Ubuntu 9.04 upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 and ATI cards fglrx problem

[ssri]

What about the new 9.10 ? will it support the older ATI cards ? or at least offer some kind of an automatic solution ?

The older cards (R500 and below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ocessing_Units) will never get any support past Catalyst 9.3, as legacy support has been shifted to supporting the development of the opensource drivers. So, Catalyst 9.3 (which supports kernels up to 2.6.28) is the end of the line when it comes to closed-source proprietary drivers for ATI legacy cards.

[triffle]

thats good to hear, how did you install fresh or upgrade? is everything else working?

I installed via upgrade, and I can confirm that the following worked for me:

Go to recovery mode,and to root prompt:

apt-get remove fglrx*
apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
aticonfig --initial -f

Then reboot.

Here is my setup via lspci

travis@travis-laptop:~$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge

00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Graphics Port 0)

00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 7914

00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 1)

00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2)

00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 3)

00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA

00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)

00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)

00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)

00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)

00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)

00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)

00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)

00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge

00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M76 [Radeon Mobility HD 2600 Series]

06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)

07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

08:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)

08:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)

08:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)

08:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)

travis@travis-laptop:~$

I hope this helps someone...

[kaiwi]

Hi

I'm having the same problem. Want to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu 9.04.

Update manager warns me:

Upgrading may reduce desktop effects, and performance in games and other graphically intensive programs.

This computer is currently using the AMD 'fglrx' graphics driver. No version of this driver is available that works with your hardware in Ubuntu 9.04.

Do you want to continue?

So I don't want to continue and am sticking with Ubuntu 8.10.

My PC is less than 3 years old. I therefore didn't expect this kind of problem.

Is there any chance that the AMD 'fglrx' graphics driver will be supported by the next long-term support release of Ubuntu?

Cheers

[Mark Phelps]

... Is there any chance that the AMD 'fglrx' graphics driver will be supported by the next long-term support release of Ubuntu? ...

Depends on what you mean by "support".

IF you mean provide a package that can be installed using that driver, the community already does that -- but it's limited what AMD/ATI has decided to support.

ATI decided last May to drop support for a lot of cards/chips. The package only provides support for the newer HD 3x/4x/5x cards. It does not, and WILL NOT, be providing support for the older "legacy" cards.

The community provides an open-source driver, which is improving all the time.

[gordontytler]

Will a new kernel break my ATI Radeon HD 3470 driver again ?

being quite new to ubuntu I let the update manager upgrade me to 9.10. The result was both screens black and all my gnome settings messed up because I switched off at the wrong moment. After several reboots the screens were still black and there was no "last good" option on grub that worked.

So after doing the update my computer was broken with no option to go back.

I eventually fixed it by downloading the latest version of the driver and fixing the Xorg config but before I did this I noticed that a re-install of the original driver detected a new kernal version and then crashed out trying to recompile itself.

Now my Update Manager wants to install the Linux kernel image for version 2.6.31 on x86/x86_64.

There is no way I will do this without

1) some way of rolling it back if it goes wrong
2) getting a new card with a supported driver (if so which one)
3) someone with the same card knows it will work with 2.6.31

What does ubuntu forum advise ?

thanks

[phreeky]

It does not, and WILL NOT, be providing support for the older "legacy" cards.

The community provides an open-source driver, which is improving all the time.

Still bothers me as it effects my computer at work (came back to work after holidays hoping I could find a solution).

These so called "older/legacy" cards are still being sold BRAND NEW in plenty of machines, Dell systems included. In fact we have a hundreds of them at work.

ATI/AMDs decision to drop support in the closed-source driver was terrible. That's something you do AFTER there is support in the open-source driver, not prior to them getting it working. Very backwards indeed.