fireglcontrolpanel problems
Originally Posted by Michael
Reply With QuoteTake 2 of posting ....
Hello Michael and Others,
First of all, thank you for all your efforts to make the drivers work for ATI cards and sharing this information. I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 running the 2.6.19-1.2895 version of FC6, and I am trying to set it up to watch movies and run Google Earth. However, lack of graphics acceleration prevents me from doing this right now.
I was able to successfully build the ATI 8.33.6 drivers for FC6 using some of the information posted on this and other sites. I ran into the:
install: cannot stat `fireglcontrolpanel': No such file or directory
problem mentioned by others as well, and was able to trace it down to some missing files. For some reason, the files extracted to the fglrx-install directory using the command:
ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run --extract
are missing the bin directory and the fireglcontrolpanel file in the x710/usr/X11R6 subdirectory. This seems to be an ommission - all other directories contain this subdirectory and file. I simply copied the file and subdrirectory from the x700 directory and I was able to generate the rpm files without any more problems using the following command from WITHIN the fglrx-install directory.
ati-installer.sh 8.33.6 --buildpkg Fedora/FC6
However if you copy the file as mentioned above and then use the command:
ati-driver-installer-8.33.6-x86.x86_64.run 8.33.6 --buildpkg Fedora/FC6
from the directory where you downloaded the file, the problem will still persist because this recreates the fglrx-install directory and wipes out your modifications.
After having done this and installed the generated rpms using:
yum localinstall *rpm
and updated my xorg.conf file using
aticonfig --initial
With this, I was able to get a resolution of 1280x800 that I cannot otherwise get.
I then modified the xorg.conf file to disable compositing by adding the sections:
Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection
to the xorg.conf file. This led to the problem of the screen hanging up - presumably with the X server consuming 100% of the CPU - mentioned by others in these forums. I have no solution to this at present.
I also noticed that the generated drivers (without the DRI extensions in the xorg.conf file) slow down with time - especially if you suspend and resume the machine, but even otherwise. This was bad enough that I ended up completely uninstalling the drivers and reverting to the VESA drivers.
From what I have read here and elsewhere, there is no way past the screen hangup problem for the 8.33.6 drivers. I will have to revert to the 8.29 drivers to be able to use that, but they are not compatible with the 2.6.19 kernel which is what I have. This is where I am at present - pondering my next move.
If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate those, though it may be a while before I blow another weekend trying to get this to work.
Just for future reference in buying hardware - which graphics cards do you recommend for Linux notebooks? Which vendor is most friendly and provides the linux community with access to the latest features? I will certainly vote with my feet (money) the next time.
Sanjay
