General Procedure to get ATI/DRI card running?

Coleman Kane cokane at cokane.org
Tue Jul 1 21:58:53 EDT 2008


On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 18:41 -0400, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:30 PM, Labitt, Bruce
> <labittb1 at tycoelectronics.com> wrote:
> > In any case, first I'd like to take a look at finding more current xorg.
> 
>   If you try and replace the X-related packages provided by the
> distro, you'll probably end up having to rebuild practically every
> X-based package on the system.  They will all depend on the X
> libraries.  You'd basically be recompiling the entire distro (minus
> stuff that doesn't use X).

If you are starting from X.org 1.4, this isn't so much the case anymore.
You can update many of the packages independently with one another,
taking care to simply make sure you get the upstream dependencies that
are affected. For the most part, packages such as Mesa and libX11 have
been developed to maintain a relatively rigid API, resulting in that
they can be upgraded without too much breakage from apps.

> 
>   So if you want to have a go at upgrading X, I would suggest doing a
> parallel install of the X server into a different directory (e.g.
> /usr/X11R7.4/ or /usr/local/X11/ or something like that).  You should,
> in theory, be able to run a newer X server, while having all the X
> clients use the libraries shipped with the distribution.  The X
> protocol is known for being fairly backwards compatible.
> 
>   That might get messy for DRI (accelerated 3D) stuff, though.  I have
> no idea how DRI works internally, but the "Direct Rendering" part of
> the name would seem to suggest version differences might matter more.
> :)
> 
> > xorg is not particularly simple to figure out what to do.
> 
>   I've never had to build X, but from what I've been told, it's one of
> the more challenging things to do.

In the monolithic days, it was a terrible mess. It has gotten easier as
they've modularized the codebase. Still, there are many packages and no
straight-forward answer of what to do with them.

> 
> -- Ben

This is one of those cases where source-based distributions rule (and
the main reason I use them exclusively).

I was successfully able to get the new xf86-video-radeonhd (R500/R600
X.org driver) working well by updating the following packages from
freedesktop.org git repositories:
      * dri2proto
      * mesa/drm
      * git
      * glproto
      * inputproto
      * kbproto
      * libX11
      * libXdamage
      * libxcb
      * mesa/mesa
      * xorg-server
      * xf86-input-keyboard
      * xf86-input-mouse
      * xf86driproto
      * xextproto
      * randrproto
      * x11proto
      * libXext
      * libXi
      * libXrandr
      * libpciaccess
      * libxkbfile
      * libxkbui
The rest of my x.org packages are the ones I built from the 1.4
releases, which are in FreeBSD's ports collection. You should be able to
use either the latest xf86-video-radeonhd or xf86-video-ati to get DRI,
AIGLX, EXA, Compositing, and other niceties. I hear the R5xx cards are
easier to support than my RS690.

Beware, it is not for the faint of heart. You will probably have to
suffer through many hurdles like any good beta tester, if you want the
goods. The good news is that it will pay off in the end. I've be
corresponding closely with the guys who've been doing a lot of the
FreeBSD work, and passing my patches and bug reports along. They've been
a very prompt and responsive bunch.

If you go down this path, I recommend getting on *both* the
xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd mailing lists (visit
http://www.radeonhd.org/). Additionally, both teams manage IRC channels
on Freenode, where there is nightly activity going on, and you can
usually get interactive help that way.

A good place to get started:
      * http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd
      * http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon (less helpful)

-- 
Coleman Kane



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