Configuring the fglrx module for AMD/ATI graphics chips in CentOS and RHEL 6

Bill Giannikos

This guide will help you configure the proprietary fglrx module under CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 for ATI/AMD based graphics chips. For those that don't know, CentOS 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are basically identical just with a different name so this guide applies to both. I will not be covering the open source radeon module included with Xorg because its configuration is normally handled automatically by most Linux distributions.

ATI/AMD provide their own license for their driver. You will need to read and accept this license before proceeding.

You should run a full update of your installation to ensure you have all the latest packages installed. See the installation guide for CentOS on this site for details how.

The fglrx driver is not included with CentOS/RHEL 6 so we will need to use a 3rd party repository. Here we will be using the ELRepo.org repository.

1. Load up a terminal window if you are in the graphic interface.

2. Switch to the root user by entering the command “su -” (without the quotes) and typing in your root password.

3. Enter the following command to get the signing key for the repository we will be using:

rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org

4. Now active the repository by entering the following commands:

rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm
yum -y install yum-plugin-fastestmirror

5. Now execute the following command to install the driver:

yum -y install kmod-fglrx

6. Reboot your system and you will be using the fglrx driver.