OpenSuSE 11.3 - less fun on a Samsung P35 - ATI woes continued

After the tremendously positive testing results of avocadohead with Tisiphone, I tried my luck some days ago with 11.3 on Thukydides, a Samsung P35 notebook, not the newest hardware and unfortunately with an ATI graphic card.

ATI woes

I had a go at installing SuSE 11.2 on Xanthippe, my slightly mercurial desktop computer (Athlon 64bit, ATI graphics, Atheros WLAN chip). The 11.0 kernel kept warring with the WLAN chip, so it was time for an upgrade.
After a normal install, the system claimed to have no working graphics during the configuration reboot (c'mon, it's only an elderly Radeon X1300) and started the console YaST.

Catalyst 9.1 (fglrx 8.573) - I believe in miracles…

…and fairies…the Easter Bunny…Santa Claus…whatever. ATI has finally managed to release a graphics driver capable of running compiz and flicker-free video at the same time, well… most of the time. Same procedure as always (see this post), tested with openSuSE 11.0_x64, compiz 0.78, AIGLX and a Radeon X1300 card.
Kaffeine and the mplayerplug-in still have displaying troubles sometimes (video shifted, distorted, interspersed with GUI elements), but given a large choice of media players one usually finds one that works - and I haven't seen a system freeze yet.
ATI is teaching real Epicurean values here: keep your standards low, and you might get lots of pleasant surprises.

Samsung P35: openSuSE 11 and Compiz

After I had completely f**ked up my X-Server by trying different fglrx drivers in order to get a reasonable compiz 3d-Acceleration, I finally decided to throw away my openSuSE 10.3 and install openSuSE 11 on my Samsung P35 XVM 1600 II, graphics card ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 series. Installation went smooth, apart from the interesting suggestion of the setup program not to just mount my home partition, but format it (yes, you should be careful about that as well - I don't want to lose all my settings just because openSuSE thinks that might be a good idea).

After the reboot, I was more than impressed... Compiz was running out of the box, without even the need to use the ati fglrx driver. This is the proof, with the radeon driver included in the XServer version of openSuSE 11 the card definitely runs AIGLX - by the way also without the well known "freeze after ending an x-session" error. Video playback of embedded flash movies in firefox unfortunately flickers a little bit. But if you use fusion-icon, you can switch back to Kwin as window manager temporarily for viewing (add the openSuSE Build: Xgl/Xorg repo to Yast in order to find fusion-icon). On the other hand, playing movies with Kaffeine doesn't show flicker at all.

The hotkeys don't work out of the box, but it is sufficient to look for acerhk in Yast after adding the standard repos and choose the appropriate rpm for your kernel flavor (which you can also get by opening Konqueror and typing sysinfo:/ into the adress bar). After the necessary reboot all the (important) hotkeys work.

ATI, OpenSuSE 11 and Compiz

Apparently the drivers in the openSuSE ATI repo are recent enough to support a reasonable AIGLX/Compiz performance, so no fiddling with the xorg.conf any more, just install the drivers and run sax2.
Compiz can replace KDM at startup: Control Centre -> KDE Components -> Session Manager. Here, you have a choice of window managers. "Compiz" will only work if compiz runs on your systems without extra options (e.g. --no-libg-fallback), which usually isn't the case. I prefer the "Compiz custom" option. To make that work, create a file "compiz-kde-launcher" in /usr/bin/, ~/bin or wherever your system can find it:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 3
wait
compiz --replace --no-libgl-fallback --ignore-desktop-hints ccp & #or whatever options work for you
sleep 1
emerald --replace &
exit 0

The sleep and wait statements are there to ensure that tray apps etc. have enough time to start up and emerald doesn't fire up before compiz is ready. Feel free to remove/change them.
Make the script executable:
# chmod a+x /usr/bin/compiz-kde-launcher
That's it.

X(anthippe)-Files Part 2: The "Clean" Install

First little joyful fact: SuSE 11.0 replaced the Ubuntu and not the SuSE 10.3 GRUB; took me a while to realise that, and a GRUB crashing at stage 1.5 or failing to read the system partition is not a pretty thing. Also, even the working version completely ignores the Windoze and Ubuntu installs. Still, one can fix that.

Secondly: SuSE boots, X doesn't start. At least I had a root shell and a network connection. xorg.conf had no mention of AIGLX options, so I started the console yast (old and staunch friend), added the ATI repositories, did an update, installed the fglrx driver and ran sax2. rcxdm restart resulted in a graphical login screen. Phew!

Thirdly: no users. I could have sworn I imported the old ones during installation. I logged in as root, created the users again in yast and gave them their old home directories, which remained unchanged, thank God.

Maybe it's Xanthippe, the little bitch, and her ATI Radeon X1300, or I was just extremely tired and stupid during install, but this could really have gone more smoothly (cf. Persephone).

fglrx 8.476: Play movies at your own risk!

