Configuring an ATi Card and the fglrx Kernel Modules

by Thomas Janssen — last modified May 15, 2009 04:02 PM

Contributors: Scott Glaser AKA Sonar_Guy, daMaestro

— filed under: Video Solutions

The ATi fglrx driver has been packaged as a kmod and is available from the RPMFusion repo.

Applicable to Fedora Versions

Fedora 9+

Requirements

Your yum configuration must be configured per this HOWTO.

Fedora 9+

Doing the work

Open a Terminal.
Type:
```
su -c 'yum install kmod-fglrx' 
```
That installs the ATi driver and kernel module for your current kernel.
Log out of your current session.
Once the X-server restarts, log back in.

Troubleshooting

How to Test

Log back in and verify that the kernel module is functioning properly by opening a terminal window and running the following command:
```
glxinfo | grep renderer 
```
If the the correct installed driver outputs something like: "OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650": "Yes" you are good to go. If not, a reboot may be required for the full effect of the module to be realized on some machines.
If the ATi Control panel does not work and you are running x86_64 Fedora, install the 32bit libs it needs to run:
```
yum install xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs.i386
```
If you want to have dual screens (spanning desktop) and not cloned screens, you have to disable RANDR 1.2 support:
Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following to your Device section:
```
Option      "EnableRandR12" "false"
Option      "DesktopSetup" "horizontal"
```
From README.fedora in the xorg-x11-drv-fglrx package: (always check /usr/share/doc/xorg-x11-drv-fglrx*/README.Fedora for the most up to date information.)
Recent releases (Catalyst 8.12+) are incompatible with the plymouth boot system implemented in Fedora 10, as the 'radeon' and 'drm' kernel modules are loaded from the kernel ramdisk image (initrd) before fglrx can be. Because of this, these modules have been blacklisted. The open-source radeon driver as well as the plymouth graphical boot system will not function while the this driver is installed. If you would like to use them, please uninstall this driver first.

The initrd image for the current kernel will need to be regenerated* before 3D rendering will function correctly. To do this, execute these commands as root:
```
mv /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img.rfbak
mkinitrd -f --allow-missing /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
```
A final reboot will be required before things function as expected. To restore plymouth functionality and use the open source drivers, first uninstall the xorg-x11-drv-fglrx package from your system and then run:
```
mv /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img.rfbak /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img
```
Once again, a reboot will be required before the open source drivers being working properly.

* Please note that in some cases, the initrd image may need to be regenerated twice (once for getting fglrx to load, the other for putting the udev config file into the initrd image). If your machine still does not have working DRI or 3D rendering after regenerating the image once and rebooting, regenerate the image again:
```
mkinitrd -f --allow-missing /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
```

More Information

If you encounter a bug in the ATi driver, please visit the ATi Driver Page!
If you have packaging issues (not driver issues) you can file a bug report at the RPMFusion Bugzilla

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on freenode.net

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