Howto for fglrx / catalyst (Ati driver)

[Fenrin]

The Radeon HD Series 4xxx and 5xxx is still supported by Catalyst 11.12(according to the ati.amd.com site). The old Catalyst 11.8 could work with Fedora 15, but will not work on Fedora 16. But I don't think there is any good reason to use Catalyst 11.8

[johnfparis]

The Radeon HD Series 4xxx and 5xxx is still supported by Catalyst 11.12(according to the ati.amd.com site). The old Catalyst 11.8 could work with Fedora 15, but will not work on Fedora 16. But I don't think there is any good reason to use Catalyst 11.8

Thanks for this. I had conflated two different problems ... my comments apply *only* to people with the A+I Mux problem. (That is, we have a Radeon chip and another chip -- typically Intel or a lower-quality Radeon -- set up in a multiplexed configuration. This is fairly common with laptops.)

People like me with an A+I Mux configuration cannot use F16, unfortunately, with Catalyst. X generates a "warning" but it in fact fails. And it seems ATI/AMD has no interest in ever supporting this configuration, because they're not marketing it anymore. Versions of Catalyst later than 11.8 *explicitly* tell you to "uninstall fglrx". So if you want to use Catalyst in a mux configuration, you have to stop upgrading with F15 and Catalyst 11.8.

I'm using F16 with the open source "radeon" driver and "vga switcheroo" to go between my Intel and ATI chips. All I seem to have lost is the ability to use Plymouth (which never worked with my laptop anyhow, even with Catalyst, but now I explicitly have to turn off the rhgb parameter in my boot line). The overheating problems have gone away, too.

[bigflopper2]

thanks guys, but...reading all the problems with the proprietary dirvers just for conclusive clarification, is the 11.12 driver working flawless under f16.x86_64 and hd radeon5 series or any series at all?

[Fenrin]

...

With a desktop environment other than Gnome shell Catalyst 11.12 works probably rather well under Fedora 16. But currently I use CentOS mainly, so it's only a guess.

[Cygn]

thanks guys, but...reading all the problems with the proprietary dirvers just for conclusive clarification, is the 11.12 driver working flawless under f16.x86_64 and hd radeon5 series or any series at all?

No. For one thing, XV is messed up and crashes whole xorg as soon as you launch a video. You can workaround to use opengl instead of XV but its a PITA.
Stock mesa works good engouh though, if you don't mind the fan noise.

[bigflopper2]

thanks for the info Cygn, damn it...mesa is working quite well, but working with hd-material is pretty laggy...is there any chance to get a fix for the driver or an update?

I'm using opengl btw

cheers

[mzt]

Given AMD/ATI historical release cycles, you probably only going to see the next release at the end of Jan 2012 and then there's packaging etc. So my best guess would be 2nd week in Feb.

[MorphingDragon]

The simplest questions implicitly or explicitly request information from a range (finite or infinite) of alternatives. When information purporting to be that requested is presented back to the questioner, the question is said to be answered. The information thus presented is called an answer. Answers may be correct or incorrect. They are incorrect if they present false information. If they present information from outside the proffered alternatives, they may be called wrong or simply inappropriate or irrelevant. This depends on the context, as do several other possibilities: Sometimes "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, sometimes even a correct answer. The same is true of "None of the above" and "There is no answer." An answer is the, or a, correct answer, if it presents true information which falls within the determined range of alternatives. Questions of this simplest sort usually begin with Who, what, which, where, when, does/do, is/are.

Other questions do not so easily fit this mould. For example, questions beginning "Why" and "How" often request any information at all that will alleviate certain confusion in a person who wants to ask that question. Here the manner in which the information is presented might be more important than which information is presented; the questioner may even already know all of the information contained in the right answer, and merely needs it to be expressed in a more useful form.

Ultimately, the interrogative pronouns (those beginning with wh in addition to the word how), derive from the Proto-Indo-European root kwo- or kwi, the former of which was reflected in Proto-Germanic as χwa- or khwa-.[citation needed]. In how (Old English hū, from Proto-Germanic χwō), the w merged into the lave of the word, as it did in Old Frisian hū, hō (Dutch hoe "how"), but it can still be seen in Old Saxon hwō, Old High German hwuo (German wie "how"). The Proto-Indo-European root directly originated the Latin and Romance form qu- in words such as Latin quī ("which") and quando ("when"). In English, the gradual change of voiceless stops into voiceless fricatives (phase 1 of Grimm's law) during the development of Germanic languages is responsible for "wh-" of interrogatives. Although some varieties of American English and various Scottish dialects still preserve the original sound (i.e. [hw] rather than [w]), the majority only preserve the [w]. The words who, whom, whose, what and why, can all be considered to come from a single Old English word hwā, reflecting its masculine and feminine nominative (hwā), dative (hwām), genitive (hwæs), neuter nominative and accusative (hwæt), and instrumental (masculine and neuter singular) (hwȳ, later hwī) respectively. Other interrogative words, such as which, how, where, whence as well as the now archaic whither derive either from compounds (which coming from a compound of hwā [what, who] and līc [like]), or other words from the same root (how deriving from hū).

This is either Grade A trolling or poorly thought out spam.

[leigh123linux]

This is either Grade A trolling or poorly thought out spam.

More target practice :dance:

[Veeshush]

This is either Grade A trolling or poorly thought out spam.

It's copied from wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question

[leigh123linux]

Post #1 edited, I will no longer write a guide for such a garbage driver.

[johnfparis]

Post #1 edited, I will no longer write a guide for such a garbage driver.

Sad but true. The good news is, the open source driver doesn't melt my laptop anymore. :) Frankly, that was the main reason I had gone with Catalyst.

[MorphingDragon]

Post #1 edited, I will no longer write a guide for such a garbage driver.

I wouldn't know about nVidia as well. Some grade A ******** has come our way before.

[MMXZ]

Sad but true. The good news is, the open source driver doesn't melt my laptop anymore. :) Frankly, that was the main reason I had gone with Catalyst.

Pardon my noobism, but this is the gallium driver, yes?

[deanej]

That is what System Info says on mine, and I haven't done anything with drivers.

[piotrekf88]

Hi
On Fedora 16 LXDE Spin, lxdm is not starting after installation of ati catalyst drivers (version 11.12). As suggested on https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=748169 it can be fixed by removing "-background vt1" in /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf:

arg=/usr/bin/X # -background vt1

I'm posting it here, because it's the first thread i found while searching for help. If this isn't the right place, sorry.

[tuxtard]

12.1 is out. It is stable for now. No glitches or crashes for me on Gnome 3 :D

[bigflopper2]

12.1 is out. It is stable for now. No glitches or crashes for me on Gnome 3 :D

On F16?

I'm using F16, what do you think...should I give it a try and install 12.1, I've got the radeon hd 5450.

[tuxtard]

Damn it, gnome-shell still crashes sometimes. It happens less frequently then before, but it still happens. Also video playback in Xv is still broken.