It is well known that the ATI fglrx driver produces flickering video in combination with compiz/AIGLX. One solution is to switch to kwin while playing DivX files, DVDs etc.; in this case fusion-icon is your friend ;-)
Nevertheless, with the latest driver (fglrx 8.476 aka AMD Catalyst 8.4) I was in for something special: trying to watch a movie with kaffeine on any window manager crashed my X session instantly. I ruefully reverted to fglrx 8.455.
Morale: Always keep a backup of the last remotely stable driver installer.

Slow resizing in compiz

This has been posted all over the net, so it's more a personal memo stolen from All My Brain.
Window resizing on compiz/ATI is excruciatingly slow with the default settings. To fix that, configure the "Resize Window" plugin in the CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Resize modes Outline, Rectangle and Stretch work OK, Normal (default) keeps slowing you down.

Google Earth 4.2 with ATI - fglrx and XGL on OpenSuSE 10.3

Found somewhere in the net and adapted to OpenSuSE 10.3: after installing Google Earth doesn't start and eats up about 99% of your processor time.

The solution is to copy libGL.so.1 into the installation directory of Google Earth:

cd /opt/google-earth
sudo wget http://shanti.mojo.cc/docs/libGL.so.1

and you can enjoy google-earth


Found here.

How to run a Wacom tablet on Nvidia or ATI AIGLX

Never, never, never, never ... use the Sax2-Module (tantalisingly dangled in front of your nose in YaST) to add a tablet, if you value your hand-written xorg.conf. Or back it up first.

I finally got my Wacom Graphire4 tablet working with nVidia AIGLX. (note that graphics tablets are generally not supported on XGL!) The problems I experienced in setting this up were:

• getting the right identifier in /dev/input (the by-id one worked fine)
• wacdump segfaulting with sudo - had to use a real root shell
• GIMP Window mode resulting in nasty stylus-cursor offset, chose the Screen setting instead

HOWTO: Connect your tablet before booting (precautionarily). Make sure the x11-input-wacom and x11-input-wacom-tools packages are installed, they should be part of the SuSE default package selection anyway. Get the tablet event-mouse identifier from /dev/input/by-id (ls output shown below).
avocadohead@tisiphone:~> ls /dev/input/by-id
usb-Logitech_USB-PS.2_Optical_Mouse-event-mouse usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse
usb-Logitech_USB-PS.2_Optical_Mouse-mouse usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-mouse

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "Mode" "relative"
Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "pad"
Option "ButtonsOnly" "on"
Option "Button9" "2" #oder 1
Option "Button13" "3"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse"
Option "Type" "pad"
Option "USB" "on"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout[all]"
InputDevice "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse[3]" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "pad" "SendCoreEvents"
Option "Clone" "off"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
Screen "Screen[0]"
EndSection

Restart X or reboot. Test the tablet with wacdump:
tisiphone:/home/avocadohead # wacdump /dev/input/by-id/usb-WACOM_CTE-640-U_V4.0-3-event-mouse
Just move the stylus and watch the console output.

GIMP configuration: File->Preferences->Input devices->Configure Extended Input Devices. For "Mode", set everything to "Screen".

This is just how things worked on my machine with a Graphire USB non-LCD tablet. For different devices, adapt the Ubuntu HOWTO accordingly.

Button support worked well, even the scroll wheel (some people reported inverted scrolling). It' s not exactly plug and play, however; I had to restart X after plugging in to get it properly working.

For older SuSE distros, one had to compile the driver and kernel modules from scratch. Although the present SuSE packages seem to be sufficient FAPP, you can get additional tweaking tips and a lot of background information on the Linuxwacom HOWTO.

Applied the same procedure to Xanthippe (openSuSE 10.3 64bit, ATI Radeon X1300), worked OK.

ATI Catalyst 7.11 (AKA fglrx 8.433), AIGLX and compiz

This time I adhered to The Gospel According To CyberOrg:

I prepared my kernel sources as I did with fglrx 8.40, forced an aticonfig and edited my xorg.conf by hand instead of having it written by sax2. Benefits: much smaller file.


# cd /usr/src/linux
# make mrproper
# make cloneconfig
# make modules_prepare
# make clean
# rpm -e $(rpm -qa |grep fglrx)
# cd <directory where you put the driver>
# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-AMD64
# rpm -Uhv <some or other fglrx>.rpm
# aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --force

Don't run sax2 now!
Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section “Module”
     Load “dbe”
     Load “type1″
     Load “freetype”
     Load “extmod”
     Load “glx”
     Load “dri”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
     Option “AllowMouseOpenFail” “on”
     Option “IgnoreABI” “on”
     Option “AIGLX” “true”
EndSection

Section “Device”
     Identifier “aticonfig-Device[0]”
     Driver “fglrx”
     Option “FSAAEnable” “off”
     Option “Capabilities” “0×00000000″
     Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
     Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
     Option “FSAAScale” “0″
     Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps” “true”
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
     Option “DAMAGE” “true”
     Option “Composite” “true”
EndSection

Modify
/usr/bin/compiz-manager:

COMPIZ_OPTIONS="--no-libgl-fallback --ignore-desktop-hints --replace"
WHITELIST="nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx“

and change "Xgl" for "Xorg" in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

Works, at least if I don't run Compiz and video apps at the same time.

