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How to do a custom installation of the ATI drivers


Here's how to install the ATI drivers if the RPM doesn't work (or if you don't want to use the RPM):

  1. First, download the ATI Drivers (the ones for "XFree86 4.3.0" will work).
  2. Then, download the Fedora Core 2 patch (Updated 12 August 2004) for the ATI Drivers. Save the patch to the /tmp directory. (Thanks to micha on FedoraForum for posting the patch!)
  3. Open a Terminal, and become root:

    su -

  4. Make sure that kernel-sourcecode is installed:

    yum install kernel-sourcecode

  5. Install the ATI drivers:

    rpm -Uvh --replacefiles fglrx-4.3.0-*.i386.rpm

  6. Now, a slight fix for dual-processor users (if you're not sure, just do it anyway, it's harmless):

    ln -s /usr/src/linux-`uname -r | sed s/smp$//` /usr/src/linux-`uname -r`

  7. Now, we're going to patch the drivers to work with Fedora Core 2:

    cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/
    gunzip -c /tmp/fglrx-fedora.patch.gz | patch -p1

  8. Now we're going to build and install the module:

    sh make.sh
    cd ..
    sh make_install.sh

  9. Now, we want to close X, the graphical part of Linux, so we can set up the driver. Open a Terminal and type:

    telinit 3

    This will shut down X and you will have a "Login:" prompt.

  10. Log in as root.
  11. Stop the built-in ATI driver, and stop any custom ATI driver that you might have:

    rmmod radeon
    rmmod fglrx

  12. Now, we're going to set up the driver:

    fglrxconfig

  13. The ATI driver has now created a new configuration file. We have to make sure that X uses the new config file, not the old one:

    cd /etc/X11
    mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak
    ln -sf XF86Config-4 xorg.conf

  14. And then we have to fix a mouse problem in the new configuration file:

    sed -i 's/\dev\/mouse/\/dev\/input\/mice/g' /etc/X11/xorg.conf

  15. And now we can start X again:

    telinit 5

  16. Finally, you'll notice that you get a (harmless) "XKB Error" when you log in, so we need to fix it.

This should install the ATI Drivers for you and provide you with 3D ATI support. Enjoy!

(Thanks to the Rage3D Linux Forum and Sindre for the original steps of this process! Thanks to Paul Kilgo, Kevin Goldstein, and Simon Olofsson for catching important typos in this question! Thanks to Peter Lawler for his help with testing and fixing some stuff! Big thanks to micha on FedoraForum for the constant updates on this question.)
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