@bigflopper
Well Gnome 3 still crashes from time to time, but if you are using KDE like me there is no reason why you shouldn't try proprietary drivers. Also if you are using SMplayer or MPlayer to play videos you can switch render to GL. With GL video playback works normally.

[hh2ohexhh]

Hi, I'm not trying to start an argument, but perhaps it's not all ATI's fault.

About a couple of minutes ago I got this when updating:

Updated kmod-catalyst-3.2.2-1.fc16.x86_64-11.11-1.fc16.5.x86_64 ?
Update 11.11-1.fc16.12.x86_64 @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates

Now I'm getting glxgears -info:

31896 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6379.109 FPS
32184 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6436.491 FPS
26289 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5257.787 FPS
30350 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6069.810 FPS
31187 frames in 5.0 seconds = 6237.243 FPS
28914 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5782.692 FPS

Of course, under Gnome 3 it'll go down to (approximatly) 2500 FPS, but at least it's something.

I've got a Radeon HD 5750 (also using the forced fallback mode for gaming). Gome 3 crashes sometimes, but like I said, maybe there are some compilation issues (face value) ...

HH

[bigflopper2]

If you wanna have a well-performing system don't use that shitty driver, it's unacceptable for me if gnome sometimes crashes, it's outrageous and sometimes tedious if the driver causes gnome to crash...use the open source driver (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=794199&postcount=1)...

[deanej]

Which is where? The post doesn't say. All I know is the one that came with F16 does NO power or temperature management to speak of, causing me to have three times more power used than in Windows.

[JamesNZ]

Which is where? The post doesn't say. All I know is the one that came with F16 does NO power or temperature management to speak of, causing me to have three times more power used than in Windows.

The one that comes with fedora (which is what you're using) is the open-source mesa driver. If you want to use the proprietary drivers, which have the power control you want, you can get it from the rpmfusion nonfree repo.

Assuming you have that repo then just run: yum install xorg-x11-drv-catalyst xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-devel akmod-catalyst

[ShivaS]

So I take it that xorg-x11-drv-ati.x86_64 : Xorg X11 ati video driver is the open-source ATI driver?
Does it have better performance than the vesa one? I'm not gameing on my laptop; i just want a crisp screen, with no parasites and a little 3D for VirtualBox:)

[Fenrin]

So I take it that xorg-x11-drv-ati.x86_64 : Xorg X11 ati video driver is the open-source ATI driver?
Does it have better performance than the vesa one? I'm not gameing on my laptop; i just want a crisp screen, with no parasites and a little 3D for VirtualBox:)

yes the open source radeon driver is much faster than Vesa. You don't have to install this radeon driver. It should be installed and used by default.

If you need power management/saving features you can try this (http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#KMS_Power_Management_Options), but the closed source driver is better with power saving. If you have a low power card like Mobility Radeon 3200 or something like that, it doesn't matter much.

Faster than the open source driver is AMD's Catalyst driver. But you probably don't need it.

[ShivaS]

Actually, the driver is installed but not used by the system???. This might be related to the high CPU and memory used by Firefox:Y
Here's what KDE is reporting (just ignore the language): 22633

[Fenrin]

the right radeon driver is used. I see this with the line "Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530". Fedora 15 and later uses Gallium (Mesa) drivers as default like most modern linux distros now. If you want to test the classic mesa driver, you could use a RHEL based distro like CentOS or Scientific Linux. Could be that classic mesa is better on your radeon card. Maybe it makes also a difference if you use a lightweight desktop instead of KDE, especially if you have less than 2 GB RAM.

if you put radeon.modeset=0 in the kernel boot line, it will use Vesa drivers which will be even slower.

the rpmfusion or Catalyst driver is not a option for you, because your card is a bit too old.

to decrease RAM and CPU usage of Firefox you can remove the Adobe flashplugin. Quite some sites still use flash, but YouTube works also fine without it. And it will result in a much lower RAM and CPU usage of Firefox. Adblock Plus addon could also help.

[ShivaS]

I did not installed flash and Adblock is running.
It might be an issue with the driver and the Xorg; I found similar problems reported for nouveau drivers where the fix was to install an experimental build of the video driver.
It's no fun having FF eating up half of the laptop's resuorces:dis:

[mzt]

I'm not a fan of raw installs on my fedora box (unless absolutely neccessary) nor can I do much about my builtin Radeon GPU in my notebook. So for now I'm stuck with what I have.

Thus can I ask, is there any update on whether RPMFusion will continue to host AMD Catalyst builds or if the package maintainer has given up as well, given that the last build was in Nov?

[Fenrin]

[...]
Thus can I ask, is there any update on whether RPMFusion will continue to host AMD Catalyst builds or if the package maintainer has given up as well, given that the last build was in Nov?


new catalyst rpmfusion packages based on the 12.1 driver are in the testing repos.
rpmfusion testing x86_64 (http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/updates/testing/16/x86_64/repoview/index.html)

I don't have a updated Fedora 16 installation, otherwise I would test these new rpmfusion packages.

[mzt]

new catalyst rpmfusion packages based on the 12.1 driver are in the testing repos.
rpmfusion testing x86_64 (http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/updates/testing/16/x86_64/repoview/index.html)

I don't have a updated Fedora 16 installation, otherwise I would test these new rpmfusion packages.

Thanks for the reply, but I'm after an fc15 build. Any info on that one?

[leigh123linux]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm after an fc15 build. Any info on that one?
I don't see any updated f15 packages on the rpmfusion buildsystem.

[Firewing1]

I don't see any updated f15 packages on the rpmfusion buildsystem.
AMD included a new 32-bit shared library in the 64-bit builds, so to avoid having the x86_64 build pull in glib.i686 and a bunch of other 32-bit dependencies, I removed that library from the build. I tested this change and it seemed stable for me, but after more testing on F16 if all is well then I'll push the updates in the testing repository to stable for F16 and submit F15 builds too.

[mzt]

AMD included a new 32-bit shared library in the 64-bit builds, so to avoid having the x86_64 build pull in glib.i686 and a bunch of other 32-bit dependencies, I removed that library from the build. I tested this change and it seemed stable for me, but after more testing on F16 if all is well then I'll push the updates in the testing repository to stable for F16 and submit F15 builds too.

Good too know, will check back later then.

[hh2ohexhh]

AMD included a new 32-bit shared library in the 64-bit builds, so to avoid having the x86_64 build pull in glib.i686 and a bunch of other 32-bit dependencies, I removed that library from the build. I tested this change and it seemed stable for me, but after more testing on F16 if all is well then I'll push the updates in the testing repository to stable for F16 and submit F15 builds too.

I was hoping to test some games I'm running with wine (32-bit), but will wait. Not a tester, but what I've seen so far looks good to me. Got a Quad-Core with an XFX HD 5750 (or is it 5770? Always forget, but is on the 5700 ATI chipset) and did manage to install the 64-bit drivers. Using gnome shell didn't crash like 11.12, but like I said before, not a tester, just curious.

