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Upgrading the Kernel - Installing the ATI Drivers

March 24, 2007 — Now we proceed with installing the video driver. Note that the drivers currently at the ATI homepage will not work with the latest Fedora kernels. As I said in the last part of this post, Michael Larabel has been kind enough to make the ATI drivers available to us from at his website. He is the maintainer of the driver for Fedora. He also does a review of the drivers when they are first released. A wealth of information is available at the Phoronix Website regarding all things ATI (see resources).

Continuing from the previous section on installing the wireless driver, we are still at the single user mode. So we can simply download the script written by Michael to install the fglrx ATI driver. I should add that it was not this simple prior to he and I exchanging a lot of questions to get the drivers working on the Fedora 7 Test 1 system. This exchange is available on the Phoronix website. Yes you heard that right. Since we are using a 2.6.20 (or greater) kernel, we are using his scripts that also works on the current Fedora kernel.

Ok, now that we have the script downloaded. Run the script using the code

sh fglrx-f7t1-builder.sh

This should 4 rpm files for you. If this is your first time installing the fglrx driver then go ahead and install all the rpm files

rpm ivh *.rpm

assuming there are not other rpm files in this directory. If not, you simply need to install the kernel module

rpm -ivh kernel-module-ATI-fglrx-2.6.20-1.2925.fc6-8.33.6-1..x86_64.rpm

since all the other rpms do not depend on the kernel and are already installed.

Well, that is it. Now that we have installed the wireless driver corresponding to the updated kernel and we have also updated the video driver, it is time to reboot. I typically shutdown and reboot. This prevents and "lint" or memory corruptions that may have crept in. In any case, your mileage may vary. Go ahead, give your new kernel a try.

Once you reboot, I would suggest that you check that you have DRI and hardware acceleration. The simplest way to check this is to use fgl_glxgears. If you get a nice cube with the gears rotating then you are all set.

You may also notice that when you use the command xvinfo that the output might state that no adapter is present. You can easily rectify this by adding the following to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Section "Device"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Driver "fglrx"
    Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
EndSection

Notice the line with VideoOverlay. This will rectify the issue. You can test this out by rerunning xvinfo.

Update

The script that Michael wrote is available on the forum. It is also possible that the current installer will work fine on FC6. Since I started using the scripts, I have not tested the above statements. You may want check it our yourself if you are so inclined. If not, with Michael's permission, the script is available from my site as well (see resources).

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