Archive for February, 2009

Dual-Screen setup with Xorg, RandR1.2 and ATI 9.2 (v8.528) Linux x86_64 drivers

February 22nd, 2009

After seeing that ATI has released again drivers for Linux with a new major version number (and not the scarry .0 behind it) I thought it was time to battle the ATI dragons again. As Debian usually lags behind on the proprietary ATI stuff (who wonders…) I’m using aain the binary packages provided by ATI.

The system is Debian testing, which is now codenamed “Squeeze” as Lenny finally stablized.
As the build required libstdc++5 I had to reinstall this package:

sh# aptitude install libstdc++5

Downloaded the latest ati-driver-installer-9.2-x86.x86_64.run and ran the usual:

sh# sudo sh ati-driver-installer-9.2-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Debian/testing

which results in the following packages being built:

  • fglrx-amdcccle_8.582-1_amd64.deb
  • fglrx-driver_8.582-1_amd64.deb
  • fglrx-driver-dev_8.582-1_amd64.deb
  • fglrx-kernel-src_8.582-1_amd64.deb

Install those and if RandR 1.2 is compiled into Xorg (which it is usually) your dual-screen setup probably switches back to a cloned view. In case you never had a working dual-screen (called big desktop by ATI) setup, run the following (and be sure to backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf in case you have anything special in there), otherwise skip this section:

sh# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
sh# aticonfig --initial --desktop-setup=horizontal --overlay-on=1

Then be sure to have added a “Virtual” desktop size to your “Display” subsection like so (for two 1680×1050 screens thats 3360×1050):

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
        Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Virtual   3360 1050
        EndSubSection
EndSection

After restarting X11 (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) login and open a terminal and run:

sh# xrandr --output DFP2 --right-of DFP1

This will setup display DFP2 to be right of DFP2, please check the correct display names to use with 

xrandr -q

.

Of course you can also use the graphical tools arandr or grandr to accomplish this.

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