Thanks Firewing1, and hope to see soon the rest (32-bit drivers) ...

Sincerely,

HH:dance:

[robertdaleweir]

Howto for F16


I haven't bothered to do a F16 guide as the catalyst driver is complete garbage.
Do yourself a favour and use the open source Radeon driver, if this isn't good enough BUY A NVIDIA CARD INSTEAD.

Hi leigh123linux
Do you mean that if one buys an NVIDIA card then the standard drivers in the base install should work fine? Or do you mean, if one gets a Nvidia Card that one has to install the Nvidia Drivers for it to work properly?
Thanks...

[leigh123linux]

Hi leigh123linux
Do you mean that if one buys an NVIDIA card then the standard drivers in the base install should work fine? Or do you mean, if one gets a Nvidia Card that one has to install the Nvidia Drivers for it to work properly?
Thanks...

The nvidia driver is still superior IMO, but nouveau is catching up fast.
Not bad considering they had to reverse engineer it.
You would have thought the radeon opensource driver would be better than nouveau.

[robertdaleweir]

The nvidia driver is still superior IMO, but nouveau is catching up fast.
Not bad considering they had to reverse engineer it.
You would have thought the radeon opensource driver would be better than nouveau.

Hi leigh123linux
Thanks a lot. Nice to know...

[Fenrin]

...

But the Radeon driver is still better than the Nouveau driver. The 3D acceleration and features of Noveau still sucks compared to the Radeon driver.

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_linux31_fermi&num=2

The 3D acceleration of Radeon is still not close to the Catalyst driver, but compared to Noveau good.

[leigh123linux]

But the Radeon driver is still better than the Nouveau driver. The 3D acceleration and features of Noveau still sucks compared to the Radeon driver.

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_linux31_fermi&num=2

The 3D acceleration of Radeon is still not close to the Catalyst driver, but compared to Noveau good.


Considering the source is open the radeon driver should be perfect but in reality it isn't much better than nouveau.


As for performance difference there isn't much in it.

see radeon sucks as well :)

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mesa_80_r300r600&num=6

[fhirnaomh]

I have installed the 12.1 drivers using the rpmfusion updates testing repo and still experience gnome-shell crashing just as frequently on F16 as the 11.11 drivers. Could this just be a problem with gnome-shell? The crash report says its sigseg 11. Saw as its always been. I'm using A6-3400M with the Radeon HD 6520G hardware on a Toshiba L775D-S7206 laptop. I probably should've bought an Intel based chipset with NVIDIA video.

[Fenrin]

....

add following line
export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none
to the file /etc/environment

this should turn off vsync in Clutter. Then reboot and report back if issues still exist. Maybe turning off vertical refresh in CCC helps as well.

[fhirnaomh]

add following line
export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none
to the file /etc/environment

this should turn off vsync in Clutter. Then reboot and report back if issues still exist. Maybe turning off vertical refresh in CCC helps as well.

Tried both ways, with and without with the same result. Can anyone confirm KDE having the same issue or is it just gnome?

[Fenrin]

Tried both ways, with and without with the same result. Can anyone confirm KDE having the same issue or is it just gnome?

hm ok. I personally didn't test Fedora 16 with these drivers so I don't know if it works without crashs. It's probably related to the xorg-version and this xvideo bugs: http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=337, http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=350

On the phoronix forums, the experience with Catalyst 12.1 is pretty mixed (thread here (http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?68421-AMD-Releases-Catalyst-12-1-Driver-For-Linux)). For some users gnome shell works without issue.

downgrading xorg* to version 1.10 could maybe help. If you want to try this:
wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/fedora-release/15/4/noarch/fedora-release-15-4.noarch.rpm
yum install fedora-release-15-4.noarch.rpm
yum downgrade xorg*

And afterwards:
wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/fedora-release/16/2/noarch/fedora-release-16-2.noarch.rpm
yum install fedora-release-16-2.noarch.rpm

maybe it works then. If you get a black screen afterward or if it crashs before you can login, add 3 to the kernel boot line and update xorg* again :(

[fhirnaomh]

It probably is related to X. I tried Ubuntu with the new drivers and gnome-shell. Same thing. Except when it crashes in Ubuntu it doesn't always restart gnome then I have to reboot. Unity seems okay though.

[Pitfall]

I cannot get decent 720p video playback on my machine. It barely keeps up with 420p. lsmod tells me that I have both fglrx and radeon running. Could that be the cause of my problem?

Module Size Used by
cpufreq_stats 13247 0
be2iscsi 72362 0
iscsi_boot_sysfs 15641 1 be2iscsi
bnx2i 54521 0
cnic 58676 1 bnx2i
uio 19067 1 cnic
cxgb4i 32909 0
cxgb4 102888 1 cxgb4i
cxgb3i 32972 0
libcxgbi 56477 2 cxgb4i,cxgb3i
cxgb3 155412 1 cxgb3i
mdio 13398 1 cxgb3
ib_iser 38073 0
rdma_cm 41898 1 ib_iser
ib_cm 41692 1 rdma_cm
iw_cm 18176 1 rdma_cm
ib_sa 28407 2 rdma_cm,ib_cm
ib_mad 46392 2 ib_cm,ib_sa
ib_core 73791 6 ib_iser,rdma_cm,ib_cm,iw_cm,ib_sa,ib_mad
ib_addr 13748 1 rdma_cm
iscsi_tcp 18333 0
libiscsi_tcp 23970 4 cxgb4i,cxgb3i,libcxgbi,iscsi_tcp
libiscsi 50527 8 be2iscsi,bnx2i,cxgb4i,cxgb3i,libcxgbi,ib_iser,iscs i_tcp,libiscsi_tcp
lockd 84578 0
scsi_transport_iscsi 51823 8 be2iscsi,bnx2i,libcxgbi,ib_iser,iscsi_tcp,libiscsi
fcoe 27326 0
libfcoe 43030 1 fcoe
libfc 108624 2 fcoe,libfcoe
scsi_transport_fc 53339 2 fcoe,libfc
scsi_tgt 19553 1 scsi_transport_fc
8021q 24070 0
garp 14069 1 8021q
stp 12823 1 garp
llc 14090 2 garp,stp
rfcomm 68661 4
bnep 19570 2
ip6t_REJECT 12939 2
nf_conntrack_ipv6 14290 1
nf_defrag_ipv6 18139 1 nf_conntrack_ipv6
ip6table_filter 12815 1
nf_conntrack_ipv4 14622 1
nf_defrag_ipv4 12673 1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
xt_state 12578 2
nf_conntrack 82331 3 nf_conntrack_ipv6,nf_conntrack_ipv4,xt_state
ip6_tables 26976 1 ip6table_filter
snd_hda_codec_idt 70166 1
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 36277 1
snd_hda_intel 33276 4
snd_hda_codec 114615 3 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep 17611 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_seq 64807 0
snd_seq_device 14129 1 snd_seq
snd_pcm 97100 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 28815 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 74425 17 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel ,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,sn d_pcm,snd_timer
btusb 23904 2
bluetooth 244750 23 rfcomm,bnep,btusb
hp_accel 25976 0
sp5100_tco 13697 0
r8169 60789 0
lis3lv02d 19480 1 hp_accel
hp_wmi 18048 0
soundcore 14484 1 snd
mii 13527 1 r8169
uvcvideo 71509 0
videodev 97776 1 uvcvideo
media 20408 2 uvcvideo,videodev
i2c_piix4 13694 0
v4l2_compat_ioctl32 16726 1 videodev
microcode 23240 0
snd_page_alloc 18101 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
fglrx 3101088 97
arc4 12529 2
ath9k 95034 0
mac80211 439421 1 ath9k
ath9k_common 13600 1 ath9k
ath9k_hw 374492 2 ath9k,ath9k_common
ath 23089 3 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath9k_hw
cfg80211 194802 3 ath9k,mac80211,ath
sparse_keymap 13526 1 hp_wmi
joydev 17412 0
k10temp 13119 0
rfkill 21410 4 bluetooth,hp_wmi,cfg80211
input_polldev 13646 1 lis3lv02d
sunrpc 235041 2 lockd
uinput 17606 0
wmi 18697 1 hp_wmi
video 18932 0
ums_realtek 17976 0
usb_storage 56207 1 ums_realtek
radeon 792595 0
ttm 68749 1 radeon
drm_kms_helper 40141 1 radeon
drm 225935 3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit 13156 1 radeon
i2c_core 37955 6 videodev,i2c_piix4,radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_a lgo_bit

