# need help installing ATI drivers

## jabegeman

i have an ATI radeon 9800 pro on a via 333 motherboard running a AMD XP 2100+. 

 i have installed gentoo and everything works fine, i even got X to run kde. 

 i am a big linux noob and i have tried every guide i can find to install ati drivers to get 3d support but currently all i get when i start X is a black screen with an unblinking _ at the top corner of the screen. 

i really dont know what i am doing half the time. 

 i am hopeing to get a step by step walkthrough by someone who has got this to work.  oh yea i am running the 2.6.10 gentoo kernel if that helps. 

 thanks in advace

edit: i forgot to mention that i have looked ot the log X creates and dont really see anyting that bad in there

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## mhelvens

I have about exactly the same problem as you. Only I have an ATI mobility Radeon 9600.

I found this faq with google and followed it. But once I renamed the config file to xorg.conf and tried to restart X I got the black screen. I can only assume there's something wrong with the config file. I could have guessed the horizontal and vertical sync ranges wrong. (Because I really don't know what they are.)

By the way, I was also as stupid as to not make a backup of the previous xorg.conf. (Actually, I didn't know there was another xorg.conf.)

Any help would be appreciated! (I want to try some of those opengl screensavers  :Wink: )

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## Wedge_

It's usually worth trying to change the "UseInternalAGPGART" setting in the xorg.conf to the opposite of whatever it is if you have this type of problem. That setting controls whether the driver uses it's own AGP support (when set to "yes") or the kernels (when set to "no").

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## mhelvens

Yup. That got rid of the black screen. The drivers are still not working, however...

I'll go try some stuff. I'll be back. In the mean time, if you have any idea what could be wrong...

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## mhelvens

It works now! All I had to do was auto-load the two modules, agpgart and sis-agp.

Thanks for the tip!

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## jabegeman

well i ran through that guide last night and once today and have tryed going back and forth on that option and i still get a blank sceen

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## jabegeman

well i have sucessfully killed my linux install and dont know what i did wrong. i tryed to boot from livecd to put back in what i took out , in the kenel, and that did not work so its back to square 0 not square 1.    :Embarassed:   damn

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## jabegeman

well i fixed linux so it would boot.  i have even tryed removing everything ati related in the kenel and following the guide and i still end up with a blank screen and have to ctrl+alt+del to get my system to do anything  :Evil or Very Mad: 

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## jabegeman

question: are you suppose to run through the guide before you install X and KDE (which i am running) or does it really matter?

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## Wedge_

You should go through the install guide when you install the drivers. This will usually be after you've installed X, since the drivers will drag it in as a dependency when you emerge them. It doesn't matter if you do it before or after emerging KDE. Are you using the latest driver version (8.10.19)? Which kernel version are you using? Do you see any errors in the output of "dmesg" after loading the fglrx module? Are there any errors in /var/log/Xorg.0.log after it crashes?

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## jabegeman

no i do not have the latest drivers.  i have 8.8.25 the one that was emerged.  i downloaded the 8.10.19 drivers and emerged rpm to get rpm support but when i try:

# rpm -i --force fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm

it gives me a list of failed dependencies such as /bin/sh, libX11.so.6 and libXext.so.6 there are a bunch more but i do not feel like typing them all out.

how do you install 8.10.19?

and the dmesg does not come up with any errors that i can see

and no errors in the the log just a few WW but none that should kill it

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## Wedge_

 *jabegeman wrote:*   

> no i do not have the latest drivers.  i have 8.8.25 the one that was emerged.  i downloaded the 8.10.19 drivers and emerged rpm to get rpm support but when i try:
> 
> # rpm -i --force fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm
> 
> it gives me a list of failed dependencies such as /bin/sh, libX11.so.6 and libXext.so.6 there are a bunch more but i do not feel like typing them all out.
> ...

 

OK, the 8.10.19 drivers are in portage already, so you don't need to install them using rpm. Do this: 

```
mkdir -p /etc/portage

echo "media-video/ati-drivers ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

echo "x11-base/opengl-update ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
```

If you then do "emerge -p ati-drivers", you should see that it will install the 8.10.19 version.

