ATI Radeon 7500 on Mandrake 9.1 --How I got DRI to Work

[Guest viewsonic]

I hope my experience might help other with the same problem--I think it applies to other HW combos. I posted this on the alt.os.linux.mandrake ng. Here is the first and last posting to the ng: (warning-this is long): First Post:

 

Can I get DRI to work with this combination?

 

MSI KM2M Combo-L MS-6738 Motherboard

ATI Radeon 7500 64 MB (powered by--so a third party reseller, I guess)

AMD XP 24000

512 DDR ram

 

During the install Mandrake automatically loaded the radeon driver and

when I check in the control center it says it is using it with 3d

acceleration, but this is not the case. XF86Config-4 says that dri is

going to load:

 

Section "Module"

Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension

Load "v4l" # Video for Linux

Load "extmod"

Load "type1"

Load "freetype"

Load "glx" # 3D layer

Load "dri" # direct rendering

EndSection

 

Section "DRI"

Mode 0666

EndSection

 

Section "Device"

Identifier "device1"

VendorName "ATI"

BoardName "ATI Radeon"

Driver "radeon"

Option "DPMS"

EndSection

 

But lsmod does not list dri as a module, just radeon:

 

radeon 107428 0

 

Also, there is no mention of AGPGART loading in XF86Config-4.

Shouldn't that be loaded as well? I tried to modprobe radeon_dri.so

from /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/radeon_dri.so but the result is:

modprobe: Can't locate module radeon_dri.so

Even though the file is there.

 

Tried the same for agpgart.o in

/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.13mdk/kernel/drivers/char/agp. The agpgart.o

file is there but it is gunzipped (agpgart.o.gz) which I don't get at

all.

 

I have lurked on a couple newsgroups/websites for info and many people

say that this card works out of the box with Mandrake 9.1, and it

does, but with no 3D acceleration. I tried a 3d game (Enemy Territory

download) and it is using software 3D acceleration and is not

playable. The ATI site has drivers for many of their cards, but not

this one. Sorry for the long post. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Last Post:

 

OK--I got DRI to work for me and my Radeon 7500 in Mandrake 9.1--after

much googling and trial and error. This is going to be fairly long, but

I don't want to leave anything out.

 

I did:

 

Edited XF86Config-4 and added Option "AGPMode" "4" to the "Device" section

 

Downloaded the newest DRI Radeon drivers from http://dri.sourceforge.net

(which for some reason are not available right now?). This is a script to

run as root after shutting down X (init 3). I answered the questions and

let it do its thing. When it was done, I restarted X (init 5)

and tested things out. Still was not working at this point (even after a

reboot), so I don't know if this was necessary.

 

Check my BIOS settings and changed option Init Display First from PCI to

AGP, saved the settings and tried again. Still no luck.

 

Went back to figuring out why agpgart would not load. Unzipped

/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.13mdk/kernel/drivers/char/agp.o.gz. and tried to

insmod with insmod ./agpgart.o. Would not load (can't remember error).

 

Looked at output of dmesg right after a reboot and found:

 

: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 494M

agpgart: Unsupported Via chipset (device id: 0605),

you might want to try agp_try_unsupported=1.

agpgart: no supported devices found.

 

I googled on this and found that this is a fairly common error for certain

chipsets and that there is a flag (?) that you can add to force agpgart to

load.

I found a page from Tom's Hardware guide that is a HOW-TO on installing

NVIDIA 3D Under Linux that addressed this issue:

 

"You could see above that many AGP-chipsets need the setting

'agp_try_unsupported=1' for the 'agpgart.o'. This driver is officially

only supporting Intel's 440BX, 440GX, i810, i810e, VIA Apollo Pro and

AMD Irongate chipsets. If you've got a different chipset you will be

pleased to hear that the setting 'agp_try_unsupported=1' works in very

many cases. I've successfully tried Intel's i815 and i820 chipset, as

well as VIA's Apollo Pro133A, Apollo KX133 and Apollo KT133. To make

sure that this setting will always be applied when the driver needs

to load, you want to modify '/etc/modules.conf'. It should contain

the line 'alias char-major-10-175 agpgart'. Include the line

'options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1' underneath and your AGP

driver will load without problems if you've got one of the

above-mentioned 'unsupported' chipsets."

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/200008...geforce-06.html

 

So I followed this sage advice, added the lines to modules.conf as shown

above and rebooted. This did it. lsmod showed that agpgart was now loaded.

Checked gxlinfo and saw: direct rendering: Yes. Finally. I am now getting

1182 FPS in glxgears instead of in the 200s. The free enemy territory

download runs just fine.

 

The funny thing is, I really don't play too many 3D games, it just

drove me crazy because I just bought the computer with the idea that

everyting would work in Linux. Huzzah. Hope this rant helps

someone.

[Guest xaff]

Thanks, that's really handy, I'm having the same problem with my Radeon 9000, hopefully this will sort things out.

 

Thanks!

[Guest xaff]

Yay! Finaly it works!

 

It's never felt this good to play Tux racer. :D

[Guest viewsonic]

Cool-Glad that helped.

[Guest GhostDX]

@viewsonic:

Mind if I ask a few questions? I'm a noob, trying to get some hardware acceleration going. I have the Radeon 9500.

 

How did you know that agpgart was not running? I thinkI have the same problem but have no way of comparing.

Could you post modules.conf file so I (we) could see exactly where you added the line in?

Do you think that the only thing needing to be done was to add the line to the modules.conf file?

 

@xaff

What of the previous post did you perform to get it to work?

 

GDX

[Guest viewsonic]

"How did you know that agpgart was not running?"

 

Boot your computer and then go to a terminal and type dmesg

This will bring the log of what happens when linux is starting--it is a lot of text. Look for references to agpgart--in my case this was toward the end of dmesg. The ref I found was:

 

Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 494M 

agpgart: Unsupported Via chipset (device id: 0605), 

you might want to try agp_try_unsupported=1. 

agpgart: no supported devices found.

 

This told me that agpgart was not loaded. This was confirmed when I ran another command from the terminal (as root): lsmod

 

This list all the modules currently loaded. If the following is not found, then agpgart is not currently loaded:

 

agpgart                40896   3  (autoclean)

 

"Could you post modules.conf file so I (we) could see exactly where you added the line in?"

 

Yes--

 

alias autofs autofs4

probeall scsi_hostadapter usb-storage ide-scsi

alias eth0 via-rhine

above snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm-oss

alias sound-slot-0 snd-emu10k1

probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd

options bttv radio=1 gbuffers=4

alias char-major-10-175 agpgart

options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

 

I added the last two lines.

 

"Do you think that the only thing needing to be done was to add the line to the modules.conf file?"

 

No--you also need to edit /etc/XF86Config-4 and add: Option "AGPMode" "4" if it not already there. My Device section of the file looks like this:

 

Section "Device"

   Identifier "device1"

   VendorName "ATI"

   BoardName "ATI Radeon"

   Driver "radeon"

   Option "DPMS"

   Option "AGPMode" "4"

EndSection

 

After doing these things, reboot and run lsmod again (as root) and look for the agpgart reference. If it is there, run glxinfo, glxgears, and/or your favorite 3D game to check if dri is working.

 

Good Luck