AMD Drivers - Dual monitor - xorg

Question

Decided to install arch again after a HDD failure. Since I'm not that good with drivers (and xorg) I came this far.. I'm running an AMD HD6850.
What I've done:
Installed the basic (vesa) driver
Installed the libre (xf86-video-ati) driver
Installed the proprietary (catalyst-dkms & catalyst-utils & lib32-catalyst-utils) drivers
Installed mesa-demos
What that did:
With the libre driver, I was able to start xorg, with my WM (awesome) and it "Just Werked (tm)", however, I was unable to set up side-by-side monitors, and after some thinking I decided to go for the proprietary driver, since I shower regurarly and only wears a tinfoilhat sometimes.
After installing the proprietary driver, I got the same thing. Started just fine (after a reboot), and "JustWerks (tm)" except for side-by-side monitors.
I remembered running "glxgears" to test if it was working the last time I used this computer with GNU/Linux, however the command was not found.
Some guy on a IRC channel told me to run "glxinfo" (and grep direct) , which was not found, but after installing "mesa-demos" it was, and it returned this error:
[cat@loli ~]$ glxinfo | grep direct
X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 153 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
Serial number of failed request: 12
Current serial number in output stream: 12
The same error appears when I try to run glxgears aswell.
So, I'm grateful for all help. and I would really appreciate it.
Last edited by oniichan (2012-10-14 19:58:43)

Answer 1

bsilbaugh wrote:Absolutely. Even if using the open source driver isn't the ideal long term solution, if it works, it would (1) provide you with a working short term solution, and (2) would confirm that the other elements of your graphics system are (most likely) functioning properly.
I'll try that one first now, however:
I recently got the advice to install the catalyst-total driver from the AUR. I did that, but I can't start Catalyst Control Centre, which would be a nice and easy way to do it...
when I try to run 'amdcccle' which is the control centre, i get an error saying ''There was a problem initializing Catalyst Control Centre Linux Edition. It could be caused by the following.
No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly.
Please install the AMD driver appropriate for you AMD hardware, or configure using aticonfig. ''
When I try to run '' aticonfig '' i get this:
[cat@loli ~]$ sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left-of
[sudo] password for cat:
Found fglrx primary device section
Found fglrx secondary device section
Using /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Saving back-up to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.fglrx-0
But nothing appears to be happening.
bsilbaugh wrote:My previous comment that Display Port is necessary for use of ATI eyefinity was true; however, running dual head displays generally does not require eyefinity. In fact, my old Radeon 4650 did not provide a Display Port (nor eyefinity). I was able to directly plug my monitors into the DVI and VGA ports of the 4650 card. For true dual head display, the important hardware criteria is that your card provides at least two controllers--which I believe your card does.
My card is perfectly capable of running it the way I want it, since it does under Fedora 17.