30 Comments

1. Vishal / March 1, 2010

   Hi,
   I saw ur post.My pc having ati radeo xpress200 on board card.I have tried using mesa-dri-drivers-experimental drivers but it doesn’t affect my disply settings.
   when i used the command
   lxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)” it gives output as

   [Vishal@localhost ~]$ glxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)”
   direct rendering: Yes
   OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project
   OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
   OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.7-devel
   OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
   OpenGL extensions:

   so what to do to enable ati driver configuration.

   Reply
   • JR / March 1, 2010

     Hi Vishal,

     I quote my own text:
     As Fedora 12 release notes says: Improvements for graphics support – Introduces experimental 3D support for AMD Radeon HD 2400 and later graphics cards.
     

     So, it may be possible that the experimental 3D support mesa-dri-drivers-experimental does not work in any way with ATI Radeon xpress200 card.

     What happens if you try run glxgears?

     glxgears

     Reply
     • Vishal / March 2, 2010

       whn i tried glxgears it says that
       [Vishal@localhost ~]$ glxgears
       Segmentation fault (core dumped)

       and on the top panel it says that
       glx-utils has been crashed
       i have updated it but still it is showing this error

       Reply
       • JR / March 4, 2010

         Unfortunately, it seems that the Fedora 12 experimental 3D support with mesa-dri-drivers-experimental does not work with ATI Radeon Express 200 cards.

         So the only option is probably to wait, that the ATI get someday their proprietary drivers working on Fedora.

         Reply
         • Jé / May 14, 2010

           Hi,
           I also have an ATI Radeon Express 200M:
           
[dje@Djelaptop ~]$ lspci | grep ATI | grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]


           Unfortunately, even if ATI releases some stable drivers, it wouldn’t work with this hardware. This serie has been listed in the legacy cards… See : http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/9.4

           However, I have another question: I get my video card working with fedora12. But here is the output of glxinfo:
           
[dje@Djelaptop ~]$ glxinfo |grep -i "\(render\|opengl\)"
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RS400 5975) 20090101 NO-TCL DRI2
OpenGL version string: 1.5 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL
OpenGL extensions:


           My DRI is R300, not R600, and OpenGL is 1.5 !! did I missed something in the dependences?

           Thanks

           Reply
           • JR / May 14, 2010

             Hi Jé,

             Nice to hear that you get it working. :)

             I think this DRI R300 is right, because it depends on your graphic card. More info about DRI’s found here.

             What happens if you run glxgears?

             Reply
             • Jé / May 14, 2010

               Hi,
               First, to eliminate any doubt on the install packages, here is what is related to mesa on my system:
               
[root@Djelaptop ~]# rpm -qa | grep mesa
mesa-libGLU-devel-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-libGLU-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-dri-drivers-experimental-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-dri-drivers-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-libGL-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-libGL-devel-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686

               Here is the result of a glxgears:

               [root@Djelaptop ~]# glxgears
               Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
               approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
               2147 frames in 5.0 seconds = 429.317 FPS
               3485 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.936 FPS
               XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server “:0.0″
               after 21572 requests (21569 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

               The fatal error occurs only when I close the gear window.
               You are right about the R300: my card is based on a RS400 chipset. Seems ok them. But I wonder why my OpenGL is 1.5, not 2.0.

               Thanks!

               Reply
               • JR / May 14, 2010

                 Looks strange, because your card should support OpenGL 2.0, at least according to this comparison.

                 Could you post your xorg.conf or are you using xorg.conf?

                 Reply
                 • Jé / May 15, 2010

                   Here it is:

                   # Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

                   Section “ServerLayout”
                   Identifier “single head configuration”
                   Screen 0 “Screen0″ 0 0
                   InputDevice “Keyboard0″ “CoreKeyboard”
                   EndSection

                   Section “InputDevice”
                   # keyboard added by system-config-display
                   Identifier “Keyboard0″
                   Driver “kbd”
                   Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
                   Option “XkbLayout” “fr”
                   EndSection

                   Section “Device”
                   Identifier “Videocard0″
                   Driver “radeon”
                   Option “DRI” “On”
                   EndSection

                   Section “DRI”
                   Mode 0666
                   EndSection

                   Section “Screen”
                   Identifier “Screen0″
                   Device “Videocard0″
                   DefaultDepth 24
                   SubSection “Display”
                   Viewport 0 0
                   Depth 24
                   Modes “1280×768″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
                   EndSubSection
                   EndSection