[Fenrin]

...

check if radeon.modeset=0 is in the kernel boot line (change the file /boot/grub/grub.conf or in the grub menu).

If that's not the reason: did you check if it built the kernel module correctly? In /usr/share/ati is a install log.

[hh2ohexhh]

Shouldn't it be on /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in Fedora 16? :confused:

[Fenrin]

Shouldn't it be on /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in Fedora 16? :confused:

oh yes thanks could be in Fedora 16. But in CentOS 6, which I use it's called grub.conf :C

[Pitfall]

Radeon.modeset=0 is present in grub.cfg.

Also catalyst-control-centre is working and runnng, so I suppose that I am using fglrx.

The weird thing is that a friend of mine has the same specs but is using Windows and can run 1080p flawless, however I am even struggeling with 480p.

[Fenrin]

...

The weird thing is that a friend of mine has the same specs but is using Windows and can run 1080p flawless, however I am even struggeling with 480p.

something is wrong with your installation. On my sytem I can play 720p smoothly on a IGP Radeon 3200, CentOS 6.2. No matter if I use Catalyst or the default Radeon driver. At least if I watch it with GMplayer. In Youtube I can play up to 480p (WebM) pretty smoothly, but playback of downloaded YouTube videos which I watch via Gnome-Mplayer or Totem works without issues up to 720p, 30fps.

...
If that's not the reason: did you check if it built the kernel module correctly? In /usr/share/ati is a install log.

[Pitfall]

I tried the live cd and I got 1080p playback on Minitube, so there is no problem with mesa.

However, catalyst crashes X with EVERY video player: MPlayer, Parole, VLC and Minitube. TBH catalyst is a piece of ***** (guess what it should say :)). The hardware of AMD is good, but the GPU drivers are not.

Flash does not crash, but I think it is not hardware accelerated. So the performance dissapointing (did not try it on mesa).

Now my final problem: getting rid of catalyst and start using mesa again. I am not doing anything 3D, so I should be all clear. Does it work by simply erasing akmod-catalyst?

[Fenrin]

I read somewhre that video playback in xv mode doesn't work with the current xorg-version of Fedora 16 if Catalyst is used.

To solve this you could change the video output driver to OpenGL.

in mplayer:
mplayer -vo gl 'videofile.mp4'

or in gnome-mplayer you can add "-vo gl" to the mplayer preference additional parameters. In other video players I don't know.

To uninstall the driver from the rpmfusion repo, you can just do this:
yum remove *catalyst*

or if you installed the driver from the site ati.amd.com
aticonfig --uninstall

this should be enough to uninstall it successfully. If it still doesn't load the default driver make sure that radeon.modeset=1 is in the boot line and xorg.conf is not used (or if used with radeon instead of fglrx as driver)

[Pitfall]

Thank you very much Fenrin. I can now watch videos in 1080p with catalyst in mplayer.
If I have some spare time on my hands I will remove catalyst. I really need my machine now, so I cannot afford a FUBAR system.

[Drowningman]

Hi all,

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. However I cannot get the ATI/AMD proprietary drivers to work.
I have a Samsung A305Vwith an AMD/ATI Radeon HD6600 Hybrid graphic card (Radeon HD6520G as an external card and Radeon HD6400M on the motherboard).

Both the drivers from rpmfusion and from AMD (have tested 12.1 and 11.9) gives the same result with the computer freezing after reboot. After booting in rescue mode and running aticonfig --adapter=all --initial I have a bootable system,but only with the Vesa driver and no 2D/3D acceleration.

This is my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "aticonfig Layout"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
Screen "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" RightOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:0:1:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]-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




and this is the output of cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -e "(WW)" -e "(EE)"

[ 850.735] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx
[ 850.751] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:1:1) found
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): Hasn't establisted DRM connection
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): No DRM connection for driver fglrx.
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(0): Invalid video BIOS signature!
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): GetBIOSParameter failed
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): PreInitAdapter failed
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): PreInit failed
[ 851.010] (EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * kernel module (fglrx.ko) may be missing or incompatible *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * 2D and 3D acceleration disabled *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[ 851.075] (WW) fglrx(0): Textured Video not supported without DRI enabled.
[ 851.079] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to open CMMQS connection.(EE) fglrx(0):
[ 851.079] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to initialize
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): No XV video playback available
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "VendorName" is not used
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "ModelName" is not used
[stefan@Fedora ~]$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -e "(WW)" -e "(EE)"
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 850.735] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx
[ 850.751] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:1:1) found
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): Hasn't establisted DRM connection
[ 850.879] (WW) fglrx(0): No DRM connection for driver fglrx.
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(0): Invalid video BIOS signature!
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): GetBIOSParameter failed
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): PreInitAdapter failed
[ 851.009] (EE) fglrx(1): PreInit failed
[ 851.010] (EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * kernel module (fglrx.ko) may be missing or incompatible *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * 2D and 3D acceleration disabled *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[ 851.075] (WW) fglrx(0): Textured Video not supported without DRI enabled.
[ 851.079] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to open CMMQS connection.(EE) fglrx(0):
[ 851.079] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to initialize
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): No XV video playback available
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "VendorName" is not used
[ 851.079] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "ModelName" is not used

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Fenrin]

[...]
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * kernel module (fglrx.ko) may be missing or incompatible *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): * 2D and 3D acceleration disabled *
[ 851.010] (WW) fglrx(0): ************************************************** *********
[...]

looks like it didn't built the kernel module of the driver.

