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Re: configurar placa AGP ATI rage 128

O meu caso é mais estranho já tive o driver fglrx a funcionar duas vez e depois ao compilar os modulos deixou de dar e nunca mais consegui colocar novamente a funcionar, embora ache que fiz as mesmas configurações. 

Eu segui estas duas página e na altura consegui, agora nao. :-(
A minha placa é a ATI9000 64mb mas acho que a consiguração é a mesma embora mude o driver. 

Tenta seguir segui as estes passos e se conseguires diz qq coisa ;-)

Utilizei estas sources:

deb     http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/ ./
deb-src http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/ ./


Cumprimentos.

hogorobos hogorobos wrote:


Bem Rafael, então tenho uma boa notícia, hoje achei
uma página que pode ajudar tanto a você (se souber
inglês) quanto a mim:
www.dirac.org/linux/writing/lgh/linux-gamers-howto.html
Eu tenho uma voodoo banshee (3DFX) que está rodando
com drivers genéricos (tdfx) e o meu problema é
parecido com o seu: tenho o X rodando sem problemas só
que os jogos ficam muito lentos (<1FPS por aqui).
Assim que eu resolver meu problema prometo postar aqui
na lista um HOWTO de instalação de placas de vídeo.
Se servir de ajuda também, entre no groups.goolge.com
e faça uma pesquisa relacionada ao problema em
português mesmo, pode ser que algum Usenet em
português já tenha a resposta :)

--- Rafael de Albuquerque
<albuquerque.rafael@gmail.com> escreveu: 
Com o vesa, soh ficaram lentos em jogos.


On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 22:00:20 -0300 (ART), hogorobos
hogorobos
<hogorobos@yahoo.com.br> wrote:

Os gráficos ficam lentos em jogos ou em tudo?

--- Rafael de Albuquerque
<albuquerque.rafael@gmail.com> escreveu:



Realmente vc vai ter problemas com essa placa.

Os

chipsets das ATI
Rage sao bem problematicos, q nao tinham suporte
adequado no XFree86
4.3 (a versao 4.4 ja suportava, mas teve uns
problemas com a
"liberdade" dela). A solucao mais rapida eh usar

o

driver vesa ou
entao encarar compilar o X.org, que ja suporta

esse

chipset. Se vc
esperar, provavelmente o proximo XFree ja vira

com

suporte (isso se
nao aprontarem outra brincadeira com licencas e
codigo...)

O Fedora suporta pq deve usar outra versao de
Xserver.

Rafael de Albuquerque


On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:19:51 -0200, Marcio de

Araujo

Benedito
<china@minaslivre.org> wrote:

Ha dias que estou apanhando desta placa de

video.

Nesta maquina estava

instalado o fedora core 1 e coloquei o

DEBIAN-BR-CDD para este amigo

meu. A placa e a seguinte.

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI

Technologies Inc Rage 128

RF/SG AGP

E o xfree eu atualizei para o do unstable, mas

tambem nao adiantou:

dpkg -l xserver-xfree86
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
|

Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed

|/

Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems
(Status,Err:

uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description


+++-==============-==============-============================================

ii  xserver-xfree8 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 the XFree86

X

server

O fedora core 1 detecta automaticamente e

configura com o driver ATI.

Instalei o debian-br-cdd e ele nao detecta a

placa, e sobe o X com o

driver generico VESA.

Se eu simplesmente troco o driver vesa por ati

no

XF86Config-4 o monitor

fica preto e o led de indicacao fica vermelho.

Procurando no google, vi

que tem de subir alguns modulos, como agpart e

atyfb, mas nao adiantou

tambem.

Alguem que tenha uma placa AGP parecida com

esta

pode me mandar a lista

de modulos e os passos para configurar?

Com o driver vesa e sem os modulos agp esta

funcionando, mas fica muito

lento os graficos.

[]'s
--
  .''`.  Márcio de Araújo Benedito

<china@minaslivre.org>

 :  :' : Promoção e Defesa do Software Livre:

http://www.minaslivre.org

 `. `'   UIN 14398303
    `-
        "Não tive filhos, não transmiti a

nenhuma

criatura o legado

       de nossa miséria"
                               Brás Cubas

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--
Title: ATI Linux driver packages for Debian

ATI Linux driver packages for Debian

Current package version: 3.7.6-5
(changelog)

This page explains how to build Debian packages from the ATI Linux driver for the ATI Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, Mobility M9, M9+, M10 and the ATI FireGL 8700, 8800, E1, E2, X1, X2, Z1 graphics accelerators. Click here to learn how this package was born.