                   Thanks a lot for your time

                   Reply
                   • JR / May 15, 2010

                     Looks OK, but try add also following sections and let’s see what happens:

                     Section "ServerFlags"
                             Option      "AIGLX" "On"
                     EndSection
                      
                     Section "Extensions"
                             Option      "Composite" "On"
                     EndSection

                     It’s nice to help. No problem. :)
2. ss7rd / March 5, 2010

   Hello I have installed the mesa experimental drivers, but I can’t find the xorg.conf file anywhere???

   Reply
   • JR / March 5, 2010

     Do you need xorg.conf file for a particular purpose?

     If not, then everything should be ok, because xorg.conf is generated automatically at startup.

     But if you really need it then you have to create one. I recommend to install the system-config-display package. With following command as root:

     yum install system-config-display

     Following command will generate a clean /etc/X11/xorg.conf file using the automatically detected driver for your video card:

     system-config-display --noui

     If you want specify a particular driver for your video card you can simply create /etc/X11/xorg.conf with following command:

     system-config-display --noui --set-driver=radeon

     For more information on ways you can use system-config-display command, simply run:

     system-config-display --help

     Reply
3. Vikas Sharma / March 19, 2010

   Hi,
   I have ATI HD 3400 and i m running fedora 12 but after installing mesa dri drivers experimental the output is same

   glxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)”

   direct rendering: Yes
   OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project
   OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
   OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.7-devel
   OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
   OpenGL extensions:

   on which card it was running successfully!!!

   Reply
4. Vikas Sharma / March 19, 2010

   hi,
   i m using ati HD 3400 and f12
   after installing mesa dri exp
   i got d same output as of VISHAL’s

   but glxgears worked with 999fps but still i cant enable desktop effect

   Reply
   • JR / March 22, 2010

     Hi,

     Are you using the automatically generated xorg.conf?
     Or are you created xorg.conf file by yourself?

     What is following command output?

     lsmod |grep radeon

     Reply
5. Ray Ward / April 7, 2010

   ATI Technologies Inc RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650]
   No luck with this one.
   glxinfo returns this.
   Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.
   Error: couldn’t find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

   I had a go with the radeonhd driver as well (KMS had to be disabled).
   X -configure decided it was a radeonhd card. the driver is very basic and cannot get a resolution higher than 1024×768 even with the monitor section mode lines correctly filled out.

   GLX is loaded I can see that from the X logs. No obvious errors in the logs.

   No 3D acceleration.

   Any ideas?

   Nice article by the way. Keep em comming.

   Regards
   Ray

   Reply
   • JR / April 8, 2010

     Hi Ray,

     Could you post the output of following commands?

     lsmod |grep radeon
      
     rpm -qa | grep mesa

     When you have just radeon driver running then you could try create custom xorg.conf file. This comment shows you simple example how you could create custom xorg.conf file, with radeon driver.

     Reply
6. Dave / April 8, 2010

   I have the same output as Vikas. Radeon HD 2400. Glxgears is 300fps. Can’t enable 3D effects either. Any ideas?

   $ glxinfo | grep -i render
   direct rendering: Yes
   OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer

   $ glxinfo | grep -i opengl
   OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project
   OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
   OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL
   OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
   OpenGL extensions:

   $ lsmod | grep radeon
   radeon 513503 1
   ttm 40269 1 radeon
   drm_kms_helper 22251 1 radeon
   drm 134966 3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
   i2c_algo_bit 4073 1 radeon
   i2c_core 21732 5 radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_i801

   $ rpm -qa | grep mesa
   mesa-libGL-7.7-4.fc12.i686
   mesa-dri-drivers-7.7-4.fc12.i686
   mesa-libGLU-devel-7.7-4.fc12.i686
   mesa-libGLU-7.7-4.fc12.i686
   mesa-libGL-devel-7.7-4.fc12.i686
   mesa-dri-drivers-experimental-7.7-4.fc12.i686

   Reply
   • JR / April 8, 2010

     Hi Dave,

     Maybe you should try the custom xorg.conf file.

