build instructions, I don't see them. Not on ATI driver opensuse wiki page nor on the ATI driver download page.
4. As the /usr/share/sax/api/data/cdb/Cards db for my card refers to the 3DDriver = fglrx driver, should I be using the proprietary driver, or can I use the xf86 one?
5. There is no need to change the inittab ("id:5:initdefault:" to "id:3:initdefault:"). One can start opensuse linux with 'linux 3' to start in runlevel 3.
6. When adding beryl to the "Sessions" in Gnome, you only need to add beryl-manager. Adding beryl forced me to restart the window manager after each reboot.

--Rbos 16:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging with ATI / Deleting

Hi my name is Nick the author of en.opensuse.org/ATI - I saw on this page that it has been suggested to merge this page with my ATI page. I am posting this here and not going to edit this page because 1 I am not the author of ATI_Driver and do not want to offend the original writer and 2. I don't particular care for any of the information on this page.

I really would not like the pages to merge as most of the information on this page is old and not relevant due to the newer drivers. Additionally my page is pretty clean and is well presented and do not wish for it to be mangled with derelict information. I worked very hard on that page.

Now I could see maybe adding some of the troubleshooting points to the ATI page, but personally I'd say to just delete this page. I am open for suggestions.

--Nick 22:40, 11 April 2007

Ok, good points. The thing is we should have only one ATI howto. Since I don't have ATI I found it hard to say which one is better. But I believe you. Let's mark ATI_Driver for deletion. Maybe you could add a paragraph about the simple ATi-installation using the KMPs from the ATI-repo?

-- cb400f 13:30, 12 April 2007

Personally, I am not an ATI user either. I made the ATI page after getting my younger brother working back when ATI didn't support Xorg 7.2. Anyways, those of you who do use ATI need to help voice your opinions on what you think needs to be added to the ATI page.

From what I can see the only thing that would need to be added to the ATI page if needed would be some of the Troubleshooting points. ATI users that have found anything on the ATI_Driver page helpful or not helpful would be good to know.

--Nick 18:18, 12 April 2007

No need to discuss any longer. I took matters into my own hands and took the Troubleshooting points I felt might be useful and then cleaned them up and merged onto ATI. ATI_Driver can now be deleted.

--Nick 21:32, 12 April 2007

Alternative installation information, via YAST

http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/ati-installer-HOWTO.html has other/additional installation information that mentions that there is a proper repository by ATI that can be used directly with YAST on 10.2.

Any experience? Does this work as good as installation by hand?

jschrod 13:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work. The driver they have is old and won't work right with Xorg 7.2. Just follow the Install procedures on the ATI page and you'll be fine.

--Nick 23:36, 25 April 2007

Any idea why www2.ati.com/suse/10.2 results in 'file not found'? i cannot add the repository to yast.

Fpflug 02:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems it was a downtime of the server at the end.

Fpflug 13:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yet, another topic: latest ATI driver, 8.42 left behind my monitor. With the driver 8.40.4 and 8.41.3 (if good recall) had could recognize my belinea 2225 S1W (defined in sax2 as max 2225 S1W).

Fpflug 13:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I am trying to install the ATI drivers on openSuSE 10.2 for days now, without any success. My latest problem is that the screen goes blank when starting the X,. in both cases gdm, or kdm.

I must note first that I am using a D processor x64 bit, with two ATI cards -- RadeOn x850, x1600. The card I am trying to access now is the RadeOn x850.

My xorg.conf seems to be written properly, and the xorg.log seems to produce the proper values -- without any error -- although I can not tell whether it finished the process, if the card didn't halt at the last part. Thus, I do not understand why I am getting this blank screen.

If anybody see this please leave me a message here, or at my page.

Thanks in advance, Nighthawk

--Nighthawk Posted on 21:56, 1 May 2007

X11 Errors

After my first initial installation I had to do some editing to the X.org configuration file.

First of all, I have a Radeon X1600 (RV515 7140) card, running with a Philips flat screen that runs at 1280x1024@75hz at best. Running any lower than that makes the text and image look pixeled.

Any setting below that worked for me, but setting it to 1280x1024 resulted in a blank screen. X starting and all, but no screen.

Necessary changes made

Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
  Modeline      "1280x1024" 135 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
EndSection

changed to

Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
EndSection

in Section "Monitor"

DisplaySize  376 301

changed to

DisplaySize  380 300

After changing this the card worked perfect with the ATI drivers coming with openSuSE 10.3 I think Sax2 are the one causing a bad setting like this because these settings was all generated with xorg.conf when I set it to do a 1280x1024 setting.

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 - openSUSE 10.3 - ATI fglrx 8.28.8 driver

I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 600M) with a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 video card, running openSUSE 10.3 (GM) x86 (32 bit). ATI supported this card (and older cards) until driver version 8.28.8, and dropped support for these cards from the subsequent versions of the driver.

I did the ATI driver one-click install for openSUSE 10.3, but it installed a much newer version of the ATI driver, so Sax2 configuration failed. So, I manually added the openSUSE 10.1 Yast repository and installed the ATI driver 8.28.8. I installed these two files:

   x11-video-fglrx - installation went fine.
   ati-fglrxG01-kmp-default - complained of several missing dependencies, so I ignored them all and installed it.

Then, if I run Sax2, it will recognize the card correctly, but when I click "Test", it would fail. I reviewed the X.org.99.log file, it said module fglrx not found. Here's an extract from the log file:

   (II) Loading extension GLX
   (II) LoadModule: "fglrx"
   (WW) Warning, couldn't open module fglrx
   (II) UnloadModule: "fglrx"
   (EE) Failed to load module "fglrx" (module does not exist, 0)

modprobe fglrx also returns that the module was not found. I think the 8.28.8 package for openSUSE 10.1 does not support the new kernel and also X.org 7.2

I also manually tried compiling it by downloading the installer file for 8.28.8 from the ATI website. Compilation failed with a large number of errors.

Can someone build an rpm of the 8.28.8 driver version that is compatible with openSUSE 10.3 and X.org 7.2, please? If not, can someone give some pointers about compiling this module from the ATI installer package on openSUSE 10.3, please? Thanks.

aticonfig and Xgl/compiz

When you search the internet for aticonfig and Xgl/compiz there are quite many links to Ubuntu related Pages where people manage to get aticonfig working by typing

DISPLAY=:0 aticonfig --someoption

This never works on openSuSE, thus I wonder what Ubuntu does different than openSuSE. If somebody knows, it would be extremely helpful to make a section somewhere in the ATI article. --Lizzarddude 23:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

3d test in "The Hard Way" and not "The easy way?

Is there a reason why that is? If it was like that for a reason then please let me know, and fix it. vendion 01:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)