I would do the following:
uninstall Catalyst driver (remove rpmfusion catalyst packages or if it was installed differently "aticonfig --uninstall") make sure that kernel-devel and kernel-headers with the right version is installed (gcc and some other packages are also needed) reinstall it, afterwards "aticonfig --adapter=all --initial" make sure that there is radeon.modeset=0 in the grub file check the install log, to make sure that it built the kernel module.

[Drowningman]

Thnks for the suggestion. I followed the instructions but still only the Vesa driver is loading. However fglrx-install.log maybe sheds som light on the problem:

Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.
Unloading radeon module...
Unloading drm module...
ERROR: Module drm is in use by ttm,drm_kms_helper
[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Error] Kernel Module : Kernel module build environment not found - please consult readme.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut

There seems to be a mismatch between kernel versions. However rpm -qa '*kernel*' returns:

kernel-PAE-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686
abrt-addon-kerneloops-2.0.7-2.fc16.i686
kernel-PAE-3.2.3-2.fc16.i686
libreport-plugin-kerneloops-2.0.8-4.fc16.i686
kernel-headers-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686
kernel-devel-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686

so I still as confused as before. Any suggestions how to solve this?

[Fenrin]

[...]
There seems to be a mismatch between kernel versions. However rpm -qa '*kernel*' returns:

kernel-PAE-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686
abrt-addon-kerneloops-2.0.7-2.fc16.i686
kernel-PAE-3.2.3-2.fc16.i686
libreport-plugin-kerneloops-2.0.8-4.fc16.i686
kernel-headers-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686
kernel-devel-3.2.5-3.fc16.i686

so I still as confused as before. Any suggestions how to solve this?

ah you use a PAE kernel, then you need kernel-PAE-devel.

[Drowningman]

Ok, thanks for the advice regarding kernel-devel. I installed kernel-PAE-devel 3.2.5 and uninstalled the previous kernel-devel package and uninstalled/installed the drivers as before. However I still boot into Vesa mode. The fglrx-install.log and cat Xorg.0.log | grep -e "(WW)" -e "(EE)" looks exactly as before. Any further suggestions?

[Fenrin]

[...]The fglrx-install.log and cat Xorg.0.log | grep -e "(WW)" -e "(EE)" looks exactly as before. Any further suggestions?

is there a line "build succeeded with return value 0" in the fglrx-install.log? I can't help you more, I have no idea why it doesn't work. I personally used in the recent years only 64bit Fedoras, no PAE kernels.

[Drowningman]

I found out that only radeon was in /etc/modprobe.d/fglrx-blacklist. By adding radeonhd after uninstall/install of the catalyst driver and then running aticonfig --init --adapter=all I got things happening in the fglrx-install.log file:

Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.
Unloading drm module...
ERROR: Module drm is in use by ttm,drm_kms_helper
[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/3.2.5-3.fc16.i686.PAE/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Går till katalogen "/usr/src/kernels/3.2.5-3.fc16.i686.PAE"
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
In file included from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:192:0:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:202:5: varning: "_DEBUG" är inte definierad [-Wundef]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:162:16: varning: "module_log_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:175:19: varning: "module_type_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o
In file included from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.c:33:0:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:202:5: varning: "_DEBUG" är inte definierad [-Wundef]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:162:16: varning: "module_log_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:175:19: varning: "module_type_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_agp.o
In file included from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_agp.c:47:0:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:202:5: varning: "_DEBUG" är inte definierad [-Wundef]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:162:16: varning: "module_log_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:175:19: varning: "module_type_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.o
In file included from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c:39:0:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:202:5: varning: "_DEBUG" är inte definierad [-Wundef]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c:45:1: varning: funktionsdeklarationen är inte en prototyp [-Wstrict-prototypes]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c:65:14: varning: funktionsdeklarationen är inte en prototyp [-Wstrict-prototypes]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c: I funktion "prvGetCpuId":
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c:72:18: varning: oanvänd variabel "Mode" [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.c: På toppnivå:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:162:16: varning: "module_log_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:175:19: varning: "module_type_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_ioctl.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_io.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_pci.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_str.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_iommu.o
In file included from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_iommu.c:45:0:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:202:5: varning: "_DEBUG" är inte definierad [-Wundef]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:162:16: varning: "module_log_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_debug.h:175:19: varning: "module_type_map" är definierad men inte använd [-Wunused-variable]
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_wait.o
LD [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/fglrx.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
CC /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/fglrx.mod.o
LD [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/fglrx.ko
make[1]: Lämnar katalogen "/usr/src/kernels/3.2.5-3.fc16.i686.PAE"
build succeeded with return value 0
duplicating results into driver repository...
done.
You must change your working directory to /lib/modules/fglrx
and then call ./make_install.sh in order to install the built module.
- recreating module dependency list
- trying a sample load of the kernel modules
done.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut

I the ran ./make_install.sh as stated above. However, after reboot I was only greeted with a black screen which also happened running startx from recovery mode. Any possible solutions?

---------- Post added at 11:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 AM ----------

I managed to solve the problem myself.
After upgrading to X.org 1.11.4 I decided to try to install the proprietary drivers again. This time I used the packages at rpmfusion but used kmod for my my specifi kernel instead of akmod and now it works like a charm.

[Soulblane]

Just out of curiosity, is livna-config-display still a dependency of xorg-x11-drv-catalyst? The only reason I ask is that I was installing fedora on my netbook and wanted to use the proprietary driver to get hardware accelerated flash. After installing akmod-catalyst and it's dependencies, fedora kept booting to a blank screen. I recalled that livna-config-display wasn't one of the packages that yum pulled to install, which it has done in the past with the catalyst driver. May not be related to the issue but I thought it was worth a look.

[Firewing1]

Just out of curiosity, is livna-config-display still a dependency of xorg-x11-drv-catalyst? The only reason I ask is that I was installing fedora on my netbook and wanted to use the proprietary driver to get hardware accelerated flash. After installing akmod-catalyst and it's dependencies, fedora kept booting to a blank screen. I recalled that livna-config-display wasn't one of the packages that yum pulled to install, which it has done in the past with the catalyst driver. May not be related to the issue but I thought it was worth a look.
Not anymore, although it is still required for older Fedora releases.

[jdredd]

Thought I'd share, having exactly same problem:

blank screen
Fedora 16
both Fusion-based (a)kmod Catalyst and newest prioprietary ATI drivers
3.2.7 kernel
X 1.11.4


After 4 hours of searching and trying all of the solutions (Grub options, xorg.conf), the one mentioned here (ArchLinux wiki) (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI_Catalyst) finally worked for me.

Namely:
aticonfig --acpi-services=off

[mzt]

12.2 is finally released.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?69203-fglrx-12-2-is-here

[tuxtard]

At least they fixed Xv playback this time for real.

