Red Hat Enterprise Linux

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the leading platform for open source computing. It is sold by subscription, delivers continuous value and is certified by top enterprise hardware and software vendors. From the desktop to the datacenter, Enterprise Linux couples the innovation of open source technology and the stability of a true enterprise-class platform." -redhat.com

Please note that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core are distantly related and are not the same product. Please see Fedora Core distribution page for more details.

Another option for those wanting the stability of RHEL, is CentOS, a community effort which tracks each RHEL release and update and offers up2date and yum service. All this for free, donations encouraged. [1]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 3 (RHEL 4.3 and CentOS 4.3)

The ATI GUI installer worked just fine for me with my Radeon 9700 Pro and CentOS (RHEL) 4.3. ATI claims to "officially" support both RHEL and SUSE, So contrary to the complex install procedure shown on the SUSE pages of this wiki, if you have RHEL, I would go with the simplest approach in the Related Resources link below.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 (RHEL 5.0 and CentOS 5.0)

fglrx versions up to and including 8.36.5 require that you install some compatabiliy RPMs.

Here is what I did to get the fglrx driver to run with my FireGX 5150 on CentOS 5.0:

Install ATI driver 8.36.5.

Display all compat-* RPMs if you like:

  yum list "compat-*"

Install the compat RPMs. I installed a bunch of them that I need for other reasons:

  yum install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-glibc compat-gcc-34 compat-readline compat-libf2c

I do not know which if these RPMs are actually needed for fglrx. They appear above ordered from most likely, to least likely to be needed.

The aticonfig program crashes, so you will have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf file yourself. All I had to do was change the driver from "vesa" to, "fgrlx":

  Section "Device"
      Identifier "Videocard0"
      Driver  "fglrx"
  EndSection

Reboot

A couple of notes to the really good summary above... You also need the -devel RPMs for most of the packages listed (and a number not). After that I managed to get the aticonf program to not crash by doing:

   aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=right

You also should add the following to your xorg.conf file:

   Section "Extensions"
         Option "Composite" "0"
   EndSection

However there are still problems with the fgrlx driver. Even after all of this and a reboot fglrxinfo still says the system is using Mesa GLX Indirect rendering. Also the ATI Catalyst Control Center (amdcccle) will now restart X when you try to run it. Basically it is a mess and I think we need to wait until an updated driver comes along for RHEL 5.

Tips and Tricks

If you have SELinux enabled and set to enforcing you may need to change the context of the fglrx_dri.so file for it to load properly:

    chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so

Substiture lib with lib64 where appropriate.

---

Scientific Linux (SL 5.0) The ATI driver installer ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run has the ability to build RPMs.

ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run --listpkg

shows the packages it can build. There is no RHEL 5 option yet, but I've read somewhere that RHEL5 is based on FC6. Given that I tried to build

ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Fedora/FC6

and it generated the following RPMs:

ATI-fglrx-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
ATI-fglrx-control-center-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
ATI-fglrx-devel-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
ATI-fglrx-IA32-libs-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
fglrx_6_8_0-8.36.5-1.i386.rpm
kernel-module-ATI-fglrx-2.6.18-8.1.3.el5-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm

fglrx_6_8_0-8.36.5-1.i386.rpm is for 32-bit.

To install these RPMs run

rpm -Uvh ATI-fglrx* kernel-module-ATI-fglrx-2.6.18-8.1.3.el5-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm

Run

aticonfig --initial

and you could try it with:

startx

or

telinit 5

When you happy with the new driver you ensure that you have

id:5:initdefault:

in your /etc/inittab and reboot the box. Please note, that SL5.0 installation did not recognise my card: ATI X1600 [Asus A6000KT laptop] so I had no X running and the default init mode was 3 [not 5]. YMMV.

I still do not know how to rebuild the kernel module for the different kernels. By default the kernel module is being build for the current kernel [uname -r] Today was the first security kernel upgrade revision 2.6.18-8.1.4.el5. So after new kernel installation I repeated the same procedure and installed new kernel module with

rpm -ivh kernel-module-ATI-fglrx-2.6.18-8.1.4.el5-8.36.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm

HTH

Related Resources

Follow link "ATI Driver Installer"