     First backup existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and create new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with following command (as root):

     system-config-display --noui --set-driver=radeon

     Then modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and check/add following lines:

     Section "ServerFlags"
             Option      "AIGLX" "On"
             ...
     EndSection
      
     Section "Device"
             ...
             Driver      "radeon"
             Option      "DRI" "On"
             ...
     EndSection
      
     Section "DRI"
             Mode         0666
     EndSection
      
     Section "Extensions"
             Option      "Composite" "On"
     EndSection

     Then restart X or even reboot and if everything is OK, then try 3D effects again.

     And you could send the output of glxinfo as before:

     glxinfo | grep -i render
      
     glxinfo | grep -i opengl

     Reply
7. Johann / April 14, 2010

   Thanks! I couldn’t get Fedora12 to give me any better than 1280×1024 on my Viewsonic 22″ 1680×1050 monitor running on a Radeon 4200HD. The mesa-dri driver did the trick! =)

   Reply
8. anuran / April 20, 2010

   yum install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental use this commend on fedora 12. the out put is Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit…
   The other application is: yum
   Memory : 17 M RSS ( 32 MB VSZ)
   Started: Wed Apr 21 00:09:37 2010 – 11:16 ago
   State : Sleeping, pid: 2576
   continuously do not stop it.what to do? how install full software for radeon 4350 ati driver.

   Reply
   • JR / April 21, 2010

     Hi anuran,

     This sounds like a normal lock as a result of some graphical program used (like automatic software updater or something like that). Another option is that for some reason yum lock is left on, although it should not be. So you can easily see information about this process with following command:

     ps aux |grep 2576

     If this process is really running then you can check it out and maybe close some program or kill it, with following command:

     kill 2576
     # OR #
     kill -9 2576

     If this is not helping then last option is to remove yum lock file, when you are absolutely sure that it does not cause any problems. You can remove yum lock file with following command (as root):

     rm -rf /var/run/yum.pid

     Did you get YUM working properly and mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package installed?

     Reply
9. Ray Ward / April 24, 2010

   Sorry for the delay. I was’t watching.

   lsmod |grep radeon
   radeon 513503 2
   ttm 40269 1 radeon
   drm_kms_helper 22251 1 radeon
   drm 134966 4 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
   i2c_algo_bit 4073 1 radeon
   i2c_core 21732 13 dvb_usb_dib0700,dib7000p,dib7000m,dib0070,dvb_usb,dib3000mc,dib8000,dibx000_common,i2c_nforce2,radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit

   rpm -qa | grep mesa
   mesa-libGLw-devel-6.5.1-8.fc12.i686
   mesa-libGLU-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-dri-drivers-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-libOSMesa-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-libGL-devel-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-demos-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   lilypond-parmesan-fonts-2.12.2-5.fc12.i686
   mesa-libOSMesa-devel-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-libGL-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-libGLU-devel-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686
   mesa-libGLw-6.5.1-8.fc12.i686
   mesa-dri-drivers-experimental-7.8-0.18.fc13.i686

   Thing’s have moved on slightly. Still on 2D but I can turn on 3D however the screen is upside down and back to front.
   Challenging but not realy usable.

   Regards
   Ray

   Reply
10. Stan / May 11, 2010

    Automatic upgrade from F10 to F12 left my docking station unusable as after boot no login chooser was displayed. After being down for a good 24 hrs. I finally found your post. I don’t think it worked completely:
    glxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)”
    X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
    But at least I can log in – woo hoo! Thought I’d have to go back to MS. Thought you should know, that after successfully logging in:
    /etc/X11/xorg.conf: No such file or directory
    Maybe removing that file was all I needed … hmm.
    Anyway, thanks again!!!

    Reply
11. James S / May 13, 2010

    Hi,

    Firstly I wish to thank you for the first user friendly guide on installing the Open Source ati driver that i could find.

    I do have a strange problem similar to Dave, I’m runninf fedora 12 and have installed the Mesa Drivers and the display config. Set up my xorg.conf file multiple times and checked that the driver is set to radeon.

    I have a XFX hd 5870, glx gears displays without issue at around 450~500 FPS and I get the following when trying your above commands: -

    glxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)”
    direct rendering: Yes
    OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project
    OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
    OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.8.1
    OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
    OpenGL extensions:
    GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp, GL_NV_fragment_program,

    glxinfo | grep -i render
    direct rendering: Yes
    OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
    GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp, GL_NV_fragment_program

    My xorg.conf file lists radeon as the driver also. I can’t see anything wrong with my config but as soon as I try to enable desktop effects I get teh defaul 3d rendering disabled error.