[GregLee]

I have (did have) Fedora 16 on a computer that seems to want the fglrx driver. Without it, Gnome 3 says it is using a fallback mode, which I guess is Gnome 2, more or less. Compared to Gnome 3 using fglrx, it's quite ugly. The first post of this thread says that I shouldn't bother trying to get fglrx to work. So I'm not going to. I have read a very small part of this long, long thread, and I thank all of you who contributed information to it -- possibly the solution to my problem is here, somewhere, but I just ran out of patience looking for it. I also tried out Ubuntu 12.04, and it lets me use the fglrx driver with no problem, so for now, goodbye Fedora.

[goodfella]

A lot of ideas here. My solution is simply to remove frame buffer access in the kernel. My system display
was hanging at random times with the default built kernel. I rebuilt the source with frame buffer access
removed. Fixed my random hang problem. I also noticed that weird hangs and blank screens happened
when I was changing the display modes with the default kernel. I rebuilt linux-3.2.11.

[nrsocial]

I got fglrx working just fine with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series on Fedora 16 with GNOME 3 working flawlessly. It wasn't that hard or that much of a pain although I did rebuild the RPM packages from the source to get them to work.

Should I bother writing a howto on how to do that, or has everyone given up on this driver because one person said they should? I would attach the RPMs for x86_64 and the SRPMS so they could be rebuilt but the attachment sizes don't allow that.


# uname -r 3.3.0-4.fc16.x86_64

http://i41.tinypic.com/ax0fir.png

Feel free to PM me if you'd like the SRPMs and know how to rebuild them, or wait until I figure out if/how I can submit packages to rpmfusion

[MorphingDragon]

I got fglrx working just fine with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series on Fedora 16 with GNOME 3 working flawlessly. It wasn't that hard or that much of a pain although I did rebuild the RPM packages from the source to get them to work.

Should I bother writing a howto on how to do that, or has everyone given up on this driver because one person said they should? I would attach the RPMs for x86_64 and the SRPMS so they could be rebuilt but the attachment sizes don't allow that.


# uname -r 3.3.0-4.fc16.x86_64

http://i41.tinypic.com/ax0fir.png

Feel free to PM me if you'd like the SRPMs and know how to rebuild them, or wait until I figure out if/how I can submit packages to rpmfusion

A how to would be nice.

I spend a lot of time working out the intricacies of getting software to work on the Fedora platform and the drivers still confuse me.

ATi/AMD has a track record of !@#$ driver design. I am trying to replace my HD6870 with a GTX560TI or 6XX.

[nrsocial]

A how to would be nice.

I spend a lot of time working out the intricacies of getting software to work on the Fedora platform and the drivers still confuse me.

ATi/AMD has a track record of !@#$ driver design. I am trying to replace my HD6870 with a GTX560TI or 6XX.

I'll work one up later this evening after I'm done work.

I've been breaking my CentOS installations until recently, when I gave Fedora a run and saw it was more up to date which saves me from repackaging my own software. Now I break my Fedora installations. :dance:

I can agree with you there, I did notice that it wasn't installing what I wanted it to install. (AMD Catalyst which had no control over my card as opposed to ATI Catalyst which does.)
I'm pretty sure that the process is still the same for your card as mine. I'll post the link when I've finished.

[MorphingDragon]

I'll work one up later this evening after I'm done work.

I've been breaking my CentOS installations until recently, when I gave Fedora a run and saw it was more up to date which saves me from repackaging my own software. Now I break my Fedora installations. :dance:

I can agree with you there, I did notice that it wasn't installing what I wanted it to install. (AMD Catalyst which had no control over my card as opposed to ATI Catalyst which does.)
I'm pretty sure that the process is still the same for your card as mine. I'll post the link when I've finished.

I like Fedora, its an oddly good Java development platform, being fully compatible and up to date with Red Hat's and IBM's Java projects.

Sadly, JMonkeyEngine and GIMP is a load of Excrement, so I develop my games in UDK or XNA and Photoshop on Windows. Blender engine has next to no documentation, and Python is slow compared to UnrealScript and C++.

[vall]

I need the ATI driver! There has not been any release in the repos since several kernels. I switched to the public driver, but it is slower. This is however not my biggest issue with it. The bigger problem is that with the public driver I have a constant CSU usage >20% no matter what. I switched to Cinnamon (BTW, I like it much better that Gnome 3!) but it did not help either. Because of this my laptop runs >10 degrees hotter than with the ATI driver. Any chance to have RPMs of the ATI driver soon?

[leepaul]

I need the ATI driver! There has not been any release in the repos since several kernels. I switched to the public driver, but it is slower. This is however not my biggest issue with it. The bigger problem is that with the public driver I have a constant CSU usage >20% no matter what. I switched to Cinnamon (BTW, I like it much better that Gnome 3!) but it did not help either. Because of this my laptop runs >10 degrees hotter than with the ATI driver. Any chance to have RPMs of the ATI driver soon?

Try the patched akmod driver package

32 bit

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6907158/akmod-catalyst-12.1-1.fc16.10.i686.rpm

64 bit

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6907158/akmod-catalyst-12.1-1.fc16.10.x86_64.rpm

[mzt]

Catalyst 12.3 has been released :-) get it from the usual place

[Maverick87]

Catalyst 12.3 has been released :-) get it from the usual place

I try 12.3 today on F16 kernel 3.2.10-3.fc16.i686.PAE and don't works by default .run installer.
Now I'm trying to patch 12.3 and we'll see if patch still working! :C
Bye


UPDATE:
The patch to .run installer works fine also with 12.3 release. without this patch installer .run don't works for me on F16, release 12.3 doesn't solve the problem by deefault.

[leepaul]

Rpmfusion has the latest driver in the rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing repo

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/updates/testing/16/x86_64/repoview/xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs.html

[solo2101]

I got fglrx working just fine with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series on Fedora 16 with GNOME 3 working flawlessly. It wasn't that hard or that much of a pain although I did rebuild the RPM packages from the source to get them to work.

Should I bother writing a howto on how to do that, or has everyone given up on this driver because one person said they should? I would attach the RPMs for x86_64 and the SRPMS so they could be rebuilt but the attachment sizes don't allow that.


# uname -r 3.3.0-4.fc16.x86_64

Feel free to PM me if you'd like the SRPMs and know how to rebuild them, or wait until I figure out if/how I can submit packages to rpmfusion


why dont you write the steps here, that wouldd help alot of people

[Dutchy]

I finally decided to give fglrx a try again and got it working by running aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf and booting with the nomodeset parameter set otherwise it would boot into black nothingness and lock up.
Although it is working better than half a year ago, performance still lacks and now and then the shell still crashes.
AMD should be ashamed of itself! :Y

[TheIceMan]

I finally decided to give fglrx a try again and got it working by running aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf and booting with the nomodeset parameter set otherwise it would boot into black nothingness and lock up.
Although it is working better than half a year ago, performance still lacks and now and then the shell still crashes.
AMD should be ashamed of itself! :Y

same here, never again i'll buy ATI/AMD video card. only Intel or Nvidia

[flebber]

Is the situation going to be any better with 12.2 on fedora 17?

