ATI Radeon X1300Pro FC6 installation problems

[biofedora]

I have recently obtained a Dell Optiplex 745 with the ATI Radeon X1300Pro video card. I have installed Fedora Core 6 x86_64 and updated via yum. I would like to get the ATI card up and running as well as dual monitor support. I have spent a considerable amount of time looking through the threads and am having a fair amount of trouble understanding what is necessary to the point of not knowing where to begin. I am fairly experienced with Linux but am essentially a bioinformatics programmer not a sysadmin or very experienced with graphics cards and X configuration etc. Our institution is a Windows shop so I am also essentially the Linux support guy here. My programming to date was on an older machine - RH 7.3 vintage (everything worked great so i didn't bother keeping up - lol). I would appreciate any guidance I can get. I also apologize if I am posting to the wrong place etc. I have done my best to do the initial groundwork. At this point I have a GUI but no dual monitor support.

Thanks in advance for your help and please let me know what additional information I should supply.

[leigh123linux]

Try this howto

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=626640&postcount=1

[alpha645]

I have recently obtained a Dell Optiplex 745 with the ATI Radeon X1300Pro video card. I have installed Fedora Core 6 x86_64 and updated via yum. I would like to get the ATI card up and running as well as dual monitor support. I have spent a considerable amount of time looking through the threads and am having a fair amount of trouble understanding what is necessary to the point of not knowing where to begin. I am fairly experienced with Linux but am essentially a bioinformatics programmer not a sysadmin or very experienced with graphics cards and X configuration etc. Our institution is a Windows shop so I am also essentially the Linux support guy here. My programming to date was on an older machine - RH 7.3 vintage (everything worked great so i didn't bother keeping up - lol). I would appreciate any guidance I can get. I also apologize if I am posting to the wrong place etc. I have done my best to do the initial groundwork. At this point I have a GUI but no dual monitor support.

Thanks in advance for your help and please let me know what additional information I should supply.

For these newer cards, I suggest you use the ones from ati.com. Compile the kernelmodules your own to get the card running. If you need help with that, ask :) .

[biofedora]

Thanks to all who have taken a look at my post and to the two who replied. Please don't take what I am about to say as an evasion of effort in getting this done but I really am having trouble deciding where to start on this. I looked at the post suggested by leigh123 (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...640&postcount=1) and also looked at the sticky at the top of this forum (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2006-February/msg01565.html) which seemed somewhat leery of the ATI drivers. I have also investigated the ATI technical support concerning the use of their drivers. The problem here is all mine i.e. I am a bioinformaticist/programmer with little X configuration beyond simple configuration. To be honest I don't understand the bulk of the acronyms/jargon involved but I will begin plowing through it immediately. If anyone can help me out it will be greatly appreciated. I am willing and very interested in learning but I can only try my supervisor's patience for so long - lol. When I get things worked out in the end I would also be more than happy to post an in-depth walkthrough "for dummies" like myself (I'm sure there are many others out there without the requisite graphics knowledge). So where do I start? ATI drivers or not - do they end up blowing out the installed libGL et? Do I go the livna.org route?
Thanks in advance.

[leigh123linux]

The livna driver is built from the ATI driver so they are equal on performance , the livna driver doesn't blow out the installed libGl.
Another plus for the livna driver is

1. it gets updated when there is a kernel change
2. you can use the livna-config-display tool to setup your xorg.conf

[biofedora]

Thanks for replying Leigh123. I went ahead as follows (directly from your suggested posting http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...640&postcount=1):
yum install livna-config-display
In /etc/X11/xorg.conf Device section changed:
Driver "drivername" --> Driver "radeon"
Rebooted.
rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
yum install kmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs-32bit
yum update kmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs-32bit
service fglrx restart
This last gave the following results:
Checking for module fglrx.ko: [FAILED]
fglrx.ko for kernel 2.6.20-1.2933.fc6 was not found. [WARNING]
fglrx DRI will not be enabled until one is found. [WARNING]

Have I messed something up here?
livna-config-display --> now displays options etc as follows (there was nothing before):
Driver isntalled: fglrx
Supported configurations --> Disable All, Xgl
Recommended configuration --> none
Configuration --> AIGLX (only Composite and Server Flag is enabled)

I would appreciate any input. Also I have to admit that I understand precious little of what is going on here. I am very willing to learn more about this. Can anyone suggest a good introductory entrance level guide to help me along my way to understanding what's going on? I really hate doing things on my computer when I don't understand exactly what I am doing.

