I deicded to change my post title to express my feelings when I saw an updated ATI drivers for Linux. It installs and work very cool without any problem with good documntation and GUI installer.
Good work. However the OpenGL libratries this driver istalls are the Mesa GL libraries:
libGL.so and so. I made sure of this by deleteing/uninstalling every single Mesa installation I have and deleting libGL.so.x.x and let the ATI driver installer installs new ones. But unfortunately I got Mesa drivers. How come?
I checked the installed modules and there is one called atiogl_a_driver.so or so. How to link to it? Please help.
With the DRI architecture it is possible to use Mesa as a front end for accelerated OpenGL. It’s somehow similar to windows, you have a single library and plug in different hardware drivers…
My question is clear. How come ATI driver installer installs the Mesa library (software implementation)? Is it a bug in the driver? or I can get latest Mesa library and recompile myself on top of the ATI modules?
And who mentioned DRI stuff?
The nonfree ATI drivers are structured very similar to the free DRI drivers. Mesa has a license which allows integration into proprietary software. Furthermore ATI has hired two DRI developers in the last months.
So I suppose these drivers plug into Mesa just like the DRI drivers do (and use Mesa for software fallback as well).
Philipp
My question is not that difficult to understand.
Why does ATI uses software Mesa OpenGL instead of their own. This does not allow for 3D acceleration, or at least these libratries cannot communicate with the atiogl_a_drv.so module.
Is it a bug in ATI installer?
Does it use Mesa to reliefe the developers from implemnting a libGL interface to the core driver?
And by the way the fglrx module cannot be loaded due to externar unresolved symbols in the kernel.
I tried to re-compile the modules but to no avail.
Thanks.
Quote from Overmind:
With the DRI architecture it is possible to use Mesa as a front end for accelerated OpenGL
Note the words DRI, Mesa and accelerated.
I think the question was understood.
Generally speaking, you don’t want to link to a vendor-named library. Because if your user just happens to have an nVidia, it won’t work.
Now whether or not it all works and gives you accelerated GL I cannot say (since I’m one of those nVidia users).
Bottomline is: is it noticeably faster than before? If not, I guess you’re getting software.
Oh my gosh.
My question is very simple. ATI driver installer installs Mesa libraries which don’t link to the atiogl_a_dri.so and hence getting software rendering only. And by the way the fglrx module cannot load because of unresolved external symbols.
Now I’m pretty sure that weither I should try another linux distribution or update to latest Fedora.
Or it’s ATI driver installer probelm.
READ THE ANSWERS!!!
Everyone here has understood your question, you have not understood the answers.
The ATI drivers use Mesa as frontend, Mesa forwards all calls to the drivers and you get hardware acceleration. Why do you believe that these libraries cannot communicate with the driver module? That’s not true, they can through the DRI architecture.
Does it use Mesa to reliefe the developers from implemnting a libGL interface to the core driver?
Exactly. That’s what everyone here is saying…
Problems with loading the module have nothing to do with Mesa and the user space GL libraries, this is a kernel problem. Make sure your installed kernel sources are the same as your running kernel.
Ok I got it. But I think I have the correct source for my kernel. I run Redhat 9.0.
And how can I get the installed Mesa GL libs accelerated? Is it because the fglrx model is not loaded?
Yes, you need the fglrx module.
Normally it shouldn’t happen that there are unresolved externals when loading a module. That means your kernel is missing some features that the module wants to use, so either there is some dependency on another module, in that case it should be loaded automatically by “modprobe”, or the feature is simply not activated in the kernel…
Either way this problem should be detected by the driver installer when compiling the kernel module, except the kernel you have running is not the same as the kernel whose source you have installed.
Look in the driver documentation if there is something mentioned how you have to configure your kernel to use the driver, or perhaps something about some kernel versions not working…
Thankls for your help. But I guess I would do my self a favour and change to NVIDIA and FC 4.
Anyway it does not worth that effort to get semi accelerated drivers for old OpenGL 1.2.
NVIDIA rules!
Unless you are Nvidia and want to re-invent the wheel, you use the open-source libGL. This is part of Mesa. Period. The libGL then loads whatever vendor specific driver driver the X-server tells it to load. For ATI’s drivers, this is fglrx_dri.so.
If you do ‘glxinfo | grep “OpenGL vendor string”’ and see "OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org" then your driver is not installed / working correctly. If you see “OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.” then everything is working properly.
The odds are that ATI didn’t fully test their installer on RH 9.0, so something is going wrong on the install. Dunno.
Please note that Nvidia is the odd-ball here by replacing a standard system component with their own. They have perfectly good reasons for doing this, and I would do the same if I were them. With the updates to libGL going into X.org 7.0 (and eventually into 7.1), hopefully they will be able to stop doing this. Only time will tell…
You should make a small program and check for the vendor and renderer. I’ve also just installed the ati driver. I’ve got a small app from KDE which checks for OpenGL and returns me every string etc. (I think).
When I had tried to recompile the kernel and had f@cked my modules the vendor string returned Mesa. Now that I’ve installed the driver I get ATI.
Anyway, getting the strings should be very trivial. I think you use glGet. Look it up in the red book or “man” it.
Also a simpler test would be to install a game which requires 3D acceleration. If it works you got it. If it doesn’t well…
PS You have run fglrxconfig after installing the drivers haven’t you?
I Downloaded the ATI Driver, Hardware Acceleration works well, all modules load correctly with kernel.org source code for version 2.6.11. Note that Kernel 2.6.12 doesn’t work with the ATI Drivers; there’s some depreciated code in the ATI software that nees to be re-written for the newest kernels.
The implementation also appears quite stable.
I apologize for my inflammatory Off-Topic-post but I just cannot restrain myself…
<ZigZag>: you absolutely do not deserve any help if you insult the people who try to answer you three times in a row with crap like “My question is clear.”, “My question is not that difficult to understand.” and “My question is very simple.”,
thereby implying that they are just too stupid to understand your problem. You definitely need to lay off that arrogant bull****.
ATI drivers now updated. New drivers. I’m very happy, but still cannot install under Redhat 9
I’ve also had problems with ati drivers. Used the installer but got no acceleration. After a few hours of tinkering I found a page which described how to compile fglrx support into my kernel. I followed the instructions and got the hardware acceleration.
How?
The problem is as follows:
UNRESOLVED EXTERNAL SYMBOLS (CANNOT LINK TO KERENL MODULE)
KERNEL version is 2.4.20 (Redhat 9)
And hence cannot load the driver.
Hey pissed? on yourself? Maybe u should wear diapers.