[Yellowman]

Is the situation going to be any better with 12.2 on fedora 17?

12.4 on fedora 17 = unsupported due to Xorg version

[flebber]

12.4 on fedora 17 = unsupported due to Xorg version

Argh thats just annoying.

[Stygian]

I managed to successfully install the new ati driver 12.3 on F16 a while ago, it didnt work out of the box, so I had to apply this patch (http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Fedora_16_Installation_Guide#Amd-driver-installer_Compilation_Problems_on_i686_Fedora_16) for it to work. Its working fine now with kernel 3.3.1-5.fc16.i686.PAE,improved life battery and 3D acceleration. But When I updated to a new kernel it stopped working and gave me the usual blank screen at the end of the boot up process. Any ideas what I did wrong ?

[goodfella]

When I updated to a new kernel it stopped working and gave me the usual blank screen at the end of the boot up process. Any ideas what I did wrong ?

What was the kernel version that you updated to?
You can diff the config files of the two kernels you used. They will be in /boot directory.
It would be nice to report what you find out.

[Stygian]

I diff'ed the two kernels config files and found nothing relevant. Then I removed the old kernel devel package and installed the development tools and the development libraries which BTW Im pretty sure I had them installed before and it finally worked. Not sure which step made it work though.
Thank you for your help :)

Old Kernel : 3.3.1-5
Current Kernel : 3.3.2-6

[gossamer]

Hi all,

Okay, I'm also having a problem on fc15 with an HD5700 on my desktop with fallback GNOME3 with two LCD 21" monitors and it's always been a PITA to set up the display. After doing a recent update, window refresh was very slow. I had set it up properly quite a while ago and had since forgotten about all the driver names and software bits that were necessary to set it up properly.

So, I've searched extensively again, and got the window refresh faster, but now the display is not correct. The "Applications" and "Places" menus are on the top, and I can access them with the mouse, but I can only open windows with half the height of the full screen. In other words, although the height of the display is 1680, the top third of the display is just black and GNOME must think the top of the screen is lower than it is.

I'm using the rpmfusion testing repo (because the kmod driver isn't available in stable) to install the kmod and catalyst drivers, although I'm not sure how they all go together and what exactly is necessary.

I thought I could include my xorg.conf and an RPM output of the packages I've installed, and someone could help me build the proper config for this.

# rpm -qva|egrep 'livna|catalyst|kmod|Xorg'
xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-11.11-2.fc15.x86_64
kmod-catalyst-11.11-2.fc15.3.x86_64
kmod-catalyst-2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64-11.11-2.fc15.3.x86_64
akmods-0.3.8-3.fc15.noarch
kmodtool-1-18.fc11.noarch
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.10.4-2.fc15.x86_64
livna-config-display-0.0.24-2.fc15.noarch
kmod-VirtualBox-OSE-2.6.42.12-1.fc15.x86_64-4.1.8-1.fc15.10.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs-11.11-2.fc15.x86_64

It appears as if this thread was started by leigh123 back on '07, but fc15 wasn't out then. How do I find what the current proper set of instructions are for getting my card to work with fc15?

I've included my xorg.conf below in case there's something obvious I'm doing wrong...


# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/catalyst"
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "0-DFP3"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
Option "TargetRefresh" "60"
Option "Position" "0 0"
Option "Rotate" "normal"
Option "Disable" "false"
Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "0-DFP4"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
Option "TargetRefresh" "60"
Option "Position" "1680 0"
Option "Rotate" "normal"
Option "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "amdcccle-Device[6]-0"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "Monitor-DFP3" "0-DFP3"
Option "Monitor-DFP4" "0-DFP4"
BusID "PCI:6:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "amdcccle-Device[6]-1"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "Monitor-DFP3" "0-DFP3"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
BusID "PCI:6:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "amdcccle-Screen[6]-0"
Device "amdcccle-Device[6]-0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Virtual 3360 1680
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "amdcccle-Screen[6]-1"
Device "amdcccle-Device[6]-1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection


Thanks,
Dave

[Fenrin]

[...]

How did you create this xorg.conf file? Did you use the aticonfig command? You normally don't have to configure xorg.conf manually.

If you want a double screen setup something like this could work:
aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left

Before you try this command, it makes sense to rename the current xorg.conf:
mv /etc/xorg.conf /etc/xorg.conf.old

the screen setup can also be changed via the xrandr command and via the Catalyst Control Center in Admin mode as well. But then it is probably changed for the current session and not for the time after reboot.

---------- Post added at 10:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 AM ----------

And you probably don't want to use the Catalyst driver from the Fedora 15 rpmfusion repo together with gnome shell. Because it is broken (the driver is still based on Catalyst 11.11 from last year). You have several possibilities then:
remove the catalyst driver via "yum remove *catalyst*" and use the default Radeon driver
remove the catalyst driver via "yum remove *catalyst*", install kernel-devel and kernel-headers, gcc, fontconfig etc and install the driver from ati.amd.com (kernel-PAE-devel if you use a PAE kernel)
set gnome fallback mode below system settings->Details->graphics and use the rpmfusion driver you have currently installed
replace your Fedora 15 with F16 or 17, but if you choose F17 the proprietary AMD/ATI driver will not work yet (because it doesn't support the xorg-server version of F17 yet)

[gossamer]

How did you create this xorg.conf file? Did you use the aticonfig command? You normally don't have to configure xorg.conf manually.
Yes, it was created by atconfig a long time ago, I believe. Running the command you provided below produced nearly the same config as I already had.

And you probably don't want to use the Catalyst driver from the Fedora 15 rpmfusion repo together with gnome shell. Because it is broken (the driver is still based on Catalyst 11.11 from last year). You have several possibilities then:
remove the catalyst driver via "yum remove *catalyst*" and use the default Radeon driver
remove the catalyst driver via "yum remove *catalyst*", install kernel-devel and kernel-headers, gcc, fontconfig etc and install the driver from ati.amd.com (kernel-PAE-devel if you use a PAE kernel)
set gnome fallback mode below system settings->Details->graphics and use the rpmfusion driver you have currently installed
replace your Fedora 15 with F16 or 17, but if you choose F17 the proprietary AMD/ATI driver will not work yet (because it doesn't support the xorg-server version of F17 yet)


Why would rpmfusion produce a new xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-11.11-2.fc15.x86_64 package if it was known to not work properly on fc15?

I'm using the fallback shell, and this all worked just fine with fc15 at one point, but someone fu$ked something up with an update and it made my previously working config stop working.

