Tip: Linux on an IBM T42 - DRI/GL heads up

[borzwazie]

So I just found Ubuntu, and I'm installing it on every piece of hardware I own.

I ran into trouble on Hoary, and I hope I can save someone else some trouble.

Hoary reported that my laptop display chipset was:

ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9000 (M7 LW)

This led me to believe that I could use the ATI fglrx drivers. This is incorrect.

What this really should have been was:

ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 7500 Mobility (M7 LW)

This chipset uses the DRI project "radeon" driver. Big difference! I spent some time chasing this problem.

I got the latest snapshot from the DRI website:

http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/

and used the following in my xorg.conf (device section):

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Radeon Mobility M7 LW"
        Driver          "radeon"
        VendorName      "ATI Technologies Inc."
        BoardName       "Radeon Mobility M7 LW"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "AGPMode"       "4"
        Option          "AGPFastWrite"  "true"
        Option          "EnablePageFlip"        "true"
EndSection

be sure to add:
Option "omit xfree86-dga"

to a subsection in Section "Module" as well.

EDIT:

By the way, if you've done all this successfully, by *all* means, download and install DRIConf - I went from about 970 frames/sec in glxgears to 2100 frames/sec!

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/DriConf

If you are using the latest snapshots from the DRI website, and you're using DriConf to tweak things, be sure to change the TCL mode to "Use software TCL pipeline" - it's much, much faster than the hardware TCL. Also, the hardware TCL displays weird lighting on quads (3d objects flicker and are lighted badly).

Choosing Software TCL gives you by far the biggest performance boost.

Also, be sure to run DriConf as the user that's actually logged in (not just as root!) - it doesn't seem to affect all applications (like screensavers) otherwise.

hope this helps someone!

[NeoChaosX]

be sure to add:
Option "omit xfree86-dga"

to a subsection in Section "Module" as well.

Can you give an example on how to add a subsection? I tried adding the line to xorg.conf, and when I tried restarting the X server, it wouldn't start.

[emendelson]

Are you able to suspend, sleep, hibernate, etc., with this driver??

[NeoChaosX]

Um, this is about video hardware, not power management. I think the thread creator should've made that a little more clear.

[borzwazie]

I'm not sure about ACPI - I did enable it in the configuration file, but I haven't tried it yet. The release notes at the DRI site might say something about it.

As far as the subsection thing:

SubSection "extmod"
              Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubSection

This should go in the: Section "Modules"

I put mine right under : Load "dri"

HTH.

[bathala]

Hello.

I have an IBM T42 laptop and I followed the publicly available tutorials on how to setup ubuntu on this machine.

The only problem is that when I use th fglrx for my ATI, I'm getting a device not found error. I believe that fglrx is not usable for my machines since I have the following entry in my xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9000 (M7 LW)"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

So I did the following:
1. I've downloaded the file radeon-20050427-linux.i386.tar.bz2
2. Unpacked it in my /root/projects directory
3. I "su" and switched to /root/projects/dripkg and executed ./install.sh

I pressed enter on all the question, taking time to verify that the directories required actually exist in my machine. They do.

Unfortunately, it said that the "kernel did not compile" and the dri.log contains the following:

Makefile:163: *** Cannot find a kernel config file. Stop.

I actually don't know what do to now.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[tnilsson]

Hello.

I have an IBM T42 laptop and I followed the publicly available tutorials on how to setup ubuntu on this machine.

The only problem is that when I use th fglrx for my ATI, I'm getting a device not found error. I believe that fglrx is not usable for my machines since I have the following entry in my xorg.conf file:


So I did the following:
1. I've downloaded the file radeon-20050427-linux.i386.tar.bz2
2. Unpacked it in my /root/projects directory
3. I "su" and switched to /root/projects/dripkg and executed ./install.sh

I pressed enter on all the question, taking time to verify that the directories required actually exist in my machine. They do.

Unfortunately, it said that the "kernel did not compile" and the dri.log contains the following:


I actually don't know what do to now.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I just changed my xorg.conf file and it worked fine. I used the radeon driver that was included in Ubuntu Hoary.

[kfc]

So I just found Ubuntu, and I'm installing it on every piece of hardware I own.

I ran into trouble on Hoary, and I hope I can save someone else some trouble.

Hoary reported that my laptop display chipset was:

ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9000 (M7 LW)

This led me to believe that I could use the ATI fglrx drivers. This is incorrect.

