Drivers

by Kulbir Saini on AMD, ATI, Compiz, Drivers, Fedora, Graphics, Hardware, Kernel, Linux, News

News : ATI Drivers 9.10 Working with 2.6.30+ Kernels

AMD released the next version 9.10 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux nearly a fortnight ago. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. The good thing about this version is that a lot of people are reporting that they can get it working on 2.6.30+ kernels. These drivers are lifesaver for people want to keep everything upto date. The corruption around cursor is still present while watching videos or with compiz enabled.

Note1 : The installation process is same as version 9.8 and can be access at How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.
Note2 : If you want to configure dual display follow How To: Configure Dual Display with ATI Radeon (fglrx).

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by Kulbir Saini on AMD, ATI, Configuration, Drivers, Fedora, Fonts, Graphics, Hacks, Hardware, HowTo, Installation, Linux, Screenshot, Tips - Tricks, Xorg

How To: Configure Dual Display with ATI Radeon (fglrx)

As promised in my last post (News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released), I am back with a post on configuring dual display with ATI Radeon HD Graphics Card and proprietary catalyst (fglrx) drivers from ATI.

Hardware Used

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, onboard)
Monitor 0: ViewSonic VG1930WM 1440×900 (19″ LCD, Connected via DVI port)
Monitor 1: Samsung SyncMaster 793S 1280×1024 (17″ CRT, Connected via VGA port)

Types of Dual Display

  • Mirror: Both screens have same content, identical refresh rate and resolution.
  • Clone: Both screens have same content but refresh rates and resolutions can be different.
  • Horizontal: Both screens can have different content, refresh rates and resolution. Screen 1 is left or right of Screen2.
  • Vertical: Same as horizontal. The only difference is that Screen1 is above or below Screen2.

In this post, we are interested in Horizontal setup with xinerama on. This way we can have two desktops allowing full screen modes on both of them and allowing us to drag and drop windows from one screen to the other.

Install ATI Drivers

If you don’t have ATI drivers installed already, follow this How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers on Fedora 11 (works for any version of ATI Catalyst drivers).

Generate xorg.conf file

If you don’t see the xorg.conf file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then you need to generate it to proceed to next step. Use the following command as root to generate one

[root@fedora ~]$ Xorg -configure

This command will generate the default xorg.conf file at /root/xorg.conf.new. Copy it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Backup xorg.conf file

Backup your original xorg.conf file so that you can restore it in case the configuration doesn’t work the way you expected.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

Generate Configuration for Dual Display

Now we are ready to generate the configuration for dual display. Use the following command with appropriate arguments (in accordance with your hardware configuration)

# --screen-layout will place second screen on left of your first screen. Other possible values are right,above,below.
# --xinerama=on option enables you to have two different desktops and one of them being passive.
# You can drag and drop windows from one desktop to the other. Task bars appear only on one of the desktops.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left --xinerama=on
# --resolution=_screen_number_,widthxheight
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --resolution=0,1440x900 --resolution=1,1280x1024
# Set horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for both monitors.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --hsync=0,30-60 --hsync=1,30-60 --vrefresh=0,30-60 --vrefresh=1,30-60

You can download my xorg.conf file via this link.

Reboot or Logout and Login Again

If you just setup your ATI drivers and configured the dual display, you need to reboot so that fglrx module can be loaded properly. If you rebooted after setting up the drivers, just logout and login again to checkout your dual display 🙂 If everything works fine, say thanks to me and if not blame ATI 😛

Adjust DPI for Normal Font Size

I faced a problem with my font sizes being too big while using xinerama. It was easy to fix by adjusting DPI. Go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Go to Fonts tab. Click Details located near the bottom right corner. On that window, try descreasing the “Dots Per Inch” value. Mine worked fine with 85 DPI.

Below is an image of my dual display setup. Click to enlarge.

Dual Display Configuration ViewSonic Samsung Using ATI Radeon Catalyst (fglrx)

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by Kulbir Saini on AMD, ATI, Compiz, Drivers, Graphics, Hardware, Kernel, Linux, News, Xorg

News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released

AMD has released the next version 9.9 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. I have already tried them with kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i586 and they seem to work fine without SWCursor hack. But I still see corruptions around cursor while moving cursor in a playing video or in Compiz. BTW I got dual display working with Xinerama turned on with this version. I’ll post a HowTo about the same very soon. I think it’ll take some more time before the drivers are completely stable. AMD has been doing a really good job in rolling out drivers at regular intervals.