Thanks,
Dave

---------- Post added at 10:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 AM ----------

Hi,

I'm attempting to make the amd driver work for my HD5700 on fedora15 x86_64 with their installer that apparently tries to compile the kernel module, and it fails:


# cat fglrx-install.log
Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.
Unloading drm module...
ERROR: Module drm is in use by ttm,drm_kms_helper
[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64'
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o
In file included from /usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h:575:0,
from include/asm-generic/termios.h:51,
from /usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/termios.h:1,
from include/linux/termios.h:5,
from include/linux/tty.h:41,
from include/linux/vt_kern.h:11,
from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.c:35:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h: In function ‘copy_from_user’:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h:57:7: error: called object ‘2’ is not a function
make[2]: *** [/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to compile kernel module - please consult readme.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut


Am I missing some source package that has to be installed first?

I've removed all the catalyst packages, so I can't reboot until this works, so any ideas greatly appreciated :-)

Thanks,
Dave

[Yellowman]

Yes, it was created by atconfig a long time ago, I believe. Running the command you provided below produced nearly the same config as I already had.



Why would rpmfusion produce a new xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-11.11-2.fc15.x86_64 package if it was known to not work properly on fc15?

I'm using the fallback shell, and this all worked just fine with fc15 at one point, but someone fu$ked something up with an update and it made my previously working config stop working.

Thanks,
Dave

---------- Post added at 10:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 AM ----------

Hi,

I'm attempting to make the amd driver work for my HD5700 on fedora15 x86_64 with their installer that apparently tries to compile the kernel module, and it fails:


# cat fglrx-install.log
Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.
Unloading drm module...
ERROR: Module drm is in use by ttm,drm_kms_helper
[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64'
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o
In file included from /usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h:575:0,
from include/asm-generic/termios.h:51,
from /usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/termios.h:1,
from include/linux/termios.h:5,
from include/linux/tty.h:41,
from include/linux/vt_kern.h:11,
from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.c:35:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h: In function ‘copy_from_user’:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h:57:7: error: called object ‘2’ is not a function
make[2]: *** [/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.43.2-6.fc15.x86_64'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to compile kernel module - please consult readme.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut


Am I missing some source package that has to be installed first?

I've removed all the catalyst packages, so I can't reboot until this works, so any ideas greatly appreciated :-)

Thanks,
Dave
It needs patching.

http://cvs.rpmfusion.org/viewvc/rpms/catalyst-kmod/F-16/rename_debug.patch?revision=1.1&root=nonfree&view=markup

[gossamer]

It needs patching.

http://cvs.rpmfusion.org/viewvc/rpms/catalyst-kmod/F-16/rename_debug.patch?revision=1.1&root=nonfree&view=markup

Where is the source that this patches?

Thanks,
Dave

[Yellowman]

Where is the source that this patches?

Thanks,
Dave
It's a patch for the ati installer (12.3 or 12.4).

[gossamer]

It's a patch for the ati installer (12.3 or 12.4).

The installer? You mean amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run? That's just one big 104MB auto-extracting shell script. Do you have specific steps, please?

Thanks,
Dave

[Yellowman]

The installer? You mean amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run? That's just one big 104MB auto-extracting shell script. Do you have specific steps, please?

Thanks,
Dave

This guide should help but will need modifying

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Fedora_16_Installation_Guide#Amd-driver-installer_Compilation_Problems_on_i686_Fedora_16

[gossamer]

This guide should help but will need modifying

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Fedora_16_Installation_Guide#Amd-driver-installer_Compilation_Problems_on_i686_Fedora_16

Okay, after some playing around I got it to compile and install properly.

When it didn't make any difference in the display, I figured out it's a problem with the local user, not the display after all.

What would cause the upper third of the display to be black and inaccessible, although the clock, "applications" and "places" menus are accessible?

IOW, how do I reset the xorg config for a local user?

Thanks,
Dave

---------- Post added at 09:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 PM ----------

Okay, after some playing around I got it to compile and install properly.

When it didn't make any difference in the display, I figured out it's a problem with the local user, not the display after all.

What would cause the upper third of the display to be black and inaccessible, although the clock, "applications" and "places" menus are accessible?

IOW, how do I reset the xorg config for a local user?

Thanks,
Dave

Turns out this was all the result of a corrupt ~user/.config/dconf/user file. After removing that file and logging in again, the display was fixed.

Of course I went through the process of rebuilding the driver before I learned this. Not something I look forward to ever having to do again. Just very frustrating.

[Pepi]

*puuh*

Still have the "copy_from_user" trouble...

[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64'
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o
In file included from /usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h:575:0,
from include/asm-generic/termios.h:51,
from /usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/termios.h:1,
from include/linux/termios.h:5,
from include/linux/tty.h:41,
from include/linux/vt_kern.h:11,
from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.c:35:
/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h: In function ‘copy_from_user’:
/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h:57:7: error: called object ‘2’ is not a function
make[2]: *** [/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to compile kernel module - please consult readme.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut


Compared to the previous posts, your kernel modules have been pretty old....? Is this issue because I'm using the latest kerner??

[gossamer]

*puuh*

Still have the "copy_from_user" trouble...

[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64'
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o
In file included from /usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h:575:0,
from include/asm-generic/termios.h:51,
from /usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/termios.h:1,
from include/linux/termios.h:5,
from include/linux/tty.h:41,
from include/linux/vt_kern.h:11,
from /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.c:35:
/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h: In function ‘copy_from_user’:
/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h:57:7: error: called object ‘2’ is not a function
make[2]: *** [/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/kcl_acpi.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.3.1-5.fc16.x86_64'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to compile kernel module - please consult readme.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : dracut


Compared to the previous posts, your kernel modules have been pretty old....? Is this issue because I'm using the latest kerner??

I'm using fc15, not fc16, so still at kernel 2.6.

The basic idea is to run the shell script with the --extract option and find the right directory before applying the patch:


# sh amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run --extract /usr/src/ati
# cd /usr/src/ati/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/
# patch -p0 < rename_debug.patch
# cd /usr/src/ati
# ./ati-installer.sh 8.961 --install --force


Substitute the 8.961 with your version number, of course.

Best regards,
Dave

[Pepi]

Dummy ....

I read the wiki so badly. The problem was fixed by following this:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Fedora_16_Installation_Guide#Amd-driver-installer_Compilation_Problems_on_x86_64_Fedora_16

(I was following the next solution were I need to patch the installer)

:dance:

[scarletshark]

In F16, it appears that the driver is working properly for me (for the most part). However, occasionally Gnome3 has to reload, which is a bit annoying.

I really only need to have the driver running when I'm using 3D-Coat, Maya, or other such software. Is it possible to create a script that turns the driver on, and starts my 3D application?

[Cygn]

and this is the firePro version for the rename_debug patch. Tested on fglrx-8.911.3.3
apply with :

patch -p0 < rename_debug_firepro.patch

in /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod after installing the driver (and it fails to build the module)
then rebuild the module with

./make.sh
cd ..
./make_install.sh

hope it helps.