Thanks in advance.

[leigh123linux]

Thanks for replying Leigh123. I went ahead as follows (directly from your suggested posting http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...640&postcount=1):
yum install livna-config-display
In /etc/X11/xorg.conf Device section changed:
Driver "drivername" --> Driver "radeon"
Rebooted.
rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
yum install kmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs-32bit
yum update kmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs-32bit
service fglrx restart
This last gave the following results:
Checking for module fglrx.ko: [FAILED]
fglrx.ko for kernel 2.6.20-1.2933.fc6 was not found. [WARNING]
fglrx DRI will not be enabled until one is found. [WARNING]

Have I messed something up here?
livna-config-display --> now displays options etc as follows (there was nothing before):
Driver isntalled: fglrx
Supported configurations --> Disable All, Xgl
Recommended configuration --> none
Configuration --> AIGLX (only Composite and Server Flag is enabled)

I would appreciate any input. Also I have to admit that I understand precious little of what is going on here. I am very willing to learn more about this. Can anyone suggest a good introductory entrance level guide to help me along my way to understanding what's going on? I really hate doing things on my computer when I don't understand exactly what I am doing.

Thanks in advance.

You may have the wrong kernel installed can you post the output from this command

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|grep kernel|sort

[biofedora]

The results from the command suggested by leight123:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|grep kernel|sort
kernel-2.6.20-1.2933.fc6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.x86_64
kernel-headers-2.6.20-1.2933.fc6.x86_64

Thx.

[leigh123linux]

The results from the command suggested by leight123:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|grep kernel|sort
kernel-2.6.20-1.2933.fc6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.x86_64
kernel-headers-2.6.20-1.2933.fc6.x86_64

Thx.

the kernel is ok, Have you tried booting the new kernel 2944 as it appears from your previous post that there was a module error ( no 2933 fglrx.ko found ) . Yum will probably have installed the 2944 module.

So boot your new kernel and run this command again

su -
service fglrx restart

then run this command

su -
livna-config-display

[biofedora]

Did as leigh123 suggested:
service fglrx restart
Checking for module fglrx.ko: [ OK ]
Enabling the fglrx driver: Driver already enabled.[ OK ]

livna-config-display
gave same display as my previous post.

Also I tried dual monitor support and it worked fine. This is probably good enough for 90% of my work-related needs but I may need at some point to do some graphics-intensive protein modelling. Can you suggest some testing/benchmarking I can do to make sure all is OK?

Once again I really appreciate your help leigh123. In the past I have tried to repay those people in the open source community who have helpeded me by contributing to charities / open source projects of their choice. Do you have any such favourites?

Thanks again.

[leigh123linux]

You could try typing

glxinfo

this will indicate if you have direct rendering

fgl_glxgears

this command will produce a 3D cube with fps count

[biofedora]

"glxinfo" gave the following:
name of display: :0.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: No
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_hyperpipe,
GLX_SGIX_swap_barrier, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer
client glx vendor string: ATI
client glx version string: 1.3
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_multisample,
GLX_ATI_pixel_format_float, GLX_ATI_render_texture
GLX version: 1.2
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_multisample
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.5.1)
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_blend_color,
GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_texture_env_add,
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias

visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x24 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 0 0 None
0x25 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x26 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x27 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x28 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 0 0 None
0x29 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x2a 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x3c 32 tc 1 0 0 c . . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None

"fgl_glxgears" gave:
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 144 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 5 (X_GLXMakeCurrent)
Serial number of failed request: 30
Current serial number in output stream: 30

Thanks alot.

[leigh123linux]

you may need to edit your xorg.conf

su -
gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and make sure you have these sections with the correct settings

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

and

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection


also could you post the output from these commands

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW

[biofedora]

After leigh123's suggested changes to xorg.conf:
glixinfo --> indicated that Direct rendering was now working
fgl_glxgears --> image of spinning cube and following results:
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
3326 frames in 5.0 seconds = 665.200 FPS
3533 frames in 5.0 seconds = 706.600 FPS

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(WW) No monitor specified for screen "Screen0".
(WW) The core pointer device wasn't specified explicitly in the layout.
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:1) found
(WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
(WW) <default pointer>: No Device specified, looking for one...

Thanks again leigh123.

[leigh123linux]

Thats better

[biofedora]

Final thanks leigh123. Your help has been greatly appreciated. I'd still be spinning my wheels without your help.