Versions 3.2.5 and later officially support the Radeon products again. These products were initially listed as supported in the documentation for version 2.9.6 of the driver, but later on all references to them were removed, leaving only the FireGL series as officially supported. However, the driver itself was not changed and later versions (up to and including version 2.9.13, which was the latest version available from ATI until 3.2.5 came along) still supported the consumer products too. I still can't understand why it was so, but now support for the Radeons is officially back and everyone should be happy.

Prebuilt packages are now available here. According to a person working for ATI, “distribution is encouraged”.

0. News

April 28, 2004
I've written a simple script that configures the kernel source tree (if needed) and builds the fglrx module for you; it will also instruct you to install any missing pieces. This should completely automate the error-prone kernel module build. Save this script in a directory of your choice, run it with 
sh fglrx-build.sh
and enjoy.

As soon as I get some feedback about this script, I will upgrade the instructions on this page. For now, if you are at all unsure, please DON'T use this script and follow the instructions below.

April 20, 2004
Section 7 now lists some working setups.
Added a note about kernel 2.6.5's broken "make clean".
April 19, 2004
There is now an archive of the mailing list.
March 29, 2004
There is now a mailing list for you. Subscribe by sending an email to flavio-fglrx-subscribe at stanchina.net. If you are having problems with the packages, please write to the mailing list. Note that this mailing list is not intended for general discussion of the fglrx driver, but only for users of my Debian packages. Posting is open to subscribers only. Abuse will not be tolerated.

1. Caveats

First things first: read the instructions below carefully before doing anything else!

This is not for the faint of hearth or the uninitiated. If you never tried to build a Debian package from source, learn how to do that before you come back here.

Note: You will need to become root to run apt-get and dpkg. Please don't stay logged in as root any longer than necessary; rather, I'd suggest to install sudo and use that.

2. Requirements

AGP support

You need some support for your AGP chipset. You have two choices: the ATI driver's built-in AGP support or the kernel agpgart driver. It's difficult to say in advance which one is better or will work at all, because it depends on the exact driver and kernel versions you're using, but the kernel driver should be your preferred choice if it works for you. If you want to use the ATI driver's built-in AGP support, make sure that the kernel driver is not compiled into your kernel: either compile it as a module or disable it entirely. If neither one supports your chipset, try using the kernel driver with the agp_try_unsupported=1 option on the kernel command line or as a parameter when you load the module.

Note that in the 2.6 kernel the AGP chipset drivers are separate from the agpgart driver itself, so if you build them as modules you will need to load the agpgart module and a chipset module such as via-agp, nvidia-agp, etc.

Kernel source

You need to install the kernel source code and configure it with make-kpkg. Any kernel version available from Debian should do.

Note: You must compile your kernel and the ATI kernel module with the same compiler version, otherwise it won't work. If you are using a prebuilt kernel, this probably means GCC 2.95 on woody or GCC 3.3 on sarge/sid. Use this command if you need to install GCC 2.95 from stable and make it the default compiler: 
apt-get install gcc/stable gcc-2.95/stable
For more information, look at the README for driver version 2.9.6 and read section 6. NOTES, TROBULESHOOTING AND LIMITATIONS, subsection 15. Handling "drmSetBusid failed".

You don't need to actually compile the kernel, but you do need to configure it properly. If you don't want to compile and install your own kernel, just install the sources for the same kernel version that you are using and use the configuration that came with your kernel package: 

apt-get install kernel-source-2.x.y
cd /usr/src
tar xjvf kernel-source-2.x.y.tar.bz2
cd kernel-source-2.x.y
cp /boot/config-2.x.y-flavour .config
make-kpkg --append-to-version "-flavour" --revision 2.x.y-z --config old configure

If you already have a configured kernel source tree, you can use it, but make sure that it's exactly the same configuration you are using.

Additional programs

Make sure you have installed debhelper, fakeroot and wget.

Once you've sorted out all this, you can proceed to download the following package sources or the prebuilt packages.

3a. Source

These scripts will package the ATI driver version 3.7.6. You can ask for a different version by setting an environment variable when you call debian/rules, but figuring out the details is left as an exercise for advanced users because this has not been tested very much and could fail.

