ATI Driver Installation

[micro2]

Hello all, I'm back with openSUSE this time to see if I can get this video card to work on this flavor of linux. I have a ATI HD3870 PCIE Video card and the driver will not install. I've tried to install it from the terminal to no avail... when I run the install it works great then I reboot the system and try to run the control panel it says no drivers installed for your device. I read somewhere else that you needed to change a file that points to the driver you want to use but it was really vague. Anyone got any Ideas? If so I would like to make a tutorial to help others at the end of this. Any help is greatly appreciated...

[micro2]

I'm trying to reinstall it again the driver that is suppose to work is

ati-driver-installer-8-3-x86.x86_64.run

...when I install or run the file it says -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Created directory fglrx-install.D16505
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing ATI Proprietary Linux Driver-8.471
==================================================
ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
Detected configuration:
Architecture: i686 (32-bit)
X Server: X.Org 7.1 and later releases
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...then open a dialog with the installer. Why when I was installing were all the files i586 instead of i686. and does this have something to do with it? Then it says something about running aticonfig from a console window or amdcccle from the desktop manager.

I am a noob to linux but have been around computers for almost 35 years building, repairing and configuring. I have owned my own ISP also so I know quiet a bit about them, any help out there?

[micro2]

...well not getting anywhere real quick. I just noticed that when I go to configure desktop it says -

your x server is using the RandR extension at version 1.2 or great and has not been configured.

I supposedly have the driver installed but can't pick the driver to use it or change screen resolutions either...

[waterhead]

Are you sure that your card is supported by the Linux driver? The list at the ATI download site doesn't show your card.

Anyway, make sure that you read the installation instructions. It says that after installation, and before rebooting, enter this command into a terminal window.

 /usr/X11R6/bin/aticonfig --initial

Edit: Here's another list of supported cards. Yours isn't on that list either.
Hardware - cchtml.com

[micro2]

From what I've read it can use the drivers that the 2900 cards used and ATI says the driver I have will work but I might need to configure it through the console/ terminal which I couldn't even begin to do. I printed out the list of commands when I run the aticonfig which does respond so I'm "assuming", hehehe that it's just not configured or pointing to that driver. I had it working in fedora but there repositories had problems this morning and my buddy told me to load openSUSE instead because of stability issues. Do you think you could help me configure the card, sound like your a command prompt kinda person.... ????

[alkemist]

hmmm....I don't know but try this.

1. At bootloader, type level 3
2. then enter su
3. type sax2 (or whatever the system display for 10.3 is called)
4. try changing the settings in sax
5. save and exit when the settings look acceptable
6. type init 5

Hope it works.

[micro2]

After I ran that command I got the ATI Catalyst Control Panel to load and setup the display and card, Gonna try to enable the 3D stuff now. At least I'm getting somewhere... baby steps, small victories... !!!!!

I ran this command as root after driver installation - /usr/X11R6/bin/aticonfig --initial

[micro2]

Do you have any suggestion for getting the 3D part to work? When I got YaST it say the same o no 3D support...

[waterhead]

The ATI Linux wiki has some instructions.
Verifying - cchtml.com

[waterhead]

Make sure that your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file contains this:

Section "Module"
    # ...
    Load "glx"
    Load "dri"
    # ...
EndSection

And this:

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

I got that from here. I don't know how current it is.

There should be a document describing setup in the /usr/share/doc/fglrx or /usr/share/doc/packages/fglrx area.

Edit: also make sure that in the xorg.conf file, your driver is listed like this:

Driver “fglrx”