Mandrake 9.2 - Custom Kernel Module

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
22
0
0
Hopefully someone here can help with this. I recently downloaded and installed Mandrake 9.2. After installation I attemted to get into KDE but was unable to because of my new video card. I got, what I'm nearly positive, is the correct driver from the website and when I tried to install it it gave me some error message. My linux experience is a bit of C++ programming and command screen navigation. I do not know much about dependancies but am willing to learn.

VisionTek Xtasy 9200 SE 128 MB PCI (ATI Radeon 9200 SE VPU)

Driver Name:
fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-3.7.0.i386.rpm
From: ATI Driver site>Linux>Graphic Driver> RADEON 9200 Series>Xfree86 4.3.0

Error message (exactly):
file /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 from install of fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-3.7.0 conflicts with file from package libxfree86-4.3-23mdk



I think that's everything. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
8,708
0
0
Looks like all that is happening is that the driver you downloaded from ATI is trying to install it's own version of the LibGL library.

libGL is I believe what is used for OpenGL rendering. Nvidia has it's own version that it installs, but I don't know what ATI does.

Library files are pretty much the same thing as *.dll files in Windows. What they are, basicly, is a collection of functions that are used buy a veriaty of programs. So that instead of each 3D program having to have it's own 3d rendering technics or using the same code over and over again in different programs, the program just calls on that library and pulls a command/function from it and excecutes that instead.

Plus if any programmer figures out something new, faster, bug fixes, or whatnot then he can stick that into the library and all the programs that use that library can benifit without having to rewrite everything.

The bad part is that some newer libraries are only somewhat compatable with older libraries, or that newer programs depend on newer versions of the library that have features or bugfixes that the old ones lack.

That, along with various programs and tools, stuff like this are called dependances, and were a big issue with Linux until now when they started using good package managers like Yum, urpmi, and apt-get to keep track of all the changes.


What I would do to try to fix your problem is to move the /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 file to a safe place for safe keeping, and then try installing the drivers. You may need to "force" the install if it complains about it and that will probably cause the installer to ignore the problem. For rpm stuff maybe try "rpm --help" or "man rpm" to find out how to do that.

Also check out the "symbolic links" to that library. Symbolic links are like shortcuts, but more fundamental and involves the filing system. Often with libraries you have several symbolic links, because maybe libGL.so.1.0 was older, but still compatable with libGL.so.1.2 (for example)

So you may run into programs that still expect libGL.so.1.0 to be present so instead of making a bunch of copies of the library file they just make a symbolic link to the newer version of the file.

"ls -l" will show if the files are symbolic links. Try going to /usr/X11R6/lib and use a wild card to see if you can find all the files that may be linked to the libGL.so.1.2 file.

Like this:
ls -l libGL.so.*

Now as long as the libGL.so.1.2 is the "real" file then you'll be ok.

You can make your own symbolic link with the "ln -s" command. See "ln --help" and "man ln" for help. You can also make "hard link" which is the actual pointer to a file on the harddrive. Each file has one hard link, which is it's name. It can have more then one name, though.... But symbolic links are much safer.


Now all this is just to be safe. More then likely you can just delete the offending file, install the driver and then have about a 90% chance of it working fine.

Also don't forget to make sure that your X windows is properly configured.
 

Chrono

Diamond Member
Jan 2, 2001
4,959
0
71
try this
rpm -Uhv --force <filename>
then type the command it tells you to type to configure your settings.
hopefully everything works fine.
 

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
22
0
0
Here is what I did...


rpm -i --force fglrx-glc22-4.3.0-3.7.0.i386.rpm

warning: group mtippett does not exist - using root
warning: user mtippett does not exist - using root
*** Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
*** WARNING ***
Tailored kernel module for fglrx not present in your system.
You must go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod subdir
and execute './make.sh' to build a fully customed kernel module.
Afterwards go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run './make_install.sh'
in order to install the module into your kernel's module repository
(see readme.txt for more details)
As of now you can still run your XServer in 2D, but hardware acclerated
OpenGL will not work and 2D graphics will lack performance.
failed.
*** Error: no kernel module build environment - please consult readme.
Installed: qt3 (gcc 3.2) based control panel application.
===
ATI display drivers successfully installed
please run 'fglrxconfig' now
===


Is it difficult to correctly build a custom kernel?
Is there anything I should know before following those directions?
 

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
22
0
0
What settings do I need to change or set while configuring the new kernel module?

Once the drivers have been successfully installed how do I configure X windows?