ATI driver 8.42.3, Radeon X1300 and compiz

Tonight I squandered a few hours of valuable sleeping time on the ATI 8.42 driver, which is rumoured to support AIGLX, and Xanthippe's Radeon X1300. Installing the thing worked OK, there was reasonable output from glxgears and fglrxinfo. Enabling AIGLX following this thread got me simply no 3d acceleration and the KWin window manager, while running the driver on XGL I experienced compiz with a nice desktop freeze.
I suppose I'll just wait for the next release...

N.B.: At least I'm not alone - and ATI seem to ship monthly driver releases right now.

Winter for GUI - when your X-Server freezes (your machine)

Right after using Xgl & Compiz with openSuSE 10.3 on Thukydides, a Samsung P35 XVM 1600 II with an ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, I experienced a wonderful winter: every time I ended a session and wanted to log in again, my computer froze - without the ability to switch even to a console. I tried different things in the settings, reinstalled the fglrx driver and so on, but it didn't help. Finally, after some research on google I found the following tip working for me (got it from here if you're interested in the source):
Look for the file kdmrc on your machine - on mine it is localized in /opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/. As Superuser look for the entry TerminateServer=false, change it to TerminateServer=true and reboot your machine. Trying it after an update failed, because the entry was positioned wrongly - obviously it must be at the end of the section [xcore-*. ...].

At least I don't have any problems with logging out and logging in any more - happy summertime.

ATI driver meta howto

Kind of a howto review, installed 10.3 on Xanthippe yesterday (Asrock board, 64bit dual core Athlon, Radeon X1300 graphics card). Compared to the 10.2 install (ATI driver vs. X.org RC battle) it went relatively smooth. Although self-assembled, the hardware is by no means bleeding edge by now, and any good OS should be able to cope with it. Some peculiarities: no LAN connection during install, but no problems later on, kdm started only after a reboot.
Next challenge: ATI drivers and compiz/xgl. I found the following howtos: E@zyVG™, unofficial ATI wiki and openSuSE and decided to follow E@zyVG™.
Comments:
Don't ever use the openSuSE/ATI repo! As of this moment, the newest driver version, 8.41, is the only one they supply, and it only works with the HD 2xxx cards. On the ATI page, you can select both OS architecture and graphics card in order to choose the right driver.
You need the kernel sources and development tools; most howtos also recommend a cleanup:
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make mrproper
# make cloneconfig
# make modules_prepare
# make clean
The above cleans up in your kernel sources and configures everything as it is with the installed kernel, which is not necessary in an all new system, but does no harm. To be sure, also remove any previously installed ATI drivers:
# rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep fglrx)
The 8.40 driver has no 10.3 option yet, but 10.2 works perfectly:
# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run –-buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-AMD64 - replace the AMD64 by IA32 for 32bit systems.
This generates the driver rpm, usually in the same directory as the shell script. Install with
# rpm -Uvh fglrx*.rpm - options Update, hash mark progress bars, verbose
# ldconfig
# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
# aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf
This updates your library cache and your xorg.conf. Both seem to be optional, but not exactly harmful, but you'd better backup your xorg.conf before any modification.
Stop your graphical system with # init 3 (runlevel 3) or # rcxdm stop, log in as root and configure your X server:
# sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
After a necessary reboot, I tested the install with fglrxinfo, glxinfo and glxgears. I tried out compiz/Xgl and all kinds of video playback, no problems there.

Postscript from a SuSE 11 point of view: Although the main overlay issues are still unsolved, the ATI driver performs OK installed from the openSuSE ATI repo and with the default config. THe bleeding edge drivers you still get only from ati.amd.com, of course.

Samsung P35, Xgl and Mobility Radeon 9700

Since I had a lot of trouble with these things, I'll post it here for others which may be as innocent as I was to those things.

Installing the drivers from the ATI repositories for 10.3 failed as posted before, so I installed version 8.40.4 with the Ati installer. Then I did an
aticonfig --initial
After that you need to reboot your machine.
Executing
fglrxinfo
and
fgl_glxgears
in a console you can check that the ATI driver is running (if there's no error message)
Then I tried to switch to Xgl via YaST which yielded serious problems. If you need to switch back to Xorg you can do that by executing
vi /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager
in a root shell and changing the entry Xgl back to Xorg (case sensitive).
Only after adding the "openSuSE 10.3 build service X11:Xorg" channel and installing compiz, compiz-emerald, opensuse-xgl-settings and executing the latter one in the graphical interface to enable xgl, everything worked well. Just to let you know, Xgl with compiz is awesome!

openSUSE 10.3 and ATI Mobility Radeon 9700

(Samsung P35 XVM 1600 II) Don't use the ATI "One-Click"-Installer offered by SuSE, but use the driver provided by http://www.ati.com and execute the shell script. Don't try to build the distribution rpm, since 10.3 is not yet included, but just install it. With the build provided by SuSE my Konqueror didn't show the sysinfo any more and also didn't accept the driver.