Yelläks /ˈyæl•eks/

I replaced my nVidia GT8600M with an ATI Radeon HD 3650. The installation of the fglrx driver is a complete mess. Maybe this posting will help you to enable the driver in your Debian/Lenny box.

My setup

At my workplace I have a external monitor (max resolution: 1280 x 1024@60Hz). However the DDC database reports this monitor to also support 1400 x something, which results in the display of “Cannot support current resolution” on the screen.
The LCD of my laptop has a resolution of up to 1680×1050 (Lovely, isn’t it? Btw, 15.4″, nice NON-glossy screen etc.)
At work I have to give a presentation sometimes, so the LCD screen should be mirrored at a resolution of 1024×768. Otherwise I would like to have a big desktop stretched over 2 screens, so that I can move windows from one side to the other.

At my home there is no external monitor and I rely only on the LCD.

Installation

I installed the proprietary drivers downloaded from ATI (fglrx, version 10.2). I tried to use kernel 2.6.33 (which was released a week ago), but despite a patch, the compiled module did not load due to some missing symbols. So I downgraded to 2.6.32.9. But even then, the installation failed. As far as I remember, the ati-installer script was complaining about a missing directory in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules or similar.
Soon I found a description which resulted in a flawless packaging and kernel module compilation. Despite the fact, the fglrx is in version 10.2, following the steps mentioned for 10.1 lead to success.

Configuration

The configuration was pretty easy and straight forward. However fglrx is heavily using xrandr and since I had nVidia earlier, I was not used to that nor did I know. The nVidia configuration relied heavily in xorg.conf and I thought the same about fglrx.

Issues

There are some issues with fglrx.

1. The external monitor does not show the proper resolution despite the fact Modeline etc are mentioned in xorg.conf.

   Solution: The problem seems to be that fglrx is not interested in the data reported by the monitor at all. Even if a ModeLine is forced by UseMode, it is completely ignored by fglrx and the highest reported resolution is used (which is incompatible with this monitor as mentioned earlier). Here is an example of that section.

   Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
HorizSync 30.0 - 80.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 76.0
Option "VendorName" "Dell"
Option "ModelName" "E177FP"
Option "DPMS" "true"
ModeLine "1280x1024_60.00" 108.9 1280 1360 1496 1712 1024 1025 1028 1060 -hsync +vsync
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024_60.00"
UseModes "1280x1024_60.00"
EndSection

   The solution is to alter the resolution bt xrandr while GDM is loaded. For that I added the lines
   EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="CRT1"
INTERNAL_OUTPUT="LCD"
xrandr |grep $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT | grep " connected "
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT --off
fi

   before gdmwhich () (right at the beginning) in /etc/gdm/Init/Default. These additional lines switch off the external monitor (anyway it does not have to show anything) only if it is connected. My xorg.conf is available at the end of this post.

2. After the user logged in, the attached monitor should be automatically detected and switched on.

   Solution: Thanks ThinkWiki there is a solution for doing so. To ease the switch between externalMonitorOff, mirror and bigScreen I created 3 executable files in /usr/local/bin/xrandr that allow me to switch the mode instantly. To access the files, you have to create starters in Gnome (e.g. right click on desktop -> “Create Launcher”)

3. After suspend to RAM and resume, the external monitor is switched off and I have to execute something like
   xrandr --output LCD --auto --output CRT1 --off
xrandr --output LCD --auto --output CRT1 --left-of LCD --mode 1280x1024
   to reinitialize my desktop and to power up my external monitor.

   Solution: A post in the Ubuntu forum leads to the solution. Put the commands into a file in /etc/pm/sleep.d/.

4. Now the fglrx driver is installed, what about Compiz?

   Compiz should work without any problem, however the resize issue (nVidia, but nevertheless same issue) resurfaced here again. It is very much annoying and I do not use compiz and the moment. I really look forward for the driver radeonhd to support 3D acceleration so that I can discard the whole fragile installation of fglrx.

Download

The zip file contains

• my xorg.conf. This also includes the old xorg.conf of the nVidia card. The xorg.conf can be found in /etc/X11/.
• the scripts that allow me to switch between the modes rapidly. Depending, what is executed, I get a my desktop stretched of 2 displays, a mode with the external VGA port switched off or with the content displayed on my LCD mirrored. To figure out the names of the --output parameter, use xrandr in the console.
• /etc/gdm/Init/Default
• /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45custom_xrandr-settings. Do not forget to make this file executable. It is called by the next file.
• /etc/pm/sleep.d/restoreScreen.sh. This file also needs to be executable.

Download!