Major driver issues

[sr.vinay]

I downloaded the latest ATI driver for my computer. I'm running Lucid Kubuntu and have a 4350HD card. I installed the driver by directly running the .run file and then activating that driver through the Hardware Drivers application. After a restart, the initial splash screen seems to have gone bonkers(it's being displayed in a weird resolution). After that, the resolution seems fine, but the compositing isn't being supported. I've turned the rendering type to XRender.
Here's my xorg.conf file, if required:


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Graphics Adapter"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Graphics Adapter"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
Option "mtrr" "off"
Driver "fglrx"
EndSection

[bridgman]

I suspect you may be running a mix of components from two or three drivers - the open source kernel driver, the fglrx driver you downloaded, and the *different* fglrx driver activated by the HW drivers option.

For xorg.conf you should generally go with whatever the aticonfig command produces when you run aticonfig --initial (per the install instructions). If you have troubles try running with the -f option as well.

[sr.vinay]

Okay. Now my xorg.conf settings are back to the settings the command aticonfig --initial sets. Still having the same problems.
How can I configure my system to use just one driver?

[sr.vinay]

Also, can you tell me what the proper method of installing the ati drivers are? I checked a lot of other pages from Ubuntu's help forums, but many have different versions!

[Pfanne]

here is the method i always use to install the ati drivers and i haven't had any problems with that yet.
first install ati drivers that ubuntu suggests. (the jockey application)
download the latest ati driver.
change into your download directory

./ati-driver-installer-10-6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/lucid
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

hasn't failed me once.
if you dont install the fglrx drivers provided by ubuntu first the system will always ask, if you want to remove fglrx with autoclean.
and this way its easier and cleaner to remove the fglrx drivers and change to open source drivers again.

[adamk]

It's been my experience lately that KDE4 has some serious issues detecting if opengl compositing should work while compiz runs just fine on the same setup, so I'm not 100% convinced your drivers are not installed properly. What's the output (as your normal user, without sudo) of 'glxinfo | grep -i render'?

Adam

[sr.vinay]

It's been my experience lately that KDE4 has some serious issues detecting if opengl compositing should work while compiz runs just fine on the same setup, so I'm not 100% convinced your drivers are not installed properly. What's the output (as your normal user, without sudo) of 'glxinfo | grep -i render'?

Adam

Here's the output:

X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 157 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
Serial number of failed request: 20
Current serial number in output stream: 20

[sr.vinay]

I'm running Kubuntu, and the command: "./ati-driver-installer-10-8-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Kubuntu/Lucid" returned an error saying, "The distribution Kubuntu is not supported"!

[bridgman]

The installer can operate in two ways - a "native" install where the files are copied directly onto your system, or by running "package builder" scripts which create distro-specific packages you then install using your distro's package manager.

AFAIK the Hardware Drivers option on Ubuntu installs a package (created by the distro packagers, not the installer scripts) which contains an earlier version of the driver.

First thing you need to decide is whether you want to manage drivers using the package manager or via native installs. Mixing the two is usually a big pain.

If you want to install via the package builder scripts on Kubuntu I suspect you should choose Ubuntu. I don't know what the current state of the Ubuntu package-builder scripts is, ie whether you are likely to have more success with a native install or by building a package, can anyone else comment on that ?

Either way, I suspect you are going to have to uninstall both the driver the "Hardware Drivers" option knows about (using the HW drivers option or package manager) *and* the natively installed driver (using the uninstall instructions provided in the installation guide on the amd.com driver download page), then do a fresh install using only one method.

[nanonyme]

I'm running Kubuntu, and the command: "./ati-driver-installer-10-8-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Kubuntu/Lucid" returned an error saying, "The distribution Kubuntu is not supported"!

Ubuntu and Kubuntu are pretty much identical though. Just use the package generation for ubuntu.