ATI

Revision 32 as of 2006-02-05 23:43:32

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By default Ubuntu will use the open source 'ati' or 'radeon' driver for cards made by ATI. Many users however prefer the proprietary 'fglrx' driver, provided by ati.com. The instructions on this page will tell you how to use this driver.

Prerequisites

Make sure the following things are true about your video card:

  • It is a 'Radeon' card
  • The model of the card is in the 9xxx series, 9500 or higer. Or it is in the X series (eg X300)
  • The command lspci reveals a card with "ATI" in its name
  • You need hardware-accelerated 3D support. The open source drivers are fine for all other areas.

If you own an ATI card that is not on this list, you already have accelerated 3D.

Install instructions for Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) and later

There are 2 ways you can get 3D acceleration working. The preferred way is to use the drivers provided by Ubuntu. More advanced users can also try the drivers from ati.com. Both approaches are documented below, you need to take only one of them. The Ubuntu-provided ones are the safest bet, the ati.com ones however sometimes are needed (eg: when you need hibernation)

Ubuntu provided drivers

  1. Install the kernel drivers. These drivers should be installed by default, but it's better to make sure they are installed. You need the package linux-$arch, where you replace $arch by the CPU architecture for the machine. This is 386 or 686 for Intel pentium, 386 or K7 for AMD athlon. 

    sudo apt-get install linux-686

  2. Install the xorg-driver-fglrx package:

    sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

  3. Add fglrx to /etc/modules: 

    echo fglrx | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

  4. Change 'ati' to 'fglrx' in /etc/X11/xorg.conf 

    sudo sed -e 's/"ati"/"fglrx"/' -i /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  5. Restart your computer

Using the drivers from ati.com

As of november 2005, ati provides usable, properly packaged drivers which can be used on Ubuntu. They can even be installed easily! Note: the installer does not seem to be compatible with the Live CD (Ubuntu crashes while unpacking the installer)!

  1. Download the apropiate drivers from [https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=300 ati.com] into an empty directory (or at least one containing no *.deb files).

  2. Make sure the universe section of the Ubuntu repositories is enabled (See the AddingRepositoriesHowto)

  3. Perform the following commands: 

    sudo apt-get install fakeroot gcc-3.4 module-assistant build-essential debhelper
chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.19.10-i386.run
fakeroot ./ati-driver-installer-8.19.10-i386.run

    Choose "Generate distribution specific packages" and "Ubuntu" and the Ubuntu version you use.

    sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo module-assistant build,install fglrx-kernel
reboot

You do not need to take all these steps if you run an up-to-date Breezy installation on a 32 bit system. Dennis Kaarsemaker provides these packages in a repository. Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list: 

deb http://mirror.ubuntulinux.nl/ breezy-seveas drivers

Then you can simply install the ubuntu-fglrx-$arch (see above for the meaning of $arch) package.

When you install from ati.com drivers or the breezy-seveas repository, you still need to change xorg.conf and add the fglrx module to /etc/modules as described under "Ubuntu provided drivers".

Notes

  • If you have an nforce2 chipset motherboard or if your Xorg.0.log reveals troubles when initialising AGP, put this in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"

  • If you're using an AMD64 configuration and your Xorg.0.log mentions a 'duplicate symbol rol_long' message, comment out the 'Load "int10"' line in the Module section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

  • If you are going to compile 3d applications, you will want to install the fglrx-driver-dev package

  • If you are having problems related to DRI or 3d acceleration and the following lines show up in your /var/log/Xorg.0.log 

    (WW) fglrx(0): Kernel Module version does *not* match driver.
(EE) fglrx(0): incompatible kernel module detected - HW accelerated OpenGL will not work

    then make sure you installed either linux-$arch or ubuntu-fglrx-$arch

  • You might want to install the fglrx-control package, which provides a control panel to configure graphics card options such as dual-head display (two monitors) and TV out.

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