I am working in my Lab with 2 19′ LCD Monitors. I have search Google about this issue when I finished installing Ubuntu 9.04 and I was unable to configure to use 2 monitors.

My desktop computer’s configuration:

• Intel(R) Core(M) 2 Quad CPU Q6600
• DDR3 4GB
• ATI Radeon HD2600XT

After I try to install ATI Drivers supported from ATI website I have figured out how to configure Ubuntu 9.04 to work with 2 monitors and I found some intersting thing as well. In this case, I am using 2 digital ports of those monitors.

Step 1: Install driver

Install ATI Driver from ATI website instead of driver from Synaptic: How to install ATI Graphic driver for Ubuntu 9.04

If you used ATI driver from synaptic, you should disable this by going to menu System -> Administration -> Hardware drivers, and install the driver again.

Step 2: Configure

Firstly, open the Catalyst Control Center by going to Applications menu and choose ATI Catalyst Control Center (super – user) or type this command in the Terminal: amdxdg-su -c amdcccle

In the tab Display Manager, you will be able to config 2 monitors to work Independently by choosing Single (Independent display)

Note that, now you can reboot your system and see what will happend, because you can face the resolution issue that you can’t configure again in the next step. If you got the lower resolution you can change by going to the properties tab on above figure. Don’t worry about that, you can do it.

The interesting thing is you can have 2 monitors work independently. 2 monitors seem to be separate from each other and you can’t drag a application from this monitor to other monitor. If you like this option, you can keep it and don’t need to follow next step.

If you want to drag windows from this monitors to other, you can enable Xinerame feature in the Display Option tab:

Important notice

If you upgrade the new Linux kernel, you might have a display problem, you can fix it by using root terminal at bootup screen to install ATI Driver again based on step 1.

I have success to configure dual monitorss on my system, and enjoy my time hehe.

Have fun.

Related posts:

1. How to install ATI Graphic driver for Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 9.04
2. How to install Ubuntu 9.04 on notebook MSI VX600
3. Howto Install and setup TFTPD in Ubuntu workstation

How to install ATI package for Ubuntu system is the controversial issue in the Ubuntu community, but just little people have been success to install ATI driver. Drivers which are from Ubuntu resposities don’t support full function for example: dual monitor in Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10 as well.

In this post How to install Ubuntu 9.04 on notebook MSI VX600 I have introduced how to install ATI driver by using that tutorial but I am wrong, you will not be able to boot your system after updating your system.

So I write this post to guide how to install ATI Graphic Driver on your Ubuntu system: notebook VX600 using the latest driver which is supported by ATI instead of Ubuntu package.

When you install Ubuntu system (with acpi=off), please don’t go to the System -> Administration -> Hardware and enable the drivers. Sometimes you could not see the ATI hardware in that list, so don’t worry about that ( I spent a lot of time to figure out why but now I ignore that).

Step 1: Update your Ubuntu system

After you install Ubuntu, it is better to update to get the latest package from Ubuntu Synaptic. Later, I will show you why you should do that.

Step 2: Download the latest ATI package

First, you have to download the latest ATI driver package. In this case, I am going to download ATI Radeon HD3xxx driver.

And click Go button, you will be able to download ati-driver-installer-9-5-x86.x86_64.run

Step 3: Install ATI package

Normally, that file will be saved on your desktop. So open Terminal and browse to your desktop:

$ cd Desktop

Install the package with root user:

$ sudo sh ./ati-driver-installer-9-5-x86.x86_64.run

It will detect automatically X version and open the wizard, and click continue:

Agree with the license:

Choose Automatic mode and continue:

Wait for a while during it is installing on your system:

Step 4: Config ATI driver

Open terminal and type this command:

$sudo /usr/bin/aticonfig --initial -f

The /etc/X11/xorg.conf content after I have finished ATI configuration:

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier     “aticonfig Layout”
Screen      0  “aticonfig-Screen[0]-0″ 0 0
Screen         “amdcccle-Screen[1]-1″ 1280 0
EndSection

Section “Files”
EndSection

Section “Module”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
Option        “Xinerama” “off”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier   “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier   “aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0″
Option        “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
Option        “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
Option        “DPMS” “true”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier   “amdcccle-Monitor[1]-1″
Option        “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
Option        “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
Option        “DPMS” “true”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier  “Configured Video Device”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier  “aticonfig-Device[0]-0″
Driver      “fglrx”
BusID       “PCI:1:0:0″
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier  “amdcccle-Device[1]-1″
Driver      “fglrx”
BusID       “PCI:1:0:0″
Screen      1
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Device     “Configured Video Device”
Monitor    “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

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
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “amdcccle-Screen[1]-1″
Device     “amdcccle-Device[1]-1″
Monitor    “amdcccle-Monitor[1]-1″
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection “Display”
Viewport   0 0
Depth     24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Now reboot your system, and see what happens next boot time , you can remove line acpi=off in the /boot/grub/menu.lst as well.

Step 5: Configure ATI Driver

After you install ATI driver, you will see the ATI Catalyst Control Center and ATI Catalyst Control Center (super-user). From now on, you can setup your ATI as you always do in windows:

Note, if the windows does not appear after you update your Ubuntu system, you should repeat from step 2 again.

