sean <tech.junk <at> verizon.net> writes: > I emerged the latest drivers you specified above and -dri stable > drivers, these actually compiled. > The xorg configure keeps crashing, but I played around with my earlier > xorg config.
Well, if you like I'll email directly to you my xorg.conf file for my ati-1900. There are numerous differences compared to any of my radeon compatible xorg.conf files... > Here is a real odd one. Having specified the radeon driver, started > xorg, and it fails stating cannot find the radeon driver. Hold on a second; you need to 'double check' my advice because I did everything over and over, including building new kernels with the options that various web pages recommended, before I got mine to work. So I'll give you advice and relate my experiences, but, I do not have ati-drivers worked out to the point of a flawless (correct) installation proceedure. Sometimes you just have to bang on the install a few times. What is really needed is for one of the smart peole on this list to write a simple one page wiki for ati-drivers, with version 8.32.5 and xorg 7.1. That said here goes: A. You are not running the 'radeon driver' you are running the ati-drivers binary driver, sometimes referred to a fglrx B. /etc/make.conf: I have this entry, because somebody told me that what they did, not that is was perfectly correct: VIDEO_CARDS="radeon vesa" <vesa is the backup if radeon croakes> yes it conflicts with what I just told you, but, who knows? Ati driver referred to a radeon? C. 'modules-update' needs to be ran after building kernels and after rebuildling xorg-x11? (or something like that). D. Graphics acceleration (dri, drm, fglrx, glxgears, opengl etc etc) and many more specific are still a little confusing to me. So you have to surf the various web pages and figure out a sequence that works... E. No matter what I did, mine did not work, until I deleted my xorg.conf and used 'xorgconfig' to build a new file from scratch. If you do that Then you have to get the monitor work and check what modules you are loading. When I first generated the file, only a few modules where in the xorg.conf and it worked fine: Load "dbe" Load "freetype" Load "dri" Load "glx" > Did a slocate for radeon_drv and it located it in the proper xorg > location for the drivers. Tried xorg again, it failed the same way. > Went to the driver location, and the radeon driver is not present. Tried > an slocate again, it states that the radeon driver is where it should be. > At a loss for this one. man updatedb tells you that in order to update the database that slocate access, you have to periodically run 'updatedb' after updates I use this command string to catch the system files and other things I use (like slocate): env-update && source /etc/profile && etc-update && update-eix && eupdatedb come up with your onw scheme and use it, so you do not get caught with the slocate, eix or other tools, out of wack......... > Right now to simplify things removing SMP from the kernel, saw a lot of > remarks stating SMP often on early versions of the driver caused problems. I keep 4 or more kernels on every system. When I run into issues, I can just go back a few revs/versions on kernels to see if that is an issue. I experiment with lots of kernel options and stuff, as do many gentoo folks... > Has anyone tried the driver install script right from ati instead of > portage? nope, but the page I used which I have now lost the bookmark to was discovered right after looking at the ati site. It was not even gentoo specific. > I am just about ready to go get an nvidia card. Well, that's your business, but as a firmware engineer, I do not see nvidia as any better. In fact they *NEVER* release hardware details about driver cards. I'm not so sure that the problems with figuring out problems with ati-drivers is so much due to the lack of ati-driver quality, as it is with a lack of enthusiasm with the folks that take the published ati-binaries and package the drivers for the varous versions of linux kernels, X sources, and linux distros..... <yea it's my opinion, but, I write firmware all day long and deal with digital hardware and semiconductor vendors.... but it's just a feeling resulting in an option> Futhermore, just look at the amount of old gentoo documentation that has not even been update for xorg 7.x or the newer (testing) ati-drivers). Even in the gentoo community, there is little enthusiams to straighten out the documentation mess surrounding Even if Nvidia is better (which I doubt) certainly we can maintain the ATI docs in a little bit more concise manner, just like amd and intel are both supported, but amd64 definately is more linux friendly. Which leads me to hope that AMD cleans up the ati-drivers mess also. Futhermore if you follow the kernel stuffage, you definately see certain vendors and their consultants and employees gaining uneven treatment with the whole area of drivers....(again in my opinion). Lots of money is changing hands here, AMD (ati) is going to have to poney_up to fix all of the issues with ati video card, where they are open source or not. An example is Sangoma still sells pci router cards and only provides a binary driver. Other, smaller router card vendors have not received such favorable treatment. You have to decide, do you support a company that has only ever release binary drivers, or a company that has done both? hth, James -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