The scripts will detect which version of XFree86 is currently installed on your machine and download the matching driver package. You can ask for a different version by setting an environment variable, but again, details are best left unexplained.

Download the files above into a directory of your choice (preferably /usr/src) and unpack with 

dpkg-source -x fglrx-installer_3.7.6-5.dsc

Then cd into the newly created fglrx-installer-3.7.6 directory and run 

fakeroot debian/rules binary

The build script will download the driver and the readme from the ATI site, then it will build the following packages in the parent directory:

("xxx" is your XFree86 version)

Now you can install the packages and compile the kernel module.

3b. Download prebuilt packages

These packages are offered for the convenience of those who don't want to learn how to build their own.

I can't guarantee anything about these packages: for example,
I can't guarantee that my system is clean from viruses which could affect binary packages, and
I can't guarantee that I'm not malicious so don't be surprised if these packages install a backdoor on your system (no I didn't do that yet, I just want to scare you). Source packages above are safe in this respect, provided that you are sufficiently paranoid to check for basic problems such as a misplaced rm -rf /; don't trust me, because I wouldn't trust you.

You can download these packages with apt by adding the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file: 

deb     http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/ ./
deb-src http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/ ./

Note that there are other packages available here, but my repository is tagged as "experimental" so the default apt pinning policy will prevent unwanted upgrades to my versions for packages that are available from here and from official sources.

You need only the packages that match your XFree86 version, and you need just the -driver and -kernel-src packages for normal use (see below). If I need to tell you which ones, you didn't read the instructions carefully: start again from the beginning.

NameSizeMD5SUM
fglrx-4.3.0-sources_3.7.6-5_i386.deb71726 bytes2fe5dd83720e056e9ec9c2bc0f02fb8d
fglrx-4.3.0-kernel-src_3.7.6-5_i386.deb230834 bytes146b3feb4f63cf7875a2af5937463e2c
fglrx-4.3.0-driver_3.7.6-5_i386.deb2672012 bytes6952c97afc28882f734a498e53b2c220
fglrx-4.3.0-driver-dev_3.7.6-5_i386.deb7760 bytes6240b489a0c1c7aa980b6e6b86187d10
fglrx-4.3.0-control-qt3_3.7.6-5_i386.deb76974 bytes05825060ccd3455ed4b553a2b979ca97
fglrx-4.3.0-control-qt2_3.7.6-5_i386.deb72508 bytes74240f884cf780edd660f587e9dccea2

Note that due to time and space constrains I'm uploading packages only for some of the possible combinations of XFree86 and driver versions. If you need a version not available here, ask politely or build your own packages.

4. Install packages and compile the kernel module

You need to install the "-driver" and "-kernel-src" packages; the "-driver-dev" package contains header files and the libfglrx_gamma.a static library and you need it only if you develop ATI-specific OpenGL applications; the "-control-qtX" packages install the control panel and can be useful for multi-monitor configurations; the "-sources" package contains the control panel source code and a sample application and it is not required for normal use. 

cd ..
dpkg -i fglrx-xxx-driver_3.7.6-5_i386.deb
dpkg -i fglrx-xxx-kernel-src_3.7.6-5_i386.deb

After you have installed the packages, change directory to /usr/src and type: 

tar xzvf fglrx-xxx-3.7.6.tar.gz
cd kernel-source-x.y.z
fakeroot make-kpkg --append-to-version "-flavour" --added-modules fglrx-xxx-3.7.6 modules_image

This will build a new package, which you will have to install: 

dpkg -i /usr/src/fglrx-xxx-kernel-x.y.z_3.7.6-5+kernelversion_i386.deb

Important: Until Debian bug #248624 is closed for good, you will need to run update-modules yourself after installing the module. As of May 24, 2004, the bug is fixed but pending a new upload.

Unresolved symbols: If you see errors like "unresolved symbol dev_base_R863b01ad", it means that the module was compiled with CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=yes but the running kernel was not. In other words, the configuration of your kernel source tree does not reflect that of the running kernel. Go back to section 2, make sure that you configured your kernel source tree correctly and double check that CONFIG_MODVERSIONS is not set.

5. Configure X

The driver package provides an automatic configuration tool called fglrxconfig. Just don't use it, OK? fglrxconfig is useful if you want a dual-head setup, but before you try that please make sure that a single-head setup works by editing your XFree86 configuration file as outlined below.

Edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4: 

Section "Device"
  Identifier "ATI"
  Driver     "fglrx" # this is the important bit
  Option     "NoDDC" # this allows you to select nonstandard screen sizes
# === Video Overlay for the Xv extension ===
  Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
# === OpenGL Overlay ===
# Note: When OpenGL Overlay is enabled, Video Overlay
#       will be disabled automatically
  Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
# === Use internal AGP GART support? ===
# If OpenGL acceleration doesn't work, try using "yes" here
# and disable the kernel agpgart driver.
  Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "your screen"
  Device     "ATI"
  Monitor    "your monitor"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth 24
    Modes "1280x960" # this is only an example,
                     # use your preferred resolution here
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Stop and restart your X server. Figuring out how to do that on your system is left as an exercise. If you know no better than to reboot your system, you will be in a lot of trouble if things don't work as expected: you might be stuck with just the console, or things could go really wrong and you could have to reboot into single user mode because your display and keyboard are completely locked. So please do learn how to properly stop and restart the X server.

If it breaks your system, you keep all the pieces and I don't care. (But let me know what happened, OK?)

After your X server starts, check if OpenGL acceleration is enabled. Open a shell and type fglrxinfo or glxinfo: the "OpenGL renderer string" should say something like "RADEON 9600 XT Generic"; if it says "Mesa GLX Indirect" instead, it means that there is a problem.

6. Bugs and Workarounds

Full-screen mode

Full-screen mode is somewhat broken: sometimes you'll end up with a garbled display, and your only chance of getting your desktop back is blindly closing the program that caused this. I didn't find a workaround yet.

DVI (digital) output

It appears that the ATI driver does not support the DVI port on my Radeon 8500 LE: all I get is a blank screen. Several people told me that they are using DVI on various 9600s, so I borrowed a 9600 XT from a friend and I could get DVI up and running in seconds.

If you are using — or tried to use — the DVI port on other types of cards, please share your experience.

Non-standard screen sizes

It appears that the ATI driver will refuse any screen size that your monitor doesn't list in its VESA DDC info; for example, I can't get my preferred resolution of 1280x960(1) with my Samsung CRT monitor. The symptoms are the following: if multiple resolutions are listed in XF86Config (such as "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600"), the display will open at 1024x768 with a noticeable delay (a couple of seconds).

There are two workarounds:
  1. List only one resolution (1280x960 in my case): the display will open at that resolution with no delay, but you won't be able to switch resolutions with Ctrl,Alt,+ and Ctrl,Alt,-
  2. Use Option "NoDDC" in the "Device" section, as shown above: this is harmless as long as you got your monitor timings right.
1. I'd kill with my bare hands whoever came up with 1280x1024, which has non-square pixels unless you give up some screen real estate. The aspect ratio of a traditional CRT is 4/3 and all standard resolutions (such as 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768) have that aspect ratio; the aspect ratio of 1280x1024 is 5/4, so pixels are slightly wider than a square and things on your display will look compressed in the vertical direction. Now call me picky, but I do notice it and i don't like it.

Kernel 2.6.5: broken "make clean"

Kernel 2.6.5's "make clean" removes include/linx/version.h and several other files that are required to build external modules.

A workaround is the following: 

$ make-kpkg ...options... kernel_image
$ make-kpkg clean
$ make-kpkg ...options... configure
$ make-kpkg ...options... modules_image
(i.e do an extra "make-kpkg configure" before "make-kpkg modules_image")

Another workaround is to apply a patch that restores a sane behavior (from the Linux Kernel mailing list).

Do not install kernel-package 8.086 that "fixes" this problem by not doing a make clean: it's worse because the kernel makefile will now relink all kernel modules during the build of external modules.

Stock fglrx kernel module doesn't work with CONFIG_REGPARM

Binary-only modules break with kernel 2.6's CONFIG_REGPARM because it changes the kernel ABI. Starting with verion 3.7.6-5, I have applied this patch for the fglrx driver that fixes this problem.

Broken SiS AGP support

Kevin Schlichter reports: "I'm running an SiS chipset, and found that the AGP support doesn't work in the 2.4 series, and not in the 2.6 series until 2.6.5. I think there are some patches available, but I didn't test any of them."

