AMD Catalyst 10.6 For Linux Brings Changes

[unimatrix]

I had the same issue. You have to purge uninstall the old fglrx driver.
Then you have to completely remove /etc/ati and /usr/lib/fglrx

Now reinstall fglrx 10.6 and run sudo aticonfig --initial --force and all is good.

Holy heck, you're right! That did it. Thank you greatly!
aticonfig --initial --force did the trick. But how was I supposed to know that. This was never required before.

Now the question remains: Why on earth does this still not happen automatically? I still don't trust ATI to make a proper deb package, so... Kano?

[bridgman]

The driver install instructions tell you to :

- fully uninstall the previous fglrx driver
- restore the original xorg.conf file that was present before the previous fglrx driver was installed
- run aticonfig --initial

If you restore the original xorg.conf as indicated in the install instructions then you normally won't need the -f option.

If the xorg.conf has been modified, either by hand or by an earlier version of aticonfig then the -f option often helps.

Am I correct in understanding that a full uninstall plus restoring the xorg.conf plus aticonfig --initial did not work but doing all those plus aticonfig --initial --f did work ?

[bridgman]

Sorry, missed a step - the instructions also tell you to reboot after uninstalling the previous version and restoring xorg.conf.

[unimatrix]

The driver install instructions tell you to :

- fully uninstall the previous fglrx driver
- restore the original xorg.conf file that was present before the previous fglrx driver was installed
- run aticonfig --initial

If you restore the original xorg.conf as indicated in the install instructions then you normally won't need the -f option.

If the xorg.conf has been modified, either by hand or by an earlier version of aticonfig then the -f option often helps.

Am I correct in understanding that a full uninstall plus restoring the xorg.conf plus aticonfig --initial did not work but doing all those plus aticonfig --initial --f did work ?

No, I did not run aticonfig at all, because I assumed Kano does that in his script. Also, because this was never necessary until now. Not to mention ATI's deb builds could've done it automatically.

[bridgman]

I don't think they're actually *our* deb builds, are they ? AFAIK the package build scripts are maintained by external distro packagers and the latest scripts are pulled into the Catalyst driver kit with each new release.

Not sure if the script runs aticonfig or not, good point though.

Note that running aticonfig --initial is not always needed, depending on the degree of change between the previous version and current version of fglrx, but we strongly recommend that it be run every time anyways.

[bridgman]

For clarity, we recommend running aticonfig --initial even after installing the driver from a package.

Also note there are two versions of aticonfig (in different folders), depending on your xorg version.

[unimatrix]

I don't think they're actually *our* deb builds, are they ? AFAIK the package build scripts are maintained by external distro packagers and the latest scripts are pulled into the Catalyst driver kit with each new release.

Not sure if the script runs aticonfig or not, good point though.

Note that running aticonfig --initial is not always needed, depending on the degree of change between the previous version and current version of fglrx, but we strongly recommend that it be run every time anyways.

OK, got it. Sorry for being a bit annoying

Anyway, congratulations guys for an exceptional release!
It really fixes a lot of issues. Fantastic!

[bridgman]

Glad to hear it's working for you.

[AnorexiasGrizzli]

this new driver is a piece of...i have an hd4670 and with this new driver the screen has artifacts everywhere, the games that used to work are full of text bugs (missing characters, LOL?!), at this point im totally pissed off, i installed radeon driver and ill stay with it for a while...

OS: Fedora 13
Kernel: 2.6.34 (custom)
X.Org: 1.8.0 (from repo) but when i was testing fglrx i was using a custom compiled xorg 1.8.0

[rohcQaH]

I never ever ran aticonfig --initial, any sane xorg.conf with
Driver "fglrx"
should do. But it is very important to remove all traces of the previous driver: shut down X, modprobe -r fglrx, remove all files (including /etc/ati/ and /lib/modules/*/video/fglrx). Using a good package manager instead of AMD's installer is preferable because it keeps track of the installed files and can remove them for you (gentoo's portage is good, I don't know about others).

The reboot isn't needed either, but it's simpler than manually shutting down X and removing the kernel module.