Debian Lenny vs ATI 10.11

propofol · 12-12-2010, 02:56 AM

I recently updated the driver for my ATI HD 4890 video card from 9.8. The install went without any problems and I then did aticonfig --initial. My kdm session started up but there was no hardware acceleration and "fglrxinfo" gave an error message.

I tried to reinstall the driver usin: m-a a-i fglrx which gave this error code:

Quote:

In file included from /usr/src/modules/fglrx/drmP.h:86,
from /usr/src/modules/fglrx/drm_proc.h:41,
from /usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c:429:
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/drm_os_linux.h:45: error: conflicting types for ‘irqreturn_t’
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-bpo.5-common/include/linux/irqreturn.h:16: error: previous declaration of ‘irqreturn_t’ was here
In file included from /usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c:429:
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/drm_proc.h: In function ‘FGLDRM__vma_info’:
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/drm_proc.h:497: warning: format ‘%08lx’ expects type ‘long unsigned int’, but argument 5 has type ‘phys_addr_t’
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c: In function ‘KCL_GetEffectiveUid’:
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c:1453: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘euid’
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c: In function ‘KCL_PosixSecurityCapSetIPCLock’:
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c:1808: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘cap_effective’
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/firegl_public.c:1812: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘cap_effective’
....
....

The only thing which finally sorted me out was to update the kernel to 2.6.32 from debian backports (linux-image-2.6.32-bpo.5-amd64).

Has anyone had issues with recent ati driver updates on Debian Lenny or is there something odd with my Lenny install? I seem to have had a lot of issues with ATI - the proprietary drivers for NVIDIA has +/- always installed without problems on stable, testing & unstable versions however I have had a variety of issues with ATI. Is it better to invest in NVIDIA for my Linux PCs?

Regards,
Stefan

gradinaruvasile · 12-12-2010, 01:34 PM

Yes, it is. But that is really old news.

TobiSGD · 12-12-2010, 02:07 PM

I don't have any problems using the ATI-card in my laptop with the proprietary drivers with Squeeze and Sid (I never use Lenny). I use the smxi-script to install them and update the system, works fine.
But in general, I would also recommend to go for nVidia, they support their products longer, and the driver seems to have less issues (at least for other people).

gradinaruvasile · 12-12-2010, 03:37 PM

Be aware though of laptops with Optimus (intel onboard card + nvidia dedicated card, used on demand) - those dont work at all with Linux (you can use the onboard intel card, but i suppose you dpnt want to dish out that amount of money).

On the other side, the Ati drivers seem to have improved lately. This is good, because the newer AMD laptops have very good price/performance ratio.

propofol · 12-13-2010, 12:13 AM

Thanks for the replies. I forgot about the smxi-script option, I will try it out.

Regards,
Stefan