General Procedure to get ATI/DRI card running?

Wed Jul 9 18:22:32 EDT 2008

My approach is to maintain two types of systems. For applications that
I want to keep 'stable", I put them on a headless server that uses
robust hardware. For my X display, I use a couple client machines
that I wipe and reinstall twice a year with the latest Fedora release.

Basically, I reinstalled client A with Fedora 6 when it was released,
then reinstalled client B with Fedora 7 when that was released,
then client A with Fedora 8, then client B with Fedora 9, etc. If I
want newer hardware, I'll buy a new machine, to replace the aging client
that's scheduled to be upgraded, a few days before the Fedora release.

On Wed, July 9, 2008 5:16 pm, Coleman Kane said:
> 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
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> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>

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