VTK/OpenGL

How to get OpenGL ATI driver working on a linux debian system.

This wiki page is based on: http://www.watchland.org/dmcgraw/ati-debian.html

• Download the RPM from ATI (it should match your for XFree version)

Go to: http://ati.com/support/driver.html

• Use 'alien' to change the rpm into a tarball (alien -t), then extract at file system root level:

 cd /
 sudo tar xvfz fglrx-4.3.0.tgz

• Install the kernel headers for your kernel

apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`

• Install the kernel-source package for your kernel

apt-get install kernel-source-<ver>

• Create a symlink for /usr/src/linux to the kernel-headers. Technically this isn't needed, but it makes it easier to keep things straight.

ln -s /usr/src/kernel-headers-`uname -r` /usr/src/linux

• Build & Install the module

cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod

sudo sh make.sh

cd ..

sudo sh make_install.sh

• Optionally (but I recommend it to at least learn the options you can use) run fglrxconfig to generate a XF86Config-4 file

• To build VTK you may still need the OpenGL header file:

 sudo apt-get install xlibmesa-gl-dev

Some more info depending on your kernel:

- For a 2.4.x kernel

 Edit a couple of locations in the ATI make.sh script. Really you just need to check/set 2 variables.
 - First search for linuxincludes. Make sure that is set to /usr/src/linux/include (if you made the symlink above).
 - Then search for drmincludes. Make sure that is set to /usr/src/kernel-source-<ver>drivers/char/drm

- For a 2.6.x kernel

 * Create a symlink for the modules build directory

  ln -s /usr/src/linux /lib/modules/`uname-r`/build

 * Change the kernel headers to reference the kernel source package's drm include

 * cd /usr/src

 * tar -jxvf kernel-source-<ver>.tar.bz2

 * cd linux/drivers/char

 * mv drm drm.original

 * ln -s /usr/src/kernel-source-<ver>drivers/char/drm drm

Other (untested) How To:

• Fedora 2:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-May/msg06859.html

• Some links:

Support for ATI Radeon & FireGL graphics cards on Linux http://www.wlug.org.nz/RadeonNotes

Some FireGL driver: http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.php

Installing ATI-Drivers on Debian Linux(nforce2 chipset) http://www.g-tec.co.at/ati.html

Another ATI-Radeon-Linux-Howto which is also available in german.

This ATI-Radeon-Linux-Howto also includes information about installing the drivers on other distributions.

ATI Linux driver packages for Debian Another HowTo for Debian, also includes Debian packages and reports of working setups.

A link to ATI web site where to find some documentation about the XFree86 file option generated from fglrxconfig