Ubuntu Hardy Installation Guide

For most users it won't be necessary to go into installation and configuration details of the driver. Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) provides a notification saying that there are restricted drivers available. You just have to go there (Restricted Drivers Manager) and enable the "ATI accelerated graphics driver". Ubuntu will then install and configure the driver for you. If this does not provide the optimal solution you were looking for, please read ahead.

After installation, in GNOME or Kubuntu, turn off visual effects or you will notice a flicker in OpenGL.

Method 1: Install the driver the Ubuntu Way
This will install the current driver in Ubuntu's repository. It is older than the one AMD has released, but will be supported by the Ubuntu people. Catalyst 8.3 is in the repositories.

The second line may not be necessary as you may already have restricted modules installed. Run it just in case. If the third line fails, you probably don't have the restricted repository enabled. See Pre-Installation.

After this, you may need to edit Xorg.conf:

In the device section, if it is not already there add:

Then to make sure Xorg is set up correctly, you'll have to let aticonfig "initialize" it:

After this you should be able to restart your computer and have the driver working. To test type

into a terminal. If the vendor string is not ATI, but Mesa, check

Post-Installation Tweaks
To enable hardware accelerated video on pre-R500 cards, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to include the following lines without [...]

Note that when Visual Effects (Compiz) are active, flickering and artifacts may occur in OpenGL applications and hardware accelerated video windows (particularly with R300 chipset). To prevent this, disable Visual Effects.

On newer cards the options below enables Visual Effects and video to be played without flicker. The Textured video option can be turned on, but this can cause flicker or diagonal artifacts when playing videos.

Method 2: Manual Install Method
If you are using the x86_64 architecture (64 bit), be sure to inst "ia32-libs" before proceeding!

Make sure universe and multiverse are enabled in your repository sources.

2. Download the latest Catalyst package.
Download page: Catalyst. This package contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit driver.

Open a terminal window and switch to the directory you downloaded the installer to. For example: cd Desktop

3. Create .deb packages.
("hardy" is not a typo)

4. Add driver to kernel module blacklist.
NOTE: This step is no longer necessary with fglrx 8-10. Just jump to step 5 in that case.

The ATI driver must be added to the kernel module blacklist so that the new ATI driver will be used. If it is not blacklisted, the official Ubuntu repository version of the ATI driver will be loaded instead.

Add "fglrx" to the line "DISABLED_MODULES"

Please note that after the modification above, the "Restricted Driver Manager" will signal "ATI accelerated graphics driver" not enabled (unticked). This is perfectly correct. At the end of the installation procedure it will signal in Status: "in use" (green light), but NOT enabled. It simply means that the fglrx module contained in the linux-restricted-modules package is not enabled, but another fglrx module is in use.

You may also need to edit the file(s) (if they exist):

Put a # in front of the line "blacklist fglrx", if it is present. Otherwise, the kernel module will not load automatically, and you will not get 3D acceleration.

5. Install .debs.
For 32 Bits

Using tab completion can make this command easier.

Starting from 8-10 version of the driver, installing the following package ensures compatibility with restricted drivers' manager:

64 bit systems should have the same behaviour.

For 64 Bits

Using tab completion can make this command easier.

Additional 64-bit instructions
If you have a 64 bit install, the above dpkg command may complain that "Errors were encountered while processing: fglrx-amdcccle". This is because of a dependency of the amdccle package on 32 bit libraries. If you receive this error, issue the following command after the above dpkg command, which will force the installation of all of the 32 bit dependencies, and then the amdccle package:

Catalyst on 64-bit systems requires the --force-overwrite command in the above dpkg command:

When installing the packages, if xorg-driver-fglrx_8.552 fails to install due to a diverted file conflict, you can fix the package with this procedure.

Fix for an error:
If you are having this error: dpkg-shlibdeps: failure: couldn't find library libfglrx_gamma.so.1 needed by debian/xorg-driver-fglrx/usr/bin/fglrx_xgamma (its RPATH is '').

Fix it by doing the following:

Finishing the Install: Configuration
If you've used fglrx previously, you will not need to do this. Run sudo aticonfig --initial -f

Now you'll likely have to edit your xorg.conf (even if just to confirm the above command added the apropriate fglrx line): sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following line to the Device section (if it does not already exist). Include the following lines without [...]: Section "Device" [...]	Driver		"fglrx" [...] EndSection Make the appropriate changes to "TexturedVideo" and "Overlay", etc., as described above in the "automatic section". Save and exit, then in a terminal. If it does not error you should be fine.

