Hello. I've been trying to make use of the proprietary ati drivers for quite some time, and on many different distros, to no avail. Until yesterday, when I came across this : http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=146 So, the laptop is an Asus V6VA20RW-Pro, powered by a Mobility X600, and what happens is that the X server will lockup right after DRI installation when using more than 768MB of ram. If I boot the kernel with 'mem=768m', the drivers work perfect, as expected. I have 2GB of ram in this laptop by the way. I submited a 'Linux Driver Feedback' to ATI, but in the hope that some talented gentoo-dev would know how to fix this in some future ebuild, I decided to create a gentoo bug report too. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install ati drivers 2. Startx 3. Actual Results: The computer locks up. Expected Results: I should get a nice KDE desktop :) This problem have been verified in gentoo linux, fedora core 4, archlinux and slackware, using both custom and factory-provided kernels, and using many many different xorg.conf files and options. It is definitly a bug in the fglrx kernel module, since when dri is disabled or when the module is not loaded, the driver loads perfectly, but you get no acceleration.
Created attachment 62345 [details] XOrg Log when booted with 'mem=768m' This is a working xorg log, when booted with mem=768m The files come from fedora, but trust me, gentoo's one were exactly the same.
Created attachment 62346 [details] My xorg.conf
Created attachment 62347 [details] XOrg log when booted with full Ram enabled (2GB) This is the xorg log when the machine hangs, kernel booted without any 'mem=XXXm' parameter. The machine locks up completely right after DRI Installation (whatever that is).
I cannot test it, sorry
If this is a bug in so many distributions, this is not the place to solve it - especially since the drivers are binaries. Get ATI to fix this, and maybe get them to make their drivers work with 2.6.12 while you're at it :P
The Ati-drivers 8.14.13-r1 *do* work with gentoo-sources 2.6.12.
Ya, I realized that a few moments after saying it.