I guess that you will be able to config Dual monitor as well with this driver. I din’t test yet, I will test this function with my computer in my Lab.

Get fun !

Related posts:

1. How to setup Dual Monitor in Ubuntu 9.04 with ATI Driver
2. How to install Ubuntu 9.04 on notebook MSI VX600
3. How to install packages from GetDeb

It is my first and new notebook with special specification:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.0 GHz
• SIS 672DX+SIS 968 Chipse
• 15.4″ 1280×800 WXGA Display
• ATi Mobility Radeon HD3410 Graphic Card  512MB
• 4GB DDR2 533/667Mhz Memory
• 10/100Mbps LAN
• 802.11 b/g, 802.11 b/g/n WLAN
• 250 GB HDD
• Physical Dimension: 358 x 259 x 27-33mm

It have arrived in the yesterday afternoon after finish working in International Dormitory. At that time, I was very happy and I have to install Operating System by myself because it came with only FreeDOS.

Unfortunately, I have tried many times but I have never been successes. When I put the Ubuntu live 9.04 disk and chose install Ubuntu or try without install mode, I always got blank screen. I known that there are some problems with this drivers, special the graphic card’s driver. I guessed that Ubuntu 9.04 does not support drivers well, and tried with OpenSuse 11.0 but I got the same problem: blank screen.

I searched Internet and found out that there are a lof of problems with installing Ubuntu or other Linux branchs almost about graphic card.

Step 1

Insert the Ubuntu live CD, when the startup window appears press F6 and select these options: noapic, acpi=off by press Enter button. Now you will be able to using any modes as normal.

Step 2

Install Ubuntu using Graphical as normal from Ubuntu Wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall

Step 3

After finish installing Ubuntu and go to the system, go to menu System => Administration => Hardware drivers and active all hardwares in the list and install those drivers.

Note that it is necessary to get update first, and then restart the system. There is some issues about ATI Graphic drivers. At this time, you can see and follow this tutorials come from ATI Wiki.

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Jaunty_Installation_Guide

It is better if you follow this post to install ATI Driver:

How to install ATI Graphic driver for Ubuntu 9.04

Step 4

Disable cpuspeed service by typing the following command in the Terminal window:

sudo update-rc.d cpuspeed remove

Open menu.lst:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find lines started with kernel and remove acpi=off to use the new installed graphic card driver next boot time:

kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=6f532263-dbcf-4ac5-b173-a79048eb74f3 ro noapic nolapic  quiet acpi=off splash

Done !

Note: with this tip you can install Ubuntu on other notebooks as well.

If you feel this tip is good for you, feel free to vote this post. I spent a lot of time with this problem, that is reason why now I still awake at 5AM . I am happy because it is a first blog post when I am using my new notebook.

Related posts:

1. How to install ATI Graphic driver for Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 9.04
2. How to fix Sound problem of Windows 7 in notebook MSI VX600
3. Ubuntu 9.10 runs very fast and stable on Notebook MSI VX600

Hi everyone,

I would like to introduce this book: Linux Device Drivers by Jonathan Corbet. It is used as a reference of many people who work with hardware or embedded system. In my case, I read many technical  documents and I found this book, at that time, really felt very happy as finding a great way to go.

I work in embedded system field, so it is very important. I hope it is good for you also. Enjoy !

Here we go

This is the web site for the Third Edition of Linux Device Drivers, by Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartm

an. For the moment, only the finished PDF files are available; we do intend to make an HTML version and the DocBook

source available as well.

This book is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. That means that you are free to download and redistribute it. The development of the book was made possible, however, by those who purchase a copy from O’Reilly or elsewhere.

LDD3 is current as of the 2.6.10 kernel. See the LWN 2.6 API changes page for information on

subsequent changes.

LDD3 chapter files

Title page	PDF
Copyright and credits	PDF
Table of Contents	PDF
Preface	PDF
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Device Drivers	PDF
Chapter 2: Building and Running Modules	PDF
Chapter 3: Char Drivers	PDF
Chapter 4: Debugging Techniques	PDF
Chapter 5: Concurrency and Race Conditions	PDF
Chapter 6: Advanced Char Driver Operations	PDF
Chapter 7: Time, Delays, and Deferred Work	PDF
Chapter 8: Allocating Memory	PDF
Chapter 9: Communicating with Hardware	PDF
Chapter 10: Interrupt Handling	PDF
Chapter 11: Data Types in the Kernel	PDF
Chapter 12: PCI Drivers	PDF
Chapter 13: USB Drivers	PDF
Chapter 14: The Linux Device Model	PDF
Chapter 15: Memory Mapping and DMA	PDF
Chapter 16: Block Drivers	PDF
Chapter 17: Network Drivers	PDF
Chapter 18: TTY Drivers	PDF
Index	PDF

Downloads

Also available:

• A tarball of the LDD3 PDF files (11MB).

References

http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

Note: you can also find out many interesting things in those authos’ website.

Related posts:

1. GUI Programming with Python: QT Edition
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3. How to install Ubuntu 9.04 on notebook MSI VX600