ATI HD4850 + Ubuntu Hardy + Compiz effects + 1920 (solution)

[EneergE]

It was a real bitch finding a solution, but I finally managed to get this setup working using Catalyst 8.7 by following a wiki by cchtml. However, I ran into a few mishaps that they failed to mention in their setup. I thought I would post this, since I didn't find any direct posts that covered it. This configuration enables compiz effects and a high resolution (1920x1200), or at least it did on my computer. I am not sure of the effects this would have on games.

This worked for me on a newly installed, but fully updated, Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. For the most part, you follow everything to the letter under the "Method 2: Manual Method (installing Catalyst 8.7)" topic: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...atalyst_8.7.29, but I'll list all the steps here so you don't need to flip back and forth.

Here's the full steps I did to get it all working:

Download the file that is mentioned at the beginning of the article to somewhere on your hard drive, such as ~/Downloads.
Assuming you have wget and a directory named 'Downloads' in your home directory, type:

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-8-7-x86.x86_64.run

Afterwards, I went ahead and opened a terminal and:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Next I made sure I was still in the correct directory, and I ran the installation script

cd ~/Downloads
sh ati-driver-installer-8-7-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/hardy

So far, so good. Now you need to edit the restricted-modules-common file using your favorite editor or in this case, gedit:

sudo gedit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

Change the line at the bottom to:

DISABLED_MODULES="fglrx"

The wiki also mentioned that you might need to modify /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-restricted and /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-local, if they exist, and comment the line "# blacklist fglrx". However, on my ststem, these files did not exist so I went on to the next step.

Because I suspected everything was in logical order, I went ahead and typed:

sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_*.deb

However, the wiki went on to say that 64 bit OSes required an extra parameter when installing. So, cursing, and hoping it would not fail, I reinstalled the package by doing:

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite xorg-driver-fglrx_8.512*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_8.512-0*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.512-0*.deb

Now, since I did not use fglrx, and did not have it in my Xorg configuration file, I needed to modify my xorg.conf. The wiki tells you to sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but in my experience, gedit would not open, and the entire system is pretty unstable so that no programs would launch - not even a new terminal. Luckily, I still had my previous terminal still opened and I used vi to modify my xorg.conf:

sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I modified the [Device] section:

Section "Device"
	[...]
	Driver		"fglrx"
	[...]
EndSection

After saving I had to do both of these:

sudo aticonfig --initial -f
sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

After this, you are suppose to reboot the system, which I couldn't do from the GUI, since everything is unstable, so I typed:

sudo reboot

After successfully rebooting back into GDM, I opened a terminal window and typed:

fglrxinfo

Surprisingly, after doing all this, everything seems to be working identical to the way it was when I had my nvidia card.

I hope by giving this post the title above and giving all the steps I followed, that other forum members can find an easy solution that should get their ATI HD4850 running on their system. I am not responsible for this installation process, and so I don't expect any praises. I just wanted to bring it to light, just in case some of you were having any problems with this particular card.

Here's a picture of my setup: here

Thanks, and Good Luck!

[Melcar]

Much easier (using Hardy 64bit and this works every time):

sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r) ia32-libs

cd /<location where installer is at>

sudo sh ati*.run

#follow automatic installer

cd

sudo aticonfig --initial

#reboot

You may need to do:

sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

... if you have an older card (r4xx and earlier) since for those I found that the driver sometimes does not load any Xv options automatically. Also, I found that rebooting the whole system works better than simply restarting X, since sometimes the module will not load. Another useful tip is to clean up your xorg.conf after you call aticonfig, since it creates duplicate entries (just leave the ones with aticonfig on them).
Oh, and if you for some reason uninstall the driver (bad install or want to upgrade) make sure to not only uninstall it with the script, but also remove the ati folder from /etc:

cd /usr/share/ati

sudo sh ./fglrx-uninstall.sh

cd 

sudo rm -r /etc/ati

... and then reconfigure X before you log out:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg