Yet Another FC6/fgrlx problem... please help!

[theslarty]

Greetings, Linux guru types:

I recently gained access to a beast of a machine - a Dell PowerEdge 6800 with 4 dual-core Xeons - to do raytracing research. It's got Fedora Core 6 and a Radeon X1300, and I've spent the better part of today trying to get the 3D acceleration working. fglrx was already on the machine, but there was no 3D acceleration, which I need to do my work. I've spent the better chunk of today trying to fix this - tried a bunch of stuff from this forum and other forums, and while none of it seems to make anything any worse, none of it is fixing the problem, either.

I'm hardly a computer novice, and while I spend most of my computing time on OS X or Windows, I'm pretty comfortable with Linux... but a lot of this is unfamiliar to me. Here's where I am... if anybody can help me out I'd be incredibly grateful. This is a machine with a Radeon X1300, running Fedora Core 6, kernel 2.6.20-1.2952.fc6.

The last thing I tried was installing directly using the ATI file. I downloaded ati-driver-installer-8.38.6-x86.x86_64.run and had it generate the Fedora/FC6 RPMs, which installed without complaint (after I removed the earlier fgrlx with Yum Extender). But, no dice: it's still using Mesa to render.

/var/log/Xorg.0.log shows this error:
(EE) fglrx(0): incompatible kernel module detected - HW accelerated OpenGL will not work

fglrxinfo gives me this:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.5.1)

Here's my xorg.conf... I've already disabled Composite and AIGLX.

# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, a font server independent of the X server is
# used to render fonts.
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Dell 2001FP (Analog)"
DisplaySize 410 310
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
HorizSync 31.0 - 80.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 76.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

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

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7166"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
Option "Capabilities" "0x00000000"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection


I'm incredibly frustrated with all this, and all out of ideas as to what to do next, but I NEED to get it to work! Thanks so much for any help anyone can give me!

- Greg

[Michael]

What kernel are you using to get that error message? Have you tried upgrading to the newest 2.6.20 kernel available in the Fedora updates repository?

[d2kx]

Michael,

This is a machine with a Radeon X1300, running Fedora Core 6, kernel 2.6.20-1.2952.fc6.

I think you need to compile the kernel module. Under Debian it can be done with module-assistant. I never tried it, but try the following:

yum install module-assistant
m-a prepare
m-a update
m-a a-i fglrx
depmod -a

And then reboot.

[theslarty]

Michael (and all),

I updated the kernel (from 2.6.20-1.2952.fc6 to 2.6.20-1.2962.fc6). Still no DRI, but now there's a different error in the Xorg.0.log:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
(EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.

So far this has been like a game of whack-a-mole - push something down, something else pops up. :-) Any idea how I can handle this new error? What's GPS? (I'm guessing it's not Global Positioning System...)

I haven't tried what d2kx suggested... should I do that next?

[Xipeos]

yum install module-assistant
m-a prepare
m-a update
m-a a-i fglrx
depmod -a

And then reboot.

I haven't tried what d2kx suggested... should I do that next?

Hell no. the fglrx installer compiles the module for you so there's no need for yum or other crap.

Uninstall your current fglrx with

# /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

(backup your xorg.conf before though)

You may want to do

# find / -name "*fglrx*" -exec rm '{}' \;

afterwards just to be sure.

Then just reinstall fglrx using the official installer (do it from the console, without X though).

That should fix any kernel incompatibilities.

And then reboot.

You don't have to reboot, this is linux. Just restart your x server (after reloading the module, if it's already loaded).