This How To is for installing the ati's fglrx driver on a i686/i386 system using a none custome kernel
it was tested on CentOS 4.3 and 4.4 using an ATI RADEON 9200SE card.
in order to install it properly you will need some adittional file to install. you can use RPM or yum just
make shoure you install them : kernel-devel , gcc , gcc-c++ , make .
The magor problem with installing the fglrx is the conflict with Mesa project this is what its all about
how to remove and install everything clean and working. all steps execpt 1st one should be done as root in
a none X enviermant ( no xserver at all ) .

1. The first step is to download the latest ATI driver from http://www.ati.com

2. Next we need to install the adittional packeges , i used yum to install the packeges i needed :



3. This is the part whare we disable Mesa libGL . using rpm command we find witch files to delete
do not uninstall xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL other services depends on it, just delete the files



now delete the files :



4. Now to the fun part , installing the fglrx driver.
cd to whare you saved the ati driver . i am using the 8.28.8 driver version here.
but first we need to remove the old module that was on running , in my case RADEON.



5. Change the xorg.conf using your favorit editor ( vi, nano .. ) to load the new fglrx driver
and the Options needed to run it.
This is the part in my xorg.conf .yours can be difrant , just make shoure to change the Driver to fglrx and th Options :



some people use the aticonfig command but i dont like unwanted script to corapt my
config files, but feel free to use it . if you used the above donot do this part !



6. Remember we delete th libGL files ? well now we will link the files again
but they will link to the the new ati files and not to Mesa, this way when typing fglrxinfo
you will get the fglrx and not Mesa .



7. startx

8. Check to see if it workes :



thats it

In order to keep your fglrx from breaking while upgrading your system
there is a trick that is ugly but works. simply disable any changes to the xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL files
the easy way is to change attribute:


Now when you upgrade the xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL it will try to remove the file but will fail
and the links that its going to make will be the same links as before, so no harm done to your fglrx .

OK.

It works but i think you can skip this part
after you compile the fglrx it makes this files then
ther is no need to relink or delete any of them, worked for me like charm without it

Quote:

Quote:

Yes, the new drivers r making the links automatically.

You also forgot to mention 2 things :

1. The chattr command is for ext2 and ext3 file systems only.
2. When you download the kernel-devel Plz download YOUR kernel devel. If u got smp u need to download kernel-smp-devel.

I just tried this to no avail. The system still locks. Anyone have any other suggestions. CentOS 4.4, Radeon 9200 Pro. (Sorry for the post to new thread, I lost track of this one.)

Now, after another reboot, all is working. The ATI control "fireglcontrolpanel" does not function, but that's a detail I can live without. Thanks for the instructions.

Hi,

the ATI control panel is very limited and lame if you ask me comparing to
Nvidia control panel. and as for the driver it is too not perfect at all. i did not try playing games
with this machine . to test your rendering you can run this command :



if you get more then 1000 FPS then you got the 3D working.
but don't expect too match from fglrx :(

Hi,

The first tie i tried isntalling the ati driver for a X1300 i did it with the instructions from the web, didn`t work. So how can i rollback and do it the way you explain in this thread???

Also its in a x86_64 installation....

thanks in advance
Chebi

chebi ,

My instructions are for x86 , i do not know if it will work under x86_64 .
but if it will then please let us know ,so it maybe added to the wiki pages.
as for your question , first check if its already installed or if you got any error during the process ?


If no errors where find then the installation was successful, and you can redo it
just the same as the instructions . if you do have errors then fallow the gcc errors on fixing it.
paste your errors here if you got any , we can help you with it.
In order to remove the previous install you can run

yyagol, i will try to install it again and post the results here, thanks for the tip about uninstalling