7. Working setups

Debian kernel(1) XFree fglrx Radeon CPU chipset FPS
fgl_glxgears 		reported
by 		notes
Woody 2.4.25 4.1.0 3.7.6-4(?) ? ? ? ? Raphael None.
Sarge 2.4.25
2.4.26
2.6.4
2.6.5 (patched) 		4.3.0-7 3.7.6-4 8500 LE Athlon 1200 MHz Via KT133A ? myself XFree configuration as above.
Using kernel agpgart as module.
Kernel 2.6.5 patched against broken "make clean".
2.4.26
2.6.5 (patched)
2.6.6 		4.3.0-7
4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 		3.7.6-4 9600 Pro Athlon XP 3200+ nVidia nForce2 Ultra ~550
2.6.5 regparm 4.3.0-7 3.7.6-5 9600 Pro Athlon 1200 MHz nVidia nForce2 Ultra ~530
Sarge 2.4.26 (stock) 4.3.0.1 3.7.6-4 9800 Pro Pentium 4 2.6 GHz Intel 875P ~605 vdrmrt Kernel agpgart module.
Sarge 2.6.5 4.3.0-7 3.7.6-4 M10 (9600) Pentium 4 3.0 GHz SiS M648FX+963 ~450 kevin schlichter Sager 4780 laptop.
The AGP for this chipset does not work in 2.4 kernels, or 2.6 kernels before 2.6.5.
Sid 2.6.4-1 4.3.0-7 3.7.6-4 9700 Athlon XP 1921 MHz nVidia nForce2 ~570 mithrandi None.
Sid 2.6.5 (debian) 4.3.0-dfsg 3.7.6-4 Fire GL T2 Pentium M 1.7 GHz Intel 855M ? pthichat IBM T41p laptop.

1. Unless otherwise noted, these are vanilla kernels from www.kernel.org.

8. How does this driver compare to the driver in XFree86 4.3?

First, here's the hardware I'm running this on: Here's a mixed list of performance considerations and problems with OpenGL applications:

Contrary to what I had previously written here, the ATI driver does support the Xv extension, but you need to have 

Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
in your XFree86 configuration (see above). Recent versions also implement the DGA extension, but there are problems: MPlayer for example will lock your screen if you use -vo=dga.

Roberto JP says: "There are a few more advantages, from a developer's viewpoint. The ATI driver supports many more (important) OpenGL extensions than the open source driver does. If you're using vertex or fragment programs (i.e pixel shaders) in your software, this is very important."

A. Thanks

B. Links

C. Changelog

fglrx-installer (3.7.6-5) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Mon, 24 May 2004 17:48:22 +0200

fglrx-installer (3.7.6-4) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 11:15:37 +0200

fglrx-installer (3.7.6-3) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 10:42:06 +0200

fglrx-installer (3.7.6-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 23:47:11 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.6-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 16:38:38 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.0-5) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 23:05:17 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.0-4) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 00:39:44 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.0-3) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sun, 8 Feb 2004 13:38:37 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.0-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Fri, 6 Feb 2004 11:35:16 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.7.0-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sun, 4 Jan 2004 17:40:05 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.2.8-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:06:47 +0100

fglrx-installer (3.2.8-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sun, 12 Oct 2003 17:07:38 +0200

fglrx-installer (3.2.5-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sat, 4 Oct 2003 12:34:18 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.13-3) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Thu, 21 Aug 2003 12:53:46 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.13-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 16:48:54 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.13-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Fri, 1 Aug 2003 10:28:08 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.6-3) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Fri, 1 Aug 2003 10:00:16 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.6-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Wed, 14 May 2003 15:13:17 +0200

fglrx-installer (2.9.6-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Mon, 31 Mar 2003 01:16:12 +0200

fglrx-glc22-4.2.0 (2.5.1-2) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Thu, 13 Mar 2003 22:06:21 +0100

fglrx-glc22-4.2.0 (2.5.1-1) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 20:53:02 +0100

fglrx-glc22-4.2.0 (2.5.1-0) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Sat, 30 Nov 2002 11:45:51 +0100

fglrx-glc22-4.2.0 (2.4.3-0) experimental; urgency=low

Flavio Stanchina — Thu, 28 Nov 2002 02:17:56 +0100

Valid HTML 4.01! Copyright © Flavio Stanchina
May 24, 2004 at 19:33:48

$Id: fglrx-installer.gtml,v 1.7 2004/05/12 18:57:51 flavio Exp flavio $
Title: Installing Linux on a Clevo 410E

Installing Linux on a Clevo 410E (D410E)

Michael Sheldon (webmaster-at-mikeasoft-dot-com) - Last Changed: 10/05/2004

About the laptop

Clevo make laptops which are distributed by many different resellers under many different names. I bought mine from Lindengrove (http://www.lindengrove.net), a UK company which sells Linux laptops (as well as Windows ones). I was pleased by the efforts of the company to help me get the system running and would recommend them to any other UK users.

