General Procedure to get ATI/DRI card running?

[Coleman Kane]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 16:58 -0400, Labitt, Bruce wrote:
> Umm, thanks for your frank assessment. 
> 
> So which is the lesser of evils - using the AMD/ATI proprietary drivers
> for 3D, or totally rebuilding my system from the ground up?  I presume
> that I will still have to mess around to get things going.  I've fooled
> around with this a few days now, I don't like wasting my time - I have
> plenty to do.  

Have you tried their proprietary drivers on your current system yet? Do
they work on such an old server?

You could always move to a Linux distro that has much newer components
to it, and start from there. The reason I posted "slackware" was just
that I've already done that route and felt it would actually be faster
to do than to shoehorn the development-class X server components into
your current system. It will be much cleaner.

If you were to just go and download all the development code for the
X.org modules and start building them, you would start to run into
compiler problems where some of the X.org headers that you have in
your /usr/include/* need to actually be removed so that they don't
override package-local versions of those headers. I don't have a
verified list of which ones they were but there are a bunch of them. So,
by trial and error you would waste immense time trying to get these
packages built for your system.

Starting from a fresh, empty base, you are more likely to have a full
working product much quicker.

> 
> If I were to do this from the ground up, which distro to choose?  Why
> slackware?  Why not Gentoo?  I suppose I can have a daily overnight
> update and recompile everything for the morning.  
> 
> I had originally wanted a relatively stable system.  It appears I can't
> get any work done with a stable system :(
> 

If you want to keep a stable system, you won't be able to easily do that
with cutting-edge hardware AND get all the cutting-edge features. This
is even beginning to be the case with Windows nowadays too (and they
have no excuse). 

From my experience, your options are:
  - Cutting edge system
  - Stable system

Choose one. :-)

In my case, I chose the first and use FreeBSD. The "cutting edge" is
"stable enough" for me, but I would never deploy a system like this onto
a bunch of office workstations. I would probably use hardware that is at
least a whole year old, and install FreeBSD 6.2 on them, after verifying
that all of the hardware has an existing track record of working well
under FreeBSD (either by buying a test system first, or researching it
online from someone else who's already bought the hardware).

> Any other solutions available?  Second opinion?  Anyone?
> 
> Bruce

Maybe it would be worth your time to investigate using the most recent
development snapshot of the xf86-video-ati driver, from its git repo? It
*might* be more compatible with older X servers, as it is at least that
old. The build/install procedure is pretty similar to what you've
already done with the radeonhd driver from what I can tell. You'll just
want to change the "radeonhd" into "radeon" in your conf file after you
build and install the driver.

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coleman Kane [mailto:cokane at cokane.org] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 4:37 PM
> To: Labitt, Bruce
> Cc: Arc Riley; gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Subject: RE: General Procedure to get ATI/DRI card running?
> 
> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 16:19 -0400, Labitt, Bruce wrote:
> > Arc led me to believe that I did not have to do that yet.  He said
> that
> > the drm did not support radeonhd yet.
> > 
> > Believe me, this is more complicated than I had anticipated... :)
> > 
> > Here is the logfile
> > 
> 
> First of all, I can tell just by looking at this log output that you are
> in for a long headache. Your X server is over 2 years old, and won't be
> able to support DRI on the radeonhd. Your X server might not even
> support AIGLX on many of the drivers that will work with its older DRI
> implementation today.
> 
> The latest X server is v1.4.1, and you are using v1.1.1. The oldest one
> that will support DRI using radeonhd is v1.4.99.something, from the v1.5
> snapshots branch in the xorg-server git repository.
> 
> Basically, you are trying to use a brand new driver for a brand new
> piece of hardware with an ancient installation of X-Windows. If your
> distro at least had a v1.4+ X-server, you might be able to get by just
> by rebuilding about five modules.
> 
> Likely, you will need to rebuild almost all of X from scratch, and try
> to make sure that it doesn't accidentally bring in headers from the old
> X installation.
> 
> IOW, to get it working on your system, you are in for a wild ride. It is
> probably easier to just install Slackware and start from scratch.
> 
> Furthermore, if you do get all of the latest X stuff, you'll need to
> disable 2D acceleration in order to allow 3D acceleration to work on the
> latest driver IIRC.
> 
> I strongly suggest you get in touch with the radeonhd mailing list as
> well.
> 
> > X Window System Version 7.1.1
> > Release Date: 12 May 2006
> > X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 7.1.1
> > Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.18-8.1.8.el5 x86_64 Red Hat, Inc.
> > Current Operating System: Linux xxx.xxxx.xxx 2.6.18-92.1.6.el5xen #1
> SMP
> > Wed Jun 25 12:56:52 EDT 2008 x86_64
> > Build Date: 12 June 2008
> > Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.1.1-48.41.el5_2.1 
> > 	Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
> > 	to make sure that you have the latest version.
> > Module Loader present
> > Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
> > 	(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
> > 	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
> > (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Wed Jul  9 15:02:06 2008
> 
-- 
Coleman Kane
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20080709/a80645d3/attachment.bin