DRI driver installation for ATI Radeon


These instructions explain how to install the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) drivers for ATI Radeon graphics cards to enable the direct rendering extension required by Project Looking Glass.

Installation Instructions

Here is the procedure for upgrading the OpenGL library (LibGL.so) and implicitly the Radeon 7500 driver on RedHat 9.

  1. Become root:

    % su root
    Password: enter root password
    #

  2. Install the kernel sources from the RedHat 9 distribution:

    # rpm -ivh kernel-source-2.4.20-8.i386.rpm

    Note: if you have mounted the RedHat 9 cdrom #2, you can find the kernel-source package in:

    /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/kernel-source-2.4.20-8.i386.rpm

  3. Update the kernel configuration and dependencies:

    # cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
    # cp /boot/config-2.4.20-8.config
    # make oldconfig
    # make dep

    Note: You don't need to recompile the kernel.

  4. Download the latest snapshot of the ATI Radeon drivers from the DRI project web site:

    Follow the download instructions in the Snapshot section of the Download page: http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Download

    You will need to download both the common snapshot (named: common-YYYYMMDD-linux.i386.tar.bz2) and the Radeon snapshot (radeon-YYYYMMDD-linux.i386.tar.bz2).

  5. Extract the common package and install it:

    # tar jxf common-*
    # cd dripkg
    # ./install.sh
    # cd ..
    # rm -rf dripkg

  6. Extract the Radeon package and install it:

    # tar jxf radeon-*
    # cd dripkg
    # ./install.sh
    # cd ..
    # rm -rf dripkg

  7. On RedHat 9 you will also need to download and install the XFree86 binary.

    Follow the instrictions in the Snapshot section of the Download page: http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/Download

  8. Add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:

    pre-install radeon /sbin/modprobe -k agpgart

    This ensures that the agpgart module is loaded before the radeon module.

  9. To enable DRI, you need to update /etc/X11/XF86Config:

    Add the following lines to the Module section if they are not already present:

    Load "glx"
    Load "dri"

    and add a DRI section, if necessary, that contains:

    Section "DRI"
        Mode 0666
    EndSection

  10. Now reboot your system.

  11. Finally, to verify that direct rendering is enabled, run the glxinfo command:

    % glxinfo | grep "direct rendering"

    You should see:

    direct rendering: Yes

Acknowledgements

The Project Looking Glass team gratefully thanks Lucian Cionca lucian.cionca@gmail.com for providing these instructions!



$Revision: 1.8 $ $Date: 2004/09/22 09:19:44 $