Re: No hardware acceleration with SuSE 9.3?

From: John-Paul Stewart (jpstewart_at_binaryfoundry.ca)
Date: 10/18/05 

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:28:17 -0400

Random Penguin wrote:
> Hi guys. OK, I tried installing the latest fglrx*.rpm through the
> console. My screen artifacted badly again, but it went away after
> hitting the reset button (ctrl-alt-backspace/f1/f2/etc. didn't work)
>
> I also attempted to install the drivers through YaST.
>
> In both cases, YaST reports the new drivers as being installed, with
> the old drivers that came with the CD disabled to avoid a conflict.
> However, hardware acceleration is still reported as being off.
>
> glxgears gives a FPS of about ~110 IIRC, with 100% CPU utilisation.
> Definitely sounds like the CPU instead of GPU is being used to render
> it.
>
> I've been reading around and it seems that I need to recompile my
> kernel to get my damned ATi card to work with Linux? E.g.
>
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/370153
>
> Any input/advice/insight would be appreciated.

It sounds like the driver package itself might be installed but not
fully configured.

You shouldn't need to rebuild the kernel, but you will need to build the
ATI module to match your currently running kernel. Check with 'lsmod'.
  Do you see 'fglrx' loaded? If so, then that's a good start. If not,
you'll have to go to /lib/module/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x (I'm assuming
you're running a 2.6 kernel) and type 'make' (probably have to do it as
root). You'll need (IIRC) the kernel sources installed and the proper
kernel config file in place (copy /proc/config.gz to /usr/src/linux,
unzip, and it rename it to .config).

Once you have a working module, you'll need to make sure that
/etc/X11/xorg.conf is setup to use the ATI driver. Use 'fglrxconfig'
(part of the ATI driver package) to configure it.

After that's done, restart X. 'glxinfo | grep renderer' should mention
ATI (indicating hardware acceleration is in use). If it still shows
"Mesa GLX Indirect", check /var/log/Xorg.0.log for errors.