What this really should have been was:

ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 7500 Mobility (M7 LW)

This chipset uses the DRI project "radeon" driver. Big difference! I spent some time chasing this problem.

I got the latest snapshot from the DRI website:

http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/

and used the following in my xorg.conf (device section):

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Radeon Mobility M7 LW"
        Driver          "radeon"
        VendorName      "ATI Technologies Inc."
        BoardName       "Radeon Mobility M7 LW"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "AGPMode"       "4"
        Option          "AGPFastWrite"  "true"
        Option          "EnablePageFlip"        "true"
EndSection

be sure to add:
Option "omit xfree86-dga"

to a subsection in Section "Module" as well.

hope this helps someone!

can u please give us a little details on which driver to use and the process of installation?
i'm kinda lost here and i don't want to break my system by faulty installations.
Thanks

[kfc]

Hello.

I have an IBM T42 laptop and I followed the publicly available tutorials on how to setup ubuntu on this machine.

The only problem is that when I use th fglrx for my ATI, I'm getting a device not found error. I believe that fglrx is not usable for my machines since I have the following entry in my xorg.conf file:


So I did the following:
1. I've downloaded the file radeon-20050427-linux.i386.tar.bz2
2. Unpacked it in my /root/projects directory
3. I "su" and switched to /root/projects/dripkg and executed ./install.sh

I pressed enter on all the question, taking time to verify that the directories required actually exist in my machine. They do.

Unfortunately, it said that the "kernel did not compile" and the dri.log contains the following:


I actually don't know what do to now.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I have exactly the same problem.
sigh...
btw, i'm running exactly the same graphic card. It'd be great to have someone to gives us a better guideline other than using the ubuntu ati drivers.
The drivers from ubuntu is fine. But currently i've some problems with it in maya. It just doesn't shows vertices in the correct size. vertices just look too small and it hurts my eye to search for it. but when i disable the default ati ubuntu driver. vertices just looks fine.

Seems like Dri is a good alternative for us. too bad i'm a total noob in this and can't figure out this part. however, i've been following this.
http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/DRIbeginner.html

[NTolerance]

I've been through some of this before in another thread, so I'll repost what I did before for reference regarding the DRI drivers:

I would strongly recommend using the Debian packages when trying to update the DRI drivers. I attempted to compile them from source yesterday and got all sorts of cryptic compiler errors that don't mean anything to anybody. Installing the Debian packages isn't easy either though - they are dependent on several other packages and errors will pop up about the packages not being able to overwrite some of the installed xorg files. I did some Googling and the 2nd to last suggestion on this page helped me to get the packages installed.

Also, at the end of the DRI installation it will ask if you want to compile some stuff for S3TC support. I could never get this to work, so I had to uninstall and run the setup again without S3TC support.

At any rate, these cards should have accelerated 3D with the DRI drivers that are included with Ubuntu. Run this to check and see if you have accelerated 3D enabled:

glxinfo

Look for a line at the beginning that says "direct rendering". If it says yes, then you have accelerated 3D with the built-in Ubuntu DRI drivers. If your 3D is working at an acceptable level, don't worry about upgrading your DRI drivers. If you want a speed boost, then get into it and try the Debian packages as I have described above.

Whether you're using the newer DRI drivers or not, having some options turned on in your xorg.conf will enable some extra features of your card.

Here's what I have under the modules section:

Section "Module"
	Load	"bitmap"
	Load	"dbe"
	Load	"ddc"
	Load	"dri"
	Load	"extmod"
	Load	"freetype"
	Load	"glx"
	Load	"int10"
	Load	"record"
	Load	"type1"
	Load	"vbe"
	# new stuff
	Load 	"radeon"
	Load 	"xtrap"
	Load	"drm"
EndSection

And this is my "device" section:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9000 (M6 LY)"
	Driver		"radeon"
	BusID		"PCI:1:0:0"
	#new stuff
	Option 		"RenderAccel" 		"true"
	Option 		"AGPMode" 		"4"
	Option 		"EnablePageFlip" 	"True"
	Option 		"UseInternalAGPGART" 	"no"
	Option          "backingstore" 		"true"
	Option 		"AllowGLXWithComposite" "true" 
EndSection

be sure to add:
Option "omit xfree86-dga"

to a subsection in Section "Module" as well.

hope this helps someone!

Can you shed some light on what this setting does?