trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-23 23:11:01

I play Enemy Territory and I am pretty sure I need to install the ATI driver s0 I downloaded an ATI driver from the ATI AMD webite but then I read something about not using the ATI installer an to use the Arch installer if this is the driver I am supposed to use how do I install it using the Arch installer? I read this

Obtain the PKGBUILD and fglrx.install files from CVS or ABS. Either:
* Visit http://www.archlinux.org/packages/12877/ and click "View CVS Entries" to find them

the link is dead

( by the way I am using 64bit Arch)
instructions say;

* Run abs as root and locate the files in /var/abs/extra/catalyst.
[edit] Editing the PKGBUILD and building
Three changes need to be made here:
First, change
pkgname=catalyst
to
pkgname=catalyst-KERNEL_NAME
where KERNEL_NAME is whatever you want (e.g. custom, mm, themostawesomekernelever)
Second, remove kernel26 from the dependencies list.
Third, change
_kernver=${_kernel_version}-ARCH
to
_kernver=`uname -r`

so I go to try this but first I had to install ABS I installed ABS and then try to run it

sudo abs
==> Starting ABS sync...
rsync: failed to connect to rsync.archlinux.org: Connection refused (111)
rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(122) [receiver=3.0.2

only to get that error

sam · 2008-05-24 05:51:37

The error means the rsync (part of abs) can't connect with the server, I had a similar error, caused by iptables not allowing the connection. You need to allow outgoing port 873/tcp.

Why are you trying to make your own package? Arch already has the 64bit ati catalyst package just type "pacman -S catalyst" into a command line.

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-24 15:58:22

sam wrote:

The error means the rsync (part of abs) can't connect with the server, I had a similar error, caused by iptables not allowing the connection. You need to allow outgoing port 873/tcp.
Why are you trying to make your own package? Arch already has the 64bit ati catalyst package just type "pacman -S catalyst" into a command line.

well I am fairely sure that the drivers won't be able to handle online gaming ( wolfenstien Enemy territory) so I would need better drivers or is this not true

sam · 2008-05-25 00:21:42

What do you mean by better drivers? The catalyst proprietary drivers will allow 3d acceleration. You maybe confusing the catalyst driver from ATI and the opensource driver from the community, which only provides 2d acceleration. The catalyst 8.4 driver was put into the repo today, and it is almost the most recent release.

BTW wolfenstein is not a very graphics hungry, your radeon is probably an overkill for the game anyways. So you will not really notice any performance improvements by using the latest drivers. I used to run wolfenstein on an intel 810 video card (integrated) with a p4 and 256 mb ram, and it ran well on 800*600 setting. Then again, my significantly more powerful laptop with an ati card can't run the game because of a really weird bug. But hopefully that won't happen to you

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-25 18:07:53

lol I know my card will eat up ET I was just concerned about the drivers because when I last had linux installed a couple of months back , I was using ubuntu gutsy and I had to install the ATI drivers because the drivers that came with ubuntu at that time couldn't handle any 3d games . then I reinstalled ubuntu hardy two weeks ago and all I had to do was turn on the accelerated drivers which was allot easier to do . now I am using Arch on a partition so I wasn't sure if the cat drivers could handle 3d and games of at least ET quality .
So they added the 8.4 into repo yeterday grat so how do I add , do I just do a pacman -S catalyst command and it will automatically upgrade?
oh and by the way thatnk you for the info

sam · 2008-05-25 22:33:02

Ok, I think I understand the problem. You have a very recent video card, and back in the days of gutsy, the catalyst driver that shipped with ubuntu didn't support your card (or maybe it had a poor support) for your video card. So ubuntu either installed a poor catalyst driver for your card or installed the open source version which had better support (at first) for your video card (but lacked 3d acceleration as mentioned above). However, the catalyst driver in the repo support your video card (ATI says so): https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/ … linux.html.

So pacman -S catalyst will install the catalyst and its dependency catalyst-utils. It will also install a newer kernel 2.6.25. After the driver installs, you are going to have to set it up.
The following links showed help
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Composite

You may have screen corruption problems or other minor video problems and you will need to tweak your xorg.conf file (this is going to require google and frequent system restarts or X11 restarts via ctr+alt+backspace). Again, you maybe be lucky and you might not have to do the last part, it all depends

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-26 02:53:22

sam wrote:

Ok, I think I understand the problem. You have a very recent video card, and back in the days of gutsy, the catalyst driver that shipped with ubuntu didn't support your card (or maybe it had a poor support) for your video card. So ubuntu either installed a poor catalyst driver for your card or installed the open source version which had better support (at first) for your video card (but lacked 3d acceleration as mentioned above). However, the catalyst driver in the repo support your video card (ATI says so): https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/ … linux.html.
So pacman -S catalyst will install the catalyst and its dependency catalyst-utils. It will also install a newer kernel 2.6.25. After the driver installs, you are going to have to set it up.
The following links showed help
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Composite
You may have screen corruption problems or other minor video problems and you will need to tweak your xorg.conf file (this is going to require google and frequent system restarts or X11 restarts via ctr+alt+backspace). Again, you maybe be lucky and you might not have to do the last part, it all depends

thanks I am used to messing around with the Xorg file just no in Arch

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-23 23:11:01

trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#2 2008-05-24 05:51:37

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#3 2008-05-24 15:58:22

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#4 2008-05-25 00:21:42

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#5 2008-05-25 18:07:53

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#6 2008-05-25 22:33:02

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

#7 2008-05-26 02:53:22

Re: trying to install Video driver to use for my ATI 3870

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