I'm trying hard to install my ATI Radeon 9600 XT on Mandrake 10.1-Official. It seems to be set up, though I can't use any 3D, whether it's Half-Life (via Cedega) or Tux Racer. I followed the instructions here:
http://www.rage3d.com/content/articl...Linux_ATI.html
I tried applying the VMALLOC patch, as it states and had no luck.
Then I tried to build the module - agpgart is running (I checked using lsmod) - and when I tried to sh make_install.sh (as root) in the /lib/modules/fglrx folder, it bombs out with the following error:

I've searched long and hard on here and other sites and found nothing to fix this problem.

When I rpm -ihv --force /path.../fglrx-driver.rpm, I get the following response:
Any ideas?

Sorry to pester, but anyone got any suggestions?

Not a one. I just installed an ATI 9550 256mg card and can't get direct rendering working. It worked fine on my old card (ATI 7200). I get this messeage from the XFree86.0.log

(WW) RADEON(0): Direct rendering not yet supported on Radeon 9500/9700 and newer cards

This is using the radeon.o module. I can't get the fglrx stuff to work worth a darn either.

I tried loading agpgart (as I did with the 7200 card) and I get this from the XFree86.0.log:

(II) LoadModule: "agpgart"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module agpgart
(II) UnloadModule: "agpgart"
(EE) Failed to load module "agpgart" (module does not exist, 0)

Though there it is in /dev.

Does someone have a working XF86Config-4 that uses a newer Raedon card and had direct rendering working that they can post?

Thanks,

stunter

edit:

OK, a bit of additional research indicates that my kernel is not yet supported. I'm running Mandrake 10.0 and the kernel is not yet supported. So if I want the ATI drivers to work, I have to compile my own fglrx module. Unfortunately, I don't have the kernel sources installed and lack the space to install them for now. Sigh. I guess it's just not going to work until ATI gets around to updating fglrx to include 2.6 kernels or until I install the kernel sources and compile the damn thing myself.

What a pain.

Tell me about it. I'm a big time noob ex-OS X-er, and I'm really not comfortable rebuilding my own kernel.

From my Xorg.0.log file:
Damn it. One day ATI will get their act together... (not that nVidia was much better for me)

Tom,

Well, more information. I built the fglrx module against my 2.6 kernel. All went well and the module installed and loaded without issue....

only to find out that the drivers don't support direct rendering. At all. Says so in my XFree86.0.log "Direct Rendering not yet supported for 9500, 9700 and newer ATI cards". Not yet?

Sigh...

So, it appears that I upgraded to a much faster ATI card with more memory and a bigger pipe that, because of ATI's inability to create drivers or release the information so others can dreate drivers, is totally useless to me.

Sigh again...

Guess I'll have pull the thing and buy an nVidia card. While not great, at least nVidia HAS 3D drivers.

Worse than that. I've decided it's too much bother. I'm buying a new IDE drive in the next few weeks and am going to have a small drive just for, shudder, Windows. As much as I would like to be 100% Tuxed up, it seems as if Windows is going to have to be there for when I want to play 3D games.

hi Tom,
I'm using a powercolor 9600xt with mandrake 10.1 CE and as luck would have it, it works fine. I know this sounds painfull but I would recommend backing up and reinstalling mandrake. Mandrake 10.1 CE is the only distro I have tried that recognized my 9600xt and set it up properly. In fact i've just done a re-install today (it's quicker than tidying up) and the graphics work fine, not very quickly, but OK. Just as a thumb-rule here is the output from glxgears.

[mick@localhost mick]$ glxgears
9115 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1823.000 FPS
10862 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2172.400 FPS
10853 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2170.600 FPS
10855 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2171.000 FPS
10845 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2169.000 FPS
10849 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2169.800 FPS

Cheers,

Mick.

Tom and Mick,

I get no direct rendering at all with the fglrx drivers. I have 10.0. Just haven't spent the time yet to download 10.1. I get OK framerates with software rendering, but it would be nice if the direct rendering worked. Certainly would work better and more consistently.

I've decide to keep my Windows XP partition. I've got a dual boot system and a stripped version of XP that I use as a game platform. I have high hopes that someday Linux will at least sort of catch up in games and I can dump Windows but until then I'll keep it around as a game platform.

Hi folks, this is a copy of a reply I posted on another forum, it sounds like it may well help.

This sounds like the same problem I had getting my 9600XT to work. I finally found a howto that helped. The below text is copied from it. I'm using a 2.6 kernel and adding the lines below (for the 2.6 kernel) to the end of /etc/modprobe.conf cured the problem and then reboot. Don't be amazed if you don't get the performance you were hopng for though, it's just that ati's drivers aren't much good (on linux anyway)

For the driver to load properly, the agpgart and your specific chipset gart must be enabled at boot time (in case you are using a gfx login). This can be done by adding the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf :

pre-install fglrx /sbin/modprobe "-k" "agpgart"

If you are using the 2.6 kernel, add the following line instead:

install fglrx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install fglrx && { /sbin/modprobe via-agp; /bin/true; }

Cheers,

Mick

Mick,

I'll certainly give it a try. Nothing else I've tried has had any effect on the direct rendering. I must have 15 versions of XF86Config-4 with various attempts to get the thing to work.

Thanks, I'll let others know if I get anywhere...of even if I don't.

stunter

It looks like you people are trying to "complicate" things.
When installing mandrake10.1, when required to select your video board manufacturer, just select ATI -> Radeon fglrx. That's the driver for the firegl line of ATI boards. It works fine with my Radeon 9600 XT.
Now if you go to System-> configuration-> configure your computer ->Hardware->hardware->videocard
it will show Radeon 9600XT.
when I run "glxinfo" command, it displays" DirectRendering : Yes " thus confirming that 3D hardware acceleration is enabled.
glxgears give 1950 FPS and Tuxracer + Epsxe ( Playstation emulator ) run nicely.
Maybe you should have posted your problem in the Mandrake distro forum because your problem is Mandrake specific: Mandrake auto-install the ATI drivers while if you have a distro such as Fedora, you'll have to download, install and configure the ATI driver manually.

I don't have Mandrake 10.1 and I don't think it's particularly distro dependent. According to ATI, the latest linux drivers from ATI (fglrx) don't yet support 3D rendering for newer ATI cards (9500, 9700, etc). If Mandrake found a way to get this working, great. I'll take the time to download the distro and upgrade my installation.

Hi all,
Biased Turkey is quite right that mandrake 10.1 does indeed auto-detect the radeon 9600xt. However, when I was running mandrake10 (as is stunter) it didn't auto-detect my graphics cards and therefore I had to use the patch

Cheers,

Mick.

This is what glxinfo is returning for me:

Tom,

Almost exactly what I get.