The Clevo laptops are generally fairly customisable, and are often shipped to resellers to customise, the specifications of mine are as follows:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz.
Chipset: SIS 962.
Memory: 256MB DDR.
Graphics: ATI Radeon Mobility 9 (M9) 64MB DDR.
Ethernet: 8139too based Realtek chipset.
Sound: SIS integrated i810 based chipset.
Modem: Smart-Link compatible.
CD: DVD/CD-RW 24x Write.
Screen: 15.1" SXGA+ 1400x1050.
Dimensions: 329(w) x 275(d) x 26.5(h)mm.
Weight: 3.3kg (including battery).
Power: 120W mains adapter (100-240V).
Other Neat Things: 1394 Firewire port, built-in microphone, 3 USB 2.0 ports, S-Video Out, IrDA.

There are additional extras available, such as onboard wireless, built in camera, bluetooth, etc. While I wanted wireless support, I decided I was more likely to be able to get it working through a PCMCIA card.


Distribution

The Clevo 410E seems to have problems with almost all 2.4 kernel based distributions, the exceptions being Mandrake (http://www.mandrakesoft.com) and MEPIS (http://www.mepis.org) a Debian based distribution (and happily, my distribution of choice).

I tried booting with a beta of Knoppix 3.4, under the 2.4 kernel it refused to boot as expected, but using the 2.6 kernel (knoppix26) it booted fine.

However, I'll be sticking with MEPIS.


Autodetection

MEPIS has some fairly neat autodetection (meauto), which managed to get the system to a working state without any problems. Unfortunately the 8139too built-in ethernet card didn't work. However I had this same problem with my desktop machine which also has an 8139too based card, there I simply upgraded to the 2.6 kernel and all was well.

However, at the time of writing a beta of the 2004.05 MEPIS release was available, which included the 2.6 kernel. I booted back in to Knoppix using the 2.6 kernel (where my network card worked fine) and downloaded the MEPIS beta to my current MEPIS (2003.10) partition. I then booted back in to MEPIS and used the laptop's DVD/CD-RW drive to write the CD. It worked flawlessly.

My CD/DVD drive, sound chip and Radeon M9 were all detected fine, though I had to do some tweaking to get 3D acceleration with the M9 (more detail later).

Now running the 2004.05 beta under the 2.6 kernel it detected my 8139too ethernet card perfectly.


Installation

To begin with MEPIS boots entirely from the LiveCD, so you can use it as an entire system without even installing it (ala Knoppix). A quick click on the "MEPS Installation Center" and a few clicks on "Next" and it was installing. The actual installation took barely any time (less than 2 minutes), however when it came to installing GRUB it paused for a considerable amount of time then produced an error, informing me that the GRUB installation had not been successful and that the new root filesystem may be faulty. A quick dash to the console showed that everything appeared to have been installed correctly, besides GRUB, so I deselected the "Install GRUB in:" option, planning to handle it myself later. Upon setting my root password I got an error saying that it was unable to set it. I had no means to continue further, so I decided to try again, this time allowing MEPIS to specify its own partitions. Unfortunately now none of the desktop links worked correctly, so I restarted. Bear in mind this is only the very first beta of this release, and the first release with the 2.6 kernel, so problems are to be expected. Hopefully by the time anyone has need of this document a release version will be ready.

This time the install took longer, perhaps 10-20 minutes, so I believe the previous install's speed was an abnormality which may have lead to (or have been caused by) the problems I experienced. This time everything went perfectly smoothly, I rebooted and lo, the wandering hamster did wake!

I used my favourite apt-get front end, synaptic, to install Xchat, and was soon mumbling away as normal in the #mepis channel (irc.freenode.net).


