Installing the ATI Graphics drivers under Debian Linux?

[satoshi]

I remember once, a couple of months ago, when I went to install the nVidia graphics drivers on my computer. I just went to nVidia's site and downloaded the file. I ran it, rebooted, all was good. Fast-forward to today, where I'm trying to install the ATI drivers under Debian (same distro as before), and I've been trying for a week straight. I've come so close, and now that I think about it, it's probably not an issue with the drivers (well, they could be easier to install..). I've followed this [linuxquestions.org] tutorial and this [desktop-linux.net] tutorial as closely as possible, but I always end up with the same outcome: My new kernel can't mount /dev/hda3 (root, ext3 partition) as root. Something along the lines of:

Kernel Panic: cannot mount /dev/hda3 or (3,3) as root

The original kernel that Debian installed mounts it fine. What's up with this?

I'm running Debian 'Sarge', beta4, i386. My card is an ATI Radeon 9600XT, and I'm running on an ASUS, nForce 2 motherboard, socket A.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Because ATI sucks at making Linux drivers.

Have you downloaded the latest release from the ATI site? Apparently they made some new ones recently.

- M4H

 

[EmperorRob]

Here's something suspicious, those links you have are redirected to www.microsoft.com in firefox v0.93.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: EmperorRob
Here's something suspicious, those links you have are redirected to www.microsoft.com in firefox v0.93.

That's cause they weren't linked properly in the post.


As for your Kernel Panic..are you using an initrd image? If you aren't you need to make sure that your IDE Drivers and EXT3 Drivers are compiled INTO the kernel and not as modules. If you are using an initrd image then make sure your boot loader is set to load the initrd first and not the kernel.

 

[EmperorRob]

Yeah but strip off the beginning "https://" and you'll still get re-directed.

Yeah for your kernel panic you need to make sure you've compiled in (statically, not as modules) hardware and filesystem support for your root partition.

 

[satoshi]

How would I go about doing that? I'm very much so a newb when it comes to most anything Linux. I've fooled around with it for about a year now, but this is the first real "in depth" thing I've ever done. And leaping head first into was probably a bad idea, but I'm open and am willing to figure things out.

As for the links, that's REALLY odd. They were linked properly and all in the post body, but now they're messed up. I'll check it again.

Edit: they keep effing up, I can't figure it out...

Edit (2): it keeps apending https:// to the front of the URL and getting rid of the : the in the http:// that was originally there. I get rid of the http:// and the first link works, whereas the second no longer does. Odd.

 

[EmperorRob]

It will just take you a little time to look through all the compilation options. I'm assuming you have an IDE drive since your root is hda3. There's an ATA/IDE section and make sure you have IDE Disk drives enabled (not as module).

An easy way to get started is to use the config that comes with a new Debian install. It should be in /boot. You can copy that to a kernel source directory and rename it ".config". Then when you run make menuconfig or xconfig you can just modify a few options instead of having to go through and choose each one.

 

[silverpig]

as root:

cd /usr/src/linux (assuming you've made the ln -sf /usr/src/linux /usr/src/folder-with-new-kernel-source symlink already, and I hope I have that in the right order)
make menuconfig

flip through the menus until you find the filesystems section and make sure the one you are using has a <*> and not an <M> or < > beside it. Do the same for your ata drivers section.

Exit the config

make clean bzImage modules modules_install

let it do it's thing

cp i386/boot/bzImage /boot/name_of_image_you_decide

now edit your bootloader config file.



(gentoo plug)

emerge ati-drivers
fglrxconfig
opengl-update ati

<ctrl> <alt> <bksp>

voila

 

[satoshi]

You said "emerge ati-drivers," I'm on Debian, not Gentoo...

As for the config thing, that's what I did. I followed the tutorial on linuxquestions.org and did the make xconfig thing and just copied my old config file from /boot. So that might not be it, but I'll try again later. I can't do anything with it right now, as I'm at my dad's house and I left my machine at my mom's house. Thanks for all the suggestions though, I'll be sure to try them all.

edit: Er, I just saw that you said "gentoo plug," nevermind...