ATI driver problem....

[jamesp]

Okay, I am fairly new to linux and have just installed Redhat 9. The only problem so far is I can't get my video card drivers to work.

I have a ATI Radeon 9200, can anyone step me through this little crisis?

[Dolda2000]

Well, what exactly is wrong? That is, what happens and what error messages do you get?

[jamesp]

Well, what exactly is wrong? That is, what happens and what error messages do you get?

Well, I restart the computer after I have specified which graphics drivers to use, a little blue window pops up and says that it cannot start X windows or some such, then it asks me to login with the root password, then it goes through some tests, finally settling on the VESA generic drivers.

[Dolda2000]

Hmmm... it might be that the open source drivers do not yet support the latest Radeon cards. I haven't used ATi in ages, so I don't really know. Try checking out ATi's proprietary driver on their homepage.

[Tetsuo]

This worked for Fedora Core 1

Well, I had much the same problem that you did a coupla weeks back and had to do the following, assuming that you can load up KDE/Gnome etc:

1) I downloaded the ATI driver from the website and performed a force install using the rpm -Ui command (mainly due to a pesky Mesa driver conflict that I had..grrr...you should be fine reinstalling the drivers after you issue rpm -e to remove your current installation.

2) Run "glxgears" in a terminal to check your fps rate. If it is up in the 1000+ range then sit back, relax and fire up tuxracer . If your fps is nowhere near this then try the "glxinfo | grep direct" command to see if you have direct rendering support enabled. If the output is negative then,

3)What I found to work was to edit my /etc/X11/XF86Config file (be sure to make a backup!). Look under Section "Device" and you should see this

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon 9200SE"

Now all you need to do is to add Load "dri" to the Section "Module" bit so,

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

Caveat! I may have left out some bits here so make backups! Also you may need to add a Load "glx" line as well as a Load "dri" line as in 3) above but I doubt that should be the case. I'm no expert so I will defer to any gurus who may be cringing at my ham-handed fix.