Some people find that changes to xorg.conf don't get used by the driver. To force the ati driver to adopt changes made to xorg.conf, type the following command: sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1 Finally, reboot the computer and type fglrxinfo into the terminal. If the vendor string contains ATI, you have installed the driver successfully. Release 8.8 looks like: display: :0.0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X1950 Series OpenGL version string: 2.1.7873 Release

Please note: Depending on the particular ATI card that you own, you may or may not automatically have all of the relevant driver features enabled. R500 and R600 cards (X1xxx, HD series, and newer) in particular will need TexturedVideo enabled in Xorg.conf (rather than the traditional VideoOverlay) in order to support Xv accelerated video playback.

Removing Mesa drivers
If fglrxinfo reports that Indirect rendering by Mesa is in place, even though you have installed ATI driver, check:


 * Remove the package xserver-xgl.
 * sudo apt-get remove xserver-xgl
 * Explanation: If you installed this previously in order to make compiz work, it will not allow direct rendering on your display. You can check out if this is what it causing the problem by running
 * DISPLAY=:0 glxinfo | grep render
 * If it returns an ATI renderer, it means that xgl is being displayed indirectly on the display 1. (Taken from )


 * Warning: This might make your compiz stop working as it is configured to use XGL. A solution might be to run the Envy script in order to configure compiz. Or, if Compiz stopped working due to "Composite" problem, check that the following is set in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Extensions" Option		"Composite"	"Enable" EndSection


 * Check for AGP and DRI errors in /var/log/Xorg.0.log like these are:
 * (EE) fglrx(0): [agp] unable to acquire AGP, error -1023
 * (EE) fglrx(0): cannot init AGP
 * (EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
 * (WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed!                 *


 * If you have Intel 8285P and E7205 chipsets and AGP not detected then you have to remove the i82875p_edac module and restart a some others:

rmmod i82875p_edac rmmod fglrx rmmod intel-agp rmmod agpgart modprobe agpgart modprobe intel-agp modprobe fglrx


 * Blacklist the modules e7xxx_edac so it doesn't start up again when booting - add the following line at the beginning of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:
 * blacklist i82875p_edac


 * This has been known to fix issues with -Mesa -AGP -DRI -Google earth and -suspend to RAM (s2ram).


 * Explanation: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Computing/Linux/Ubuntu


 * Check you are running the correct kernel.
 * Explanation: If you're upgrading from Gutsy to Hardy in some instances the Grub bootloader does not get updated and the new kernel is not loaded.
 * Run in a terminal:


 * If the output starts with 2.6.22 or below you are not using the current kernel and the Ati drivers will not load properly.

If this doesn't help, try Ubuntu Gutsy Installation Guide, or other links:, ,.

Segmentation Fault with glxinfo/fglrxinfo
If you experience such errors (and have glxinfo report "Direct rendering" as No despite following the whole procedure without any errors) you may want to have a look at the Specific Issues chapter of the Ubuntu Gutsy Installation Guide [] as this may be due to missing links or wrong permissions.

Hang at logout
If you experience hangs when logging out (of X) it is probably due to the /etc/ati/authatieventsd.sh script looking for X authorisation files in the wrong place when it starts up. You can kill the hanging authatieventsd.sh processes from a console tty to allow the shutdown of the X server. This can be fixed permanently with:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/xdm/authdir sudo ln -s /var/run/xauth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles

If that doesn't work then you can disable atieventsd with this command:

sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f atieventsd remove

Suspend/Hibernation
Suspend hibernation works with the latest driver.

For ATI X1400, to get the laptop to wake up from suspend, I had to change the following in /etc/default/acpi-support:

SAVE_VBE_STATE=false

POST_VIDEO=false

ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false

For Radeon 3200, to wake up from suspend, I had to add the following lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf: (This settings is not good option, if you are using compiz-fusion or any other transparency-based thingie. Not working for HD 3850)

Section "Extensions" Option       "Composite"        "Disable" EndSection

Section "ServerFlags" Option "AIGLX" "off" EndSection

Error! This module/version combo is already installed
Simply uninstall the previous version before installing the new one with sudo dkms remove -m fglrx -v 8.522 --all