    Can you think of any fixes?

    Reply
    • JR / May 13, 2010

      Hi James S,

      Glad to hear that you think this is a user friendly guide. :)

      Your problem sounds really strange, because everything looks okay (except very low FPS for your card). Possible reason why you get error message is low FPS, but let’s see what we can do…

      Please post here your xorg.conf file and output of following command:

      lsmod |grep radeon

      Reply
12. Nikolay / May 16, 2010

    Hi
    I can not get my ATI RADEON x1100 card working on FC 13. I tried yum install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental
    even few days ago without any result. when I type it now it says ‘poackage already installed. NOthing to do.’
    Then I gave a try on what is shown on that page regarding FC13 sudo yum --enablerepo=rawhide update mesa-dri-drivers-experimental mesa*
and it just says
    Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit

    Error getting repository data for rawhide, repository not found

    Here is the output I have from rpm -qa | grep mesa
mesa-dri-drivers-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-libGL-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-dri-drivers-experimental-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
mesa-libGLU-7.8.1-6.fc13.i686
    From glxgears I get only:
    826 frames in 5.0 seconds = 165.096 FPS

    Please, HELP!

    Reply
    • JR / May 17, 2010

      Hi Nikolay,

      Sounds strange that rawhide, repository not found. If I run command yum –enablerepo=rawhide update mesa-dri-drivers-experimental mesa* I get following results:

      yum --enablerepo=rawhide update mesa-dri-drivers-experimental mesa*
       
      Loaded plugins: dellsysidplugin2, fastestmirror, presto, refresh-packagekit
      ...
      rawhide                                                         | 4.3 kB     00:00     
      rawhide/primary_db                                              |  10 MB     00:05     
      Setting up Update Process
      Resolving Dependencies
      --> Running transaction check
      ---> Package mesa-dri-drivers.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      ---> Package mesa-dri-drivers-experimental.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      ---> Package mesa-libGL.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      ---> Package mesa-libGL-devel.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      ---> Package mesa-libGLU.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      ---> Package mesa-libGLU-devel.i686 0:7.8.1-6.fc13 set to be updated
      --> Finished Dependency Resolution
       
      Dependencies Resolved
       
      =======================================================================================
       Package                             Arch       Version            Repository     Size
      =======================================================================================
      Updating:
       mesa-dri-drivers                    i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide        10 M
       mesa-dri-drivers-experimental       i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide       1.5 M
       mesa-libGL                          i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide       154 k
       mesa-libGL-devel                    i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide       485 k
       mesa-libGLU                         i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide       188 k
       mesa-libGLU-devel                   i686       7.8.1-6.fc13       rawhide       111 k
       
      Transaction Summary
      =======================================================================================
      Install       0 Package(s)
      Upgrade       6 Package(s)

      So no problems, with Rawhide repository.

      Could you post following command output:

      ls -la /etc/yum.repos.d/

      And could you post your xorg.conf or are you using xorg.conf?

      Reply
13. Brad Bodenhamer / September 13, 2010

    Worked great on F13 as well. I am using Dual Radeon 4870HD’s.
    [root@localhost ~]# glxinfo |grep -i “\(render\|opengl\)”
    direct rendering: Yes
    OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
    OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (RV770 9440) 20090101 TCL DRI2
    OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8.1
    OpenGL shading language version string: 1.10
    OpenGL extensions:
    [root@localhost ~]# glxgears
    16836 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3367.073 FPS
    16203 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3240.564 FPS
    16979 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3395.712 FPS
    XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server “:0.0″
    after 66602 requests (66601 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
    I terminated gears hence the fatal error.

    Thanks for the info!

    Reply
14. pixelet88 / November 17, 2010

    Hello,
    Has anyone tried the ATi Catalyst 10.10 driver for Linux on Fedora 14? I have M17-X10 R2 laptop configured to be dual boot – Win 7 and Fedora. 4Gb ram Dual ATi Radeon HD5870 GPU’s. I tried installing the Ati Propriety driver that did not work I could not reboot the Fedora partition. I had to reinstall Fedora. I am new at this any help or link with some information would be appreciated.

    Thanks

    Reply