Arch Linux

NForce

Member

From: Lithuania,Kaunas

Registered: 2008-11-16

Posts: 17

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

So, I noticed that the testing package was updated to 8.11 final. So, I updated and now when X is started, I get a black screen, indefinitely. I tried removing amdpcsdb to no avail. Is anyone else having this problem, and or know how to fix it?

Did you also comment out the Rgbpath in /etc/X11/xorg.conf?  That's a common cause of black screen (the path is no longer necessary as of xorg-server 1.5.

I have that commented out, but i get black screen as well

Mikko777

Member

From: Suomi, Finland

Registered: 2006-10-30

Posts: 837

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

yup, catalyst 8.11 black screen/ hang on x startup if i change any setting through amdcccle. (still)

---

Planet KDE | Opendesktop.org | Chakra Project

RagingDragon

Member

Registered: 2008-07-27

Posts: 24

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

No issues here. I installed Catalyst 8.11 and xserver 1.5 from testing (x86_64) and it just worked - I didn't need to create any symlinks, nor delete control center database file (my xorg.conf never had the RGB path entry).  I built this machine in August, it never had Catalyst < 8.8 installed, so that might explain the lack of control center issues. KDE4 is noticably faster.

Last edited by RagingDragon (2008-11-17 06:23:45)

SyXbiT

Member

From: Seattle, WA

Registered: 2008-06-28

Posts: 177

Website

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

xserver 1.5 has been in testing for so long!
and it's all cause catalyst didn't support it.
should be ready soon now

Inkaine

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-07-14

Posts: 88

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-gen … 18958.html

Nope, it's not Catalyst. Hasn't been since JGC provided us the 8.11 beta (and this proved reliable) afaik.

NForce

Member

From: Lithuania,Kaunas

Registered: 2008-11-16

Posts: 17

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Catalyst 8.11-1 isn't working at all(( I tried it from the ATI site, and from Arch repository too, but none of these worked( And catalyst 8.11-0-3 worked so well...maybe someone has it's packages in cache for i686? Because it seems that I am going to have to get back to the ubuntu( the arch was so good for me...stupid ATI drivers

Last edited by NForce (2008-11-17 19:25:12)

SyXbiT

Member

From: Seattle, WA

Registered: 2008-06-28

Posts: 177

Website

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-gen … 18958.html

Nope, it's not Catalyst. Hasn't been since JGC provided us the 8.11 beta (and this proved reliable) afaik.

now that 8.11 is the first 'stable' driver to support xorg 7.4, we'll need a while in testing before moving to core.
so technically, it's still cause of catalyst (obviously IMHO)

Last edited by SyXbiT (2008-11-17 19:42:44)

merlin

Member

From: Maine

Registered: 2008-10-06

Posts: 12

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

I have joined the testing of xorg-server-1.5.3 along with evdev, etc. My machine is a MSI laptop 64 bit Turion with a X700 graphics card. For starters I used the open source ati driver; auto config of modules, keyboard, touchpad, fonts all worked like a charm.
I then installed catalyst and catalyst-utils and ran aticonfig --initial -f which modified my xorg.conf for the fglrx and added fglrx to /etc/rc.conf. Poof, everything works like a charm. No complaints  here; suspend & hibernate both work under pm-utils.
The only observation is that glxgears shows a max of around 2550 FPS; using the catalyst 8.8 I always got around 4100 FPS. I do not know the reason for this; on the other hand I have read that glxgears is not a good benchmark, so there are no worries?

Statix

Member

From: Hangzhou, China

Registered: 2008-02-16

Posts: 240

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

The true test is to try a game that you've played before and see if you notice any performance drop.

I've also joined the testing and I'm going to try out some TF2 on wine tonight. (Gotta make some progress on my essay first though. )

---

Madly in love with Arch64, Openbox, DotA, and of course... penguins!
Happy to help if you're not a Help Vampire. Use your wonderful resources like ArchWiki, Google, and our wonderful search page.

Spewns

Member

Registered: 2008-08-19

Posts: 11

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Checkerboard with 8.11 when starting WoW. Bleh.

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

So, 8.12 is out now. I'm trying to fiddle with the PKGBUILD to make it work now...it's not going to so well :-p.

Anyone else given it a try?

