Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Installing ATI Radeon Drivers on the 2.6 Kernel


Malikith
05-08-2004, 06:43 AM
So.. You're here wondering why your ATI drivers will not compile and install in linux... You're getting the error message, and if you're here to try and fix the problem, you know which one i'm talking about.

FATAL: Error inserting fglrx (/lib/modules/2.6.5/kernel/drivers/char/drm/fglrx.ko): Operation not permitted
failed.

I will first say, this is a problem in the kernel, its nothing other than that. I found only one way to reproduce the problem and that was changing one small kernel entry, into a module instead of built in :), even though it doesn't make much sense, this is just how the world seems to work now days...

What you need:

1} Make sure you have the latest 2.6 kernel from Http://www.kernel.org

2) The ATI Linux drivers from Http://www.ati.com for your card and Xfree version

3) To know that this is the only tutorial out there ever made for anyone to find out how to fix this problem, its either people run into it, or they don't at all, well I did, and managed to fix it.

----------------
Now lets begin.

1) Go to your kernel sources at /usr/src/linux and do a make menuconfig - menuconfig is better than xconfig in my opinion.

2) In the kernel, you need to go to this location, and make sure this stuff is exact while we head there:

Device Drivers --->
Character devices --->
Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)
<M> ATI Radeon

All those other things in the Direct Rendering Manager section aren't needed so you can just exclude those since we should have a radeon...

3) Save and recompile your kernel, restart, and recompile the drivers which if you have a rpm for the drivers, go to root by typing su and your password, then type rpm -i --force fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm then everything should compile nicely, you might see one error message, just ignore it.

4) Run fglrxconfig which is the easiest part.

5) Run X by typing startx or restart depending on your X settings.

6) Now you should see your video card working on that great new kernel. Feels great eh? :)
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Heres the story behind how I found out how to do this, for a long time i'd been dying to use the 2.6 kernel, which to this date of the howto, I used the 2.6.5 kernel, but i'd always wanted to try using the 2.6 series, problem is my video would never work, so there was basically no point since I am actully a linux gamer hehe, I know my share of wine and everything else, I love games in linux since the performance boost is noticable, and with this kernel i've compiled, i've excluded only the things that just make my system work and only the things I need, in every menu, this thing is blazing fast, yeah its only 900 mhz, but geez, this thing can cruise :), gotta love the power of linux.

This is my first howto by the way, and my first post on trying to help people in the linux community, I feel thats what i'm made to do, is enjoy what i've got here, since it took lots of work to get to this point, of course, I could have taken the easy way out and used rpm's for my kernels but if I do that, then I don't get the good stuff like the 2.6 kernel + optimized to the core :)

bwkaz
05-08-2004, 08:44 AM
Originally posted by Malikith
FATAL: Error inserting fglrx (/lib/modules/2.6.5/kernel/drivers/char/drm/fglrx.ko): Operation not permitted I generally get that when I try to modprobe something and I'm not root.

Though if you were root and still got it, then it likely is due to you already having a driver in your kernel that handles the same hardware as the fglrx one. ;)

Malikith
05-08-2004, 01:02 PM
Yep I was in root when I got the problem, but it was just so great for me to have fixed the problem because I didn't know much about recompiling kernels at the time, and now at this moment, i'm running a completely tweaked out kernel, hehe, very very fast

DimGR
05-11-2004, 11:46 AM
i get this error when i begin

make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

Icarus
05-11-2004, 12:06 PM
Originally posted by Malikith
Device Drivers --->
Character devices --->
Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)
<M> ATI Radeon I have to argue this :)

There is no need to make this module or have it in the kernel at all, if your going to be using the ATI drivers and not the XFree ones.
You would use this driver if you were NOT going to install the fglrx driver from ATI

bwkaz
05-11-2004, 06:49 PM
Originally posted by DimGR
make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop. You need to be inside the directory where you unpacked the kernel source before you do this.

However, the kernel source does not need to go in /usr/src/linux -- in fact, any package that goes after the kernel source in /usr/src/linux is completely wrong. If a piece of software is a kernel module, then it needs /lib/modules/<kernel version>/build instead. If it's not, then it needs userspace headers (installed by glibc, at /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm). I build my kernels in my home directory, since that way I don't have to be root (except during make modules_install).