Ubuntu on HP 431 - Correctly Installing ATI Radeon 6470M Drivers

Nishant Arora 16/Jul/2012
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Hi,

I was too busy to post any updates here, but I recently successfully installed the proprietary drivers for ATI Radeon Graphics which are failing by default/giving issues. If you would have installed Ubuntu or any other linux flavor on your machine which has an onboard ATI HD Mobility series graphics card, then you are most likely to be helped by this post.

My Machine has a ATI Radeon 6470M 1GB Graphics and until earlier there were no proprietary drivers available for 6xxxM series in all. So Follow these steps on the machine having a similar graphics card and get this solved.

STEP 1: I suppose the ubuntu would have installed the fglrx drivers on the machine, which would not be needed, so remove it because they will definitely cause issues with your install

:~$ sudo apt-get --purge remove fglrx*

STEP 2: Restart and resolve any dependencies.

:~$ sudo reboot now

This will restart the system and once done.

STEP 3: Rebuild package cache

:~$ sudo apt-get update

STEP 4: Creating a new directory and downloading the latest driver version from ATI's website. At the time of posting this the latest version is 12.6 so this guide will help you install 12.6, which works great for now

:~$ sudo su
:~$ [type your password to get root access]
# mkdir ati-drv
# cd ati-drv
# wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-driver-installer-12-6-x86.x86_64.run

STEP 5: It's a 102M download so while take a while depending upon your bandwidth. Once done we need to download some added modules so that it is built successfully.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install libqtgui4 dh-make dh-modaliases execstack

Again this is a combined 50M download will take a while, we are using Ubuntu 12.04 as base check this post for more requisites of other versions
STEP 6: Building the driver package as an executable for 12.04 precise

# sudo sh amd-driver-installer-12-6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/precise

STEP 7:  If everything goes smooth, the script will complete dependencies and make the following files in the folder

fglrx_8.980-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
fglrx-amdcccle_8.980-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
fglrx-dev_8.980-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Since they have been created okay, just install them

# sudo dpkg -i *.deb

STEP 8:  If there are any broken dependencies, complete them using Synaptic, and execute the following

# sudo aticonfig --initial
# reboot now

This will reboot the system and configure the drivers in place.
STEP 9:  Verifying the install and configure ATI Catalyst. After the boot, type into the terminal

:~$ fglrxinfo

It should output something like this

display: :0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6400M Series
OpenGL version string: 4.2.11733 Compatibility Profile Context

Note: If you see any mention of MESA in the output, the fglrx drivers have not been installed correctly.

Start configuring ATI catalyst:

:~$ sudo amdcccle

It will start a GUI to configure all Graphics settings. Congrats you have successfully installed ATI proprietary drivers

Hope I helped!
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