Peter

EDIT: Got it working fine. Install went well. The only problem was that I had to copy fglrx_dri.so from /usr/lib64/dri to /usr/lib/dri. No more black screen when I stry to start GDM. Huzzah!

Last edited by pjjanak (2008-12-10 21:52:41)

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Any interesting gains?

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

There are supposed improvements in video playback, which I haven't really noticed. I have a problem where when playing a video and using compositing, the video is always over the selected window. That seems to be about it, unless you have a CrossFire setup.

You can read the release notes here: ati.com

Peter

Last edited by pjjanak (2008-12-11 03:37:20)

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

I finally have two CRT monitors, and I want to have an extended desktop.
Is it possible to get Catalyst to accomodate for the gap in between the two monitors so that anything between the two screens will be hidden instead of shifted over to the next monitor?

Last edited by Wintervenom (2008-12-12 23:47:15)

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Well...sort of. You could just set your virtual size to accomadate for the space and then do some fancy positioning in your Xorg.conf, where the second monitor is all the way to the left and the first is all the way to right (or however you have it set up) so the extra space is then in the middle. I think that would be do-able. And if it is, you should have been able to do that for a while now.

Peter

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Anyone tested catalyst out with the latest kernel26 (2.6.28) in testing?

cinan

Member

From: Slovakia

Registered: 2008-07-04

Posts: 251

Website

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

I have problems with ati and kernel 2.6.28: module fglrx not found.

AndyRTR

Developer

From: Magdeburg/Germany

Registered: 2005-10-07

Posts: 1,641

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

this is known we will be fixed soon.

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

I'm starting the big bad update...there is a new build of catalyst in the repos now and it appears to be compatible with 2.6.28. Let's see how it works.

Peter

arew264

Member

From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

Website

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

I got that update from Pacman last night, and it killed my X. Then again, I have an ATI XPress 200M, which is poorly supported by ATI/AMD.

I'll troubleshoot it later. I'm on vacation right now, so I just rolled it back to 8.11.

kevin89

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2007-03-14

Posts: 218

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

My findings:
Using x86_64 and testing repo with newest kernel & catalyst & xorg gives me a black screen when I startx, and I have to ctrl+alt+backspace to reboot my PC. The Xorg.0.log displays really nothing unusual..no sign of errors.

edit:
For clarifications:
kernel 2.6.28
catalyst 8.12-2
xorg-server 1.5.3-4

Last edited by kevin89 (2008-12-28 16:56:50)

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

kevin89:

There is a new build of catalyst in testing as of this morning which should fix your problem.

The update went smoothly (after removing radeonhd, which was causing conflict issues). Everything is working great! Hooray new kernel!

Peter

kevin89

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2007-03-14

Posts: 218

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Peter: Hurray! My X works again! Thanks for mentioning it

pjjanak

Member

Registered: 2008-08-17

Posts: 128

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

It seems that 9.2 has been leaked (yeah, wierd, I know). As a warning, the download speeds are slow from China.

Here is where I found out.

This was also mentioned on the Phoronix forums and people have had some success with it.

Peter

EDIT: Here is a much faster link.

EDIT2: So, it installed fine, after modifying the PKGBUILDs for catalyst and catalyst-utils, but then it took a crap on my computer after booting up telling me it couldn't load fgrlx.ko because of an unknown symbol. I'm trying to track down the cause now. Here's the exact warning I get during compilation (which is reiterated in dmesg when trying to load the module):

WARNING: "flush_tlb_page" [/home/peter/.source/catalyst/src/archive_files/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/fglrx.ko] undefined!

Anyone know?

Last edited by pjjanak (2009-01-24 20:36:03)

unehed

Member

Registered: 2008-10-23

Posts: 10

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

Well I just installed the 9.2 driver using the Ati installer. And it works fine for me. The performance in glxgears almost doubled and I can play Nexuiz on high now which I couldn't do before. I still have to disable composite in xorg.conf though, otherwise I get the good old 5 seconds to maximize terminals. (which I also get using the open source drivers btw.) Since I'm not into flashy eyecandy this doesn't bother me too much though. Although it would be nice with some window shadows and transparent terminals. Well I guess I'm gonna have to live without it until a new version of xorg comes out...

edit: Turns out the performance boost was just placebo. I downgraded to the 8.12 driver and glxgears was actually better now. And Nexuiz seemed to be the same. So forget what I said before.

Last edited by unehed (2009-01-25 22:56:51)