Kernel

I couldn't get 3D acceleration working correctly with the radeon drivers and to compile the MadWifi drivers and fireglx module I'd need the kernel source, so I decided I may as well go all out and recompile the kernel myself. A copy of my kernel config file can be found here: .config

These steps should cover how to compile the kernel:

su
apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.4
cd /usr/src
tar -jxf kernel-source-2.6.4.tar.bz2
cd kernel-source-2.6.4
mv .config .config-old
wget http://linux.mikeasoft.com/.config
make
make modules_install
make install
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage-clevo

Next you'll need to edit your GRUB configuration to make this a boot option. Open /boot/grub/menu.lst in your favourite editor and add the lines:

title Clevo Kernel 2.6.4
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-clevo - Where (hd0,0) is your boot partition. You should be able to work this out from the other entries.
savedefault


Graphics

After having little success with the open source radeon drivers included with MEPIS (recompiling the kernel removed most errors, but it still complained about not being able to initialize agp and so not starting DRI), I headed over to the ATI site and downloaded the fglrx_4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm package.

I used alien to convert the rpm to a deb package, alien fglrx_4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.rpm. Then used dpkg to install it, dpkg -i --force-overwrite fglrx_4.3.0-3.7.6.i386.deb (the --force-overwrite switch was needed to overwrite libGL.so from the xlibmesa-gl package).

To compile the fglrx module I did the following:

su
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
chmod +x make.sh
./make.sh
cd ..
rmmod radeon
chmod +x make_install.sh
./make_install.sh

I then edited my /etc/X11/Xfree86Config-4 so that it used Driver "fglrx" instead of Driver "radeon". You'll also want to ensure that the default bit depth is 24, since the fglrx drivers don't provide 3D acceleration at any other depth.

After doing this (and restarting X) I now get on average around 1900 frames per second with glxgears.


Wireless

MEPIS 2003.10 provided wireless support for the Atheros chipset, which is used in my WG511T, unfortunately the modules failed to load correctly. With the 2.6.4 version of the 2004.05 beta no wireless modules are included at all.

To compile the modules myself I did the following:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi
cd madwifi
make
make install
modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_hal
modprobe ath_pci

This worked perfectly and I was able to configure my wireless from within the MEPIS System Center without problems.

Unfortunately the MadWifi drivers don't yet support SuperG, which would offer 108Mbps with this card.


Modem

I haven't tried using the modem myself, but have been informed that it's a Smart-Link compatible device, and should work fine with this driver: ftp://ftp.smlink.com/linux/unsupported/slmodem-2.9.6.tar.gz. I've also noticed that MEPIS seems to detect the modem on startup, but I have not tried to make use of it.


Sound

Worked fine from the word go.


Power Management

The system can be put to sleep without any problems, unfortunately when waking up the display is corrupted and unusable. I'll have more of a fiddle with power management in the future.


CDRW/DVD

Burning CDs worked flawlessly, neither do I have any problems reading CDs or DVDs. When it came to playing a DVD I first had to install the libdvdcss package (included with MEPIS but not installed.). Look under the "Converted from RPM by alien" section in synaptic. I then started up xine, changed the input device from /dev/dvd to /dev/cdrom (Setup -> Input) and set the region to 2 (UK).


S-Video Out

I wasn't able to get this to work, though I didn't make a major effort. I tried using the atitvout tool included with MEPIS but just got the error "VBE call failed." I'm not amazingly fussed about this feature myself as the laptop has a very nice display of its own, which is perfectly adequate for watching DVDs and video files on.


Function Keys

The function keys which appear to be controlled by the BIOS such as screen brightness work straight away. However to make use of the sound function keys (volume up, volume down and mute) it's necessary to install acme (available via apt-get). When you run acme an icon of a key will appear in the system tray right click this and select preferences to be able to assign tasks to your function keys. (Note: GNOME 2.6 has the functionality of acme built in.)


Bibliography

http://cpbotha.net/clevo5600/clevo5600_linux/ - Nice site about a previous Clevo model, with many similarities to the 410E.

http://www.mepis.org/ - General MEPIS information.

http://www.lindengrove.net/ - The company I purchased my laptop from.

http://sourceforge.com/projects/madwifi/ - MadWifi project.

http://www.tuxmobil.org/ - Linux on laptops, PDAs and mobile phones

http://www.linux-laptop.net/ - Another large linux laptop resource.



Feel free to distribute this article however you wish and to create any derivative works you desire; providing you attribute the original authorship to myself. (I'm vain like that)

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