Note : The installation process is same as version 9.8 and can be access at How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.

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by Kulbir Saini on AMD, ATI, Drivers, Fedora, Graphics, Hardware, HowTo, Installation, Kernel, Xorg

How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers

Note: This How To is valid up to Catalyst Driver version 10.1.
Note: With minor changes this How To may work for other Linux distributions like Mandriva, Suse, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Cent OS etc.

Following the suggestions in comments on my last post about ATI Catalyst (fglrx), I tried to reinstall ATI drivers version 9.8 and finally it worked. I thought of noting down the the process in few simple steps which anyone can follow and get the drivers working on Fedora 11 with latest kernel versions.

Step 1 : Update Kernel, Install kernel-devel

Huge thanks to Richard Lloyd and mxyzptlk2063 for pointing this out.
This step is not necessary. You may like to stick to the kernel version you already have. In case you want the latest kernel, just use yum to get the latest kernel.

Note: Do not forget to update the kernel-devel package as well as its needed to compile the fglrx kernel module.

DONT UPDATE THE KERNEL. Instead stick to whatever kernel version you have. If you have 2.6.30.*, you are unlucky 🙁 Get a kernel version 2.6.29.* and install the kernel-devel for the same.

With Catalyst Driver version 9.10 you can update kernel to latest version before installing the Drivers.

[root@fedora ~]$ yum update kernel
[root@fedora ~]$ yum install kernel-devel

Step 2 : Download Drivers

Download the ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver from ATI/AMD website.

Step 3 : Install Drivers

Install the drivers that you have downloaded using the following command.

[root@fedora ~]$ bash ./ati-driver-installer-9-8-x86.x86_64.run

Step 4 : Check Installation Result

Check the /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log file for result of installation. If there are no errors, proceed to the next step.

Note: You may see lines like this at the end of file

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.

You can ignore these lines happily if they don’t contain any error message. You don’t really need to execute the command mentioned in those lines.

Step 5 : Blacklist radeon and radeonhd kernel modules

Add these lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

blacklist radeon
blacklist radeonhd

Step 6 : Generate initial Xorg configuration file

Note: This step is optional with Catalyst Driver version 9.10, but it wont harm even if you execute this.

You have to generate the initial xorg.conf file which will use fglrx as display device.

[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial

Step 7 : Modify xorg.conf

Open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and add the following line to “Device” section (the one with fglrx as driver)

Option "SWCursor" "true"

Step 8 : Reboot

Reboot your machine. And you’ll have the latest ATI Catalyst drivers working on your Fedora 11 🙂

Step 9 : Testing

You can test your newly installed drivers and get the performance benchmarks for your graphics card using the commands below.

[saini@fedora ~]$ glxgears
[saini@fedora ~]$ fgl_glxgears

My graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, Onboard) and I get 1500FPS with glxgears and 300FPS with fgl_glxgears.

In case you messup things somewhere, you can uninstall the fglrx drivers using the following command

[root@fedora ~]$ /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
 
by Kulbir Saini on AMD, ATI, Bug, Drivers, Fedora, Graphics, Hardware, Kernel, News

Info: ATI Drivers 9.8 Doesnt Work with Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)

After a night out I was about to go to bed when I saw the news that ATI has released a new version of ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver, its proprietary display drivers for Linux. I immediately downloaded the drivers to test with my Fedora 11 as I am getting more and more desperate to watch HD Movies 😐 Installed them on a manually compiled kernel 2.6.27 and the build failed 🙁 Installed the latest kernel version (for fedora 11) 2.6.29.6.xxx and build failed yet another time. Switched back to 2.6.27 and tried to build again. This time build was successful. Everything worked as expected. I was getting 1500FPS with glxgears and 300FPS with fgl_glxgears. But after sometime display hanged inturn freezing the system. Hard reboot was the only solution and then this happened for a few times in a row. Now, I am back to radeonhd, waiting for yet another release of ATI drivers so that I can try them yet another time to see yet another failure 🙁

Update : Drivers are working now. Move on to How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.