ATI drivers + dual monitors + myterious new kernel...

Hello,

I'm attempting to get dual monitors working in an installation of SL 5.2 and am hoping some of you might be able to help with some problems/confusion that came along the way. My desktop system has an ATI Radeon HD 3450 with two dell 1908FPBLK monitors. The dvi connector Y-splits into two vga connectors, one to each monitor.

My intent was to get the 'big desktop' functionality, to have one wide desktop which spreads onto both monitors horizontally.

First, I used the ElRepo repository to install:
fglrx-x11-drv.x86_64 : AMD's proprietary driver for ATI graphic cards, and:
kmod-fglrx.x86_64 : fglrx kernel module(s)

My first question is that after doing this, a mysterious new option appeared in my GRUB screen with a higher kernel value. Is it because I installed this fglrx kernel module? I haven't explicitly updated the kernel, and to my understanding kernel updates are excluded from yum autoupdates.

Here is a link to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf which is built by default. Default xorg.conf . This configuration file allows the X server to load correctly in both versions of the sci lin kernel that show up in grub.

After installing fglrx I have access to the aticonfig utility. However using this to generate an Xorg.conf file results in disaster when I log out and log back in - I get a series of dialog boxes asking if I want to look at the /var/log/Xorg.setup.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log files. Here is the resulting Xorg.conf from performing

aticonfig --initial xorg.conf

After that it asks if I want to log into root to try to fix the problem. Now what happens depends on which version of the kernel I'm in. If I'm in the new kernel, I get to a blank screen and nothing happens, my only option is a hard poweroff. (ctrl-alt-f[1-8] do nothing).
If I'm in the original kernel, eventually the system-config-display utility in gnome appears, and when I hit ok it restarts the X server and brings me back to the login screen.

Of course, then the system-config-display utility just generates the default Xorg.conf again and I'm back where I started. Then I can inspect /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old where I see numerous warnings/errors, which might make more sense to some of you than to me.

Also, in both versions of the kernel, when I execute fglrxinfo or glxinfo:

Which makes me think that the drivers didn't actually install correctly. Also, when running lsmod, there is no reference to fglrx, which also makes me think it's an installation issue.

Should it bother me that I have a new kernel version, and is there an easier way of getting big-desktop funtionality?

Thanks for reading,
Joe

I think your kernel is too old for the kmod module you are using.
You will probably have to upgrade to a more recent 5.x kernel package first to use that kmod module.

Thanks for the reply - posting the below for anyone who has had similar issues.

First thing I tried was updating the SL kernel via yum, which worked fine - however it didn't add any boot options to the grub menu nor did it seem to change the kernel version numbers. It also didn't solve any of the issues although I didn't try doing yum uninstall fglrx or anything like that.

I ended up grabbing SL5.5 CD and installing from there, and installing drivers from the ATI support site (ati.amd.com). The graphical ATI control utility seemed to be capable of doing what I needed.

Joe