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## jabegeman

well i did that and i says it wants to install media-video/ati-drivers-8.8.25

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## Wedge_

Doublecheck your package.keywords file has those two lines in it. Are the 8.10.19 ebuilds in /usr/portage/media-video/ati-drivers? If not you'll need to emerge sync.

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## jabegeman

there are the 2 lines in package.keywords.  and yes i have the 8.10.19 ebuild but it still wants to install 8.8.25 when i emerge

edit: does it matter what version of Xorg you have and how do you find out what version of it i have?

edit: i tryed to emerge 8.10.19 by typing:

# emerge -p =ati-drivers-8.10.19

and it tell me that it has been masked.  

- media-video/ati-drivers-8.10.19 (masked by: -* keyword)

edit: i also checked the package.mask and those drivers are not in there

edit: and i am running the gentoo-dev-source 2.6.10-r6

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## jabegeman

/bump

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## Wedge_

I'm not sure what's going on here. If you've unmasked the ~x86 ebuilds in package.keywords, it should just let you emerge them. Can you post the output of "emerge info" and "emerge -p ati-drivers"? I'm no Portage expert, but I'll see if I can see anything that might be causing this.

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## jabegeman

ok this is what i get for the ati-drivers:

```
bash-2.05b# emerge -p ati-drivers

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!

[ebuild   R   ] media-video/ati-drivers-8.8.25

bash-2.05b#

```

and this is emerge info:

```
bash-2.05b# emerge info

Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/x86/2004.3, gcc-3.3.5, glibc-2.3.4.20040808-r1, 2.6.10-gentoo-r6 i686)

=================================================================

System uname: 2.6.10-gentoo-r6 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP

Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16

Python:              dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1 [2.3.4 (#1, Mar 13 2005, 14:31:43)]

dev-lang/python:     2.3.4-r1

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r6

sys-devel/automake:  1.5, 1.9.4, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.4_p6, 1.8.5-r3

sys-devel/binutils:  2.15.92.0.2-r1

sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.10-r4

virtual/os-headers:  2.4.22-r1

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"

AUTOCLEAN="yes"

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"

CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/ http://gentoo.seren.com/gentoo http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/ ftp://cudlug.cudenver.edu/pub/mirrors/distributions/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://gentoo.ccccom.com ftp://gentoo.ccccom.com http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://gentoo.netnitco.net ftp://gentoo.netnitco.net/pub/mirrors/gentoo/source/ http://mirror.tucdemonic.org/gentoo/ http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/gentoo/ http://mirrors.acm.cs.rpi.edu/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.ndlug.nd.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://open-systems.ufl.edu/mirrors/gentoo http://gentoo.llarian.net/ ftp://gentoo.llarian.net/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.binarycompass.org http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://gentoo.eliteitminds.com http://gentoo.cs.lewisu.edu/gentoo/ ftp://linux.cs.lewisu.edu/gentoo/ http://prometheus.cs.wmich.edu/gentoo http://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/public/gentoo/ http://mirror.usu.edu/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.usu.edu/mirrors/gentoo/ http://lug.mtu.edu/gentoo"

MAKEOPTS="-j2"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

USE="x86 3dnow X alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts crypt cups curl dvd emboss encode fam font-server foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk gtk2 imlib ipv6 jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl spell ssl svga tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts xml2 xmms xv zlib"

Unset:  ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

bash-2.05b#  

```

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## Wedge_

I don't see anything unusual about your emerge info, but it should definitely be showing 8.10.19 rather than 8.8.25 when you do "emerge -p ati-drivers". I can't think of anything else you need to do other than add 

```
media-video/ati-drivers ~x86
```

 to /etc/portage/package.keywords...did you copy/paste the commands I posted above? A typo could be all that's to blame.

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## avieth

This guide worked great for me, just scroll down to the section listed with numbers:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl/?sid=04/12/17/1831202&tid=152&tid=137&tid=4&tid=106

However, the ATI drivers arnt great at all.

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