Mobility Radeon HD 3870 / M88 drivers... :(

[Melcar]

You need to use Jaunty's 2.6.28 kernel.

[bridgman]

No problems when I installed Jaunty this last time (and the first time). Whatever was installed by default worked, in that it let me see my desktop. Acceleration-wise, it was doing squat, but I know that that part is coming along and will take a while.

The default drivers in Jaunty should give you EXA (2d) and Xv (video) acceleration, but not 3D acceleration (so no desktop effects with Compiz).

I'll try the Cat 9.6 drivers, then. But two questions, do I need to boot to the stock kernel, or can I use the 2.6.30 kernel? And secondly, what do I do if the shit hits the fan? Last time I frantically installed and uninstalled drivers and that of course was a confusing mess by the end. Or, can I simply go back to using my old xorg.conf file and simply put "radeon" as the Driver?

You should use the 2.6.28 kernel. There are some patches around to make 2.6.30 work with the current fglrx but I don't know how well they work.

[Poop Loops]

I booted to the stock kernel and I still had a black screen. Tried to reconfigure my xserver and then edit my xorg.conf, but that didn't help either. What do I do now?

[Kano]

You sell your laptop

[bridgman]

Let's see... you still have fglrx installed, right ? Let's get you back to the original drivers as a starting point.

Did you install fglrx by building packages or via the native installer ? I'm guessing "installer", so you should be able to remove it by running uninstall. I don't have the install instructions in front of me so not sure about exact syntax etc..

Next, use the package manager to remove and reinstall a few packages :

xserver-xorg-video-radeon (this is probably OK)
libgl1-mesa-glx
libgl1-mesa-dri

I don't know an easy way to get back to the stock xorg.conf, so maybe just edit it and make sure the driver is set to "radeon" ("ati" would be fine too, but "ati" just loads "radeon"). Maybe pastebin your xorg conf so we can see if there's anything bad in there.

Reboot, and you should be running with the open source drivers. Run the xvinfo command and make sure you get Xv adapters - this is probably the easiest way to confirm that all the acceleration is working.

Next, read through the installation instructions for "building packages" - I think that's the approach we recommend when packages are supported for your distro.

[Poop Loops]

No, I manually installed the drivers. That's why I don't really know how to uninstall them... dpkg -i blah.deb worked fine. Is there a dpkg-uninstall blah.deb command or something? I'm guessing not...

Err... yes, a quick Google told me that I have to use dpkg -p to completely purge the system of the following packages. I'll try that really quick.

[Melcar]

You can also just remove the packages with apt-get remove just like any normal .deb package. Once you uninstall the packages you need to restore xorg.conf:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Answer the questions and edit the new file so the system loads the radeon driver:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

#find the Device section and add the line:

Driver    "radeon"

Reboot and now you should have a working desktop (Xv, exa accel., no 3D). Now you can try to install fglrx again.
Check it:

1.- Got to ATI's website and donwload the driver. The same installer works for both 32bit and 64bit systems.

2.- Open a terminal and move into the directory where you saved the driver in:

cd /<location of driver>

3.- Install needed dependancies:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms  

#install ia32-libs if on a 64bit system

4.- Build packages:

sudo sh <name of .run file> --buildpkg

#this will generate several packages inside the source directory

5.- Install packages:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

#this will install ALL .deb files inside the directory, so make sure you don't have anything else aside from the driver
#if you are then asked about overwriting files, just tell it to go ahead (type "Y" when prompted)

6.- Initialize the driver:

cd
sudo aticonfig --initial

7.- Reboot

[Poop Loops]

That is almost exactly what I did, except that I downloaded the ati*.run driver file, made 3 .deb files out of it, and then followed your instructions step by step.

Basically, what I did was this:

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...eady_installed

So unless your method is significantly different, then I already know the result. The problem has to be somewhere else, and I don't know where to even start looking.

But, at least I'm back to the open-source drivers now, which is good.

[Melcar]

It should create more than three packages (5 I think). Also, when you install them, check the terminal and make sure no errors are being spit out.

[Poop Loops]

Okay, I reinstalled the drivers, this time I booted to the stock kernel, though. Still the same story, just booting to a black page. Is there anything else I can try or do I just accept that my system is borked?

One thing, though, is that lspci gives me this:

06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9509
06:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon HD 3870 Audio device

And when running aticonfig -- initial, BusID is always PCI:6:0:0. Should I try PCI:6:0:1?