ATI X1950 AGP in Daryna with fglrx & Compiz

[Lolo Uila]

When I first booted up Daryna after a fresh install I was surprised and excited that it actually detected my AGP Radeon X1950 Pro and asked me if I wanted to install the ATI accelerated graphics driver. I thought, wow, maybe Gutsy finally got this graphics driver issue working. Should've known better...

The problem is the AGP versions of the ATI Radeon X1k/X2k series cards (like my X1950) are PCI-Express chipsets with an AGP bridge chip, and these cards are falsely detected as PCI-E cards by the driver. This leads to either DRI failing and the Mesa driver loading (if you're lucky) or the infamous ATI "Black Screen of Death!"

The 8.37.6 driver currently in the Ubuntu Gutsy repositories (used by Daryna) will not work and will hard-lock your computer with the black screen. The new 8.42.3 driver will not lock your computer, but it will fail to load leaving Mesa in its place. Fear not fellow Mintians, I have the answer! Here's how I got the new ATI 8.42.3 "fglrx" driver working...

EDIT: Envy has been updated! Get the new version and you can use Envy to install the driver (instead of using the guide). Note that Envy still disables Composite Extensions in xorg.conf by default (see my note below) and you still need to follow the rest of this how to.

Follow the install guide in the wiki (use Method 2):
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu ... tion_Guide

But before you reboot you need to blacklist a couple of modules.

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sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and add the following:

# EDAC modules to fix false PCI-E detection
blacklist i82875p_edac
blacklist edac_mc

Note that I have the driver working, but I have not tested it much. No promises beyond getting the correct output from fglrxinfo and glxinfo | grep direct.

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tim@Daryna-Test3:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X1950 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6958 Release

tim@Daryna-Test3:~$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

Oh, and to get Compiz working you need to whitelist the fglrx driver:

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sudo gedit /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager

and add: WHITELIST=fglrx

And finally, if you or any previous driver install has messed around with xorg.conf you need to remove sections that disable composite or AIGLX (comment them out if not sure). EDIT: If you used Envy you need to do this step!

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sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

...remove the following (and anything similar disabling AIGLX):

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Section "Extensions"
     Option     "Composite"     "0" # 0, disable, false, etc...
EndSection

Hope this helps. Remember, this is for users with AGP X1k/X2k series cards. My Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB AGP card is now running in Daryna with direct rendering and Compiz, and Xgl is NOT needed with the 8.42 driver!

IMPORTANT! If the Restriced Drivers Manager pops up a message asking you about the new driver you just installed, don't check the box. Just click cancel. If you click the box it will screw with your xorg.conf file again (although this probably won't break anything). If you already have clicked the box, DO NOT UN-CHECK IT! Ubuntu will undo all your hard work and remove the driver you just installed!

EDIT: If you have a PCI-E Radeon and want the latest driver, follow the above, EXCEPT the part about blacklisting the EDAC modules (don't do that part).

Aloha, Tim

PS: Video overlay is messed up when Compiz is running. Also, scrolling in applications like Firefox is annoyingly slow! I don't have these problems in Cassandra & Celena. The driver for Feisty works fine (with Xgl). Something to consider before upgrading (if it ain't broke...).

EDIT: After further testing I cannot recommend Daryna to users of X1k series ATI cards. This is the only driver that will work, and it has some serious problems under Daryna (Ubuntu Gutsy). Overall performance is slow and laggy, and the more I test it, the more I find broken.

Stick with Celena or Cassandra (Feisty) and the 8.34 driver from the repository (with Xgl). It works very well.

[Lolo Uila]

If you get a white screen when Compiz starts, and you are sure you did everything above correctly, then hit Control+Alt+F1 to open a command shell. Log in to the shell and enter the following command:

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sudo ln -sf /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc/fglrx.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/volatile/fglrx.ko

Then restart.

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sudo reboot

...and pray!

Aloha, Tim

[JustinClift]

Hmmm, I'm not seeing any kind of edac in the listing from lsmod on my system. However, I'm still seeing what looks like PCI-E entries for the X1950 AGP graphics card (Sapphire 512MB GDDR3).

It's the "pcie" bit in this that indicates the misdetection right?

****************************
(II) fglrx(0): [pci] find AGP GART
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] Mode=0x1f000a1b bridge: 0x1106/0x3189
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] AGP v1/2 disable mask 0x00000000
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] AGP v3 disable mask 0x00000000
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] enabling AGP with mode=0x1f000b1a
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] Remapping MC AGP space (new MCAGPBase = 0xe0000000, MCAGPSize = 0x10000000)
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] AGP protocol is enabled for graphics board. (cmd=0x1f000312)
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] graphics chipset has AGP v3.0 (native mode)
(II) fglrx(0): [pcie] 262144 kB allocated
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] DRM buffer queue setup: nbufs = 100 bufsize = 65536
****************************

Wondering how to get past that, as blacklisting the edac modules you mention isn't working for me. My system is running an amd cpu, so they don't seem to apply.

Any ideas?