Fglrx and Kernel 2.6.20

rickh · 04-13-2007, 01:07 AM

I see that Kernel 2.6.20 has showed up in Sid. I have installed it a couple times from Experimental but have not been successful building fglrx (8.31.5, also in Experimental) using module-assistant.

The fglrx driver in Sid is still 8.28-4. Has anyone had success with either of those modules and 2.6.20?

BillyGalbreath · 04-13-2007, 03:44 PM

ATI does not have support for the 2.6.20.x kernel yet. I hear they plan to add support for it in fglrx 8.36.x

To be honest, I cant get fglrx 8.35.X on 2.6.19.x either, but they claim its supported. I dont remember now, but I think I had SATA troubles with 2.6.19.x (but not 2.6.20.x) - so fglrx might work for you with that kernel.

So, for now, I'm stuck with a custom 2.6.18.8 kernel on my system.

rickh · 04-14-2007, 10:32 PM

There is a patch here...

http://darcs.frugalware.org/repos/fr...x-2.6.20.patch

...which supposedly allows the module to compile. I have not however read any success stories about it.

I'd be willing to try it, but I don't know how to apply the patch. It's just source code, so I suppose it just gets added to one of the files in /usr/src/modules/fglrx

Anybody want to try it, or attempt to explain to me exactly what needs to be done?

Junior Hacker · 04-14-2007, 11:36 PM

I'm wondering if there is a "header" issue in the path here, as I also want to use this kernel but cannot compile modem modules without arch. specific headers to which won't be available till late next week, at best, according to the current agenda.

rickh · 04-14-2007, 11:39 PM

I solved the "headers" problem by adding this line to my sources.list ...

deb http://kernel-archive.buildserver.net/debian-kernel/ trunk main

nx5000 · 04-15-2007, 04:17 PM

I can't try it I have not an ATI.

Quote:

--- ATi/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c.old 2007-03-28 21:39:58.000000000 -0400
+++ ATi/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c 2007-03-28 21:39:46.000000000 -0400

Put the patch in your ATi directory (or whatever the name is, the only condition is that there should be a directory common under this directory)
Rename the file the patch will modify:
mv common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c.old
Apply the patch:
patch -p1 ./blabla.patch
p1 means it will skip the part "ATi/"
You should have the patched file firegl_public.c

rickh · 04-15-2007, 04:42 PM

Code:

debian64:~# ls /usr/src/modules/fglrx/
agp3.c         debian          drm_proc.h          libfglrx_ip.a.GCC4
agp_backend.h  drm_compat.h    firegl_public.c     Makefile
agpgart_be.c   drm.h           firegl_public.h     make.sh
agpgart.h      drm_os_linux.h  i7505-agp.c         Module.symvers
agp.h          drmP.h          libfglrx_ip.a.GCC3  nvidia-agp.c

This is the source directory for fglrx. As you can see, there is no "common" directory, but there is a file, firegl_public.c

Is it likely that I can just rename firegl_public.c to firegl_public.c_old, and copy the patch here as firegl_public.c, ...

...or do the instructions you gave me affect other things, as well

Junior Hacker · 04-15-2007, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickh

I solved the "headers" problem by adding this line to my sources.list ...

deb http://kernel-archive.buildserver.net/debian-kernel/ trunk main

Thanks, header packets appear to be coming down the line.

nx5000 · 04-16-2007, 01:23 AM

Ah ok,
For understanding what behind patch command line syntax:

On my last example, -p1 meant that the patch command will remove the first 1 subdirectory from the patch description (because I thought you had the same tree but not in Ati but maybe in my_Ati or whatever). -p1 is common because it's the root directory of the archive and the user may have rename it.

So, to adapt to your case, you need
1) To remove the complete 6 directories:
ATi/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/
2) Be in the directory which contains this damned firegl_public.c
So:
cd /usr/src/modules/fglrx/
mv firegl_public.c firegl_public.c.old <--- xxx.old is the name used in the header of the patch file (look my previous post), I did not invent it.
patch -p6 < ~rickh/fglrx-2.6.20.patch

At this point, you are supposed to rename /usr/src/modules/fglrx/ to /usr/src/modules/fglrx-patched/ so that you remember what you did (but in your case, it might create a problem if modules are listed somewhere else)

And remember: a patch file is a list of
+++ which means add this line to the old file to make the new file
--- which means remove this line to the...
Other lines are used by patch to resynchronise itself. Some different algorithm can be used.
The header is specific and list the complete file to patch and the resulting file it will produce. It contains lots of info.

So you CAN NOT replace a source file by a patch. It's not a C file.
I mean, you can physically.. but the results won't be pretty

If patch says reject, it means that it was unable to automatically apply the patch:
You are patching the wrong file (bad name or bad version of fglrx). You have to make sure the website from where you got the patch mentions the version of fglrx to apply the patch to.
If you have a too new or too old version of fglrx, you modify yourself the patch file. For this you need to understand the underlying program, in this case fglrx.. When you have this problem with kernel patch, it gets tricky..

rickh · 04-19-2007, 07:23 PM

Read several other threads about this ... people were having mixed success ...

Anyway ati has now posted 8.36.5 drivers on their site, so it's now a moot point. I installed them and they're working fine.

Thanks for the explanation tho, nx5000 ... Between that and other threads I've been reading, I think it kernel patches are starting to sink in.

h3xis · 04-20-2007, 03:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickh

Read several other threads about this ... people were having mixed success ...

Anyway ati has now posted 8.36.5 drivers on their site, so it's now a moot point. I installed them and they're working fine.

Thanks for the explanation tho, nx5000 ... Between that and other threads I've been reading, I think it kernel patches are starting to sink in.

How did you do this? I'm running 2.6.20.4 and installed the 8.36.5 drivers (running Lenny) and they install fine but I do not have 3D acceleration. Could you just post some of the steps that you did?

rickh · 04-20-2007, 08:53 AM

Download the installer and put it in ~/fglrx/

$ cd ./fglrx/
$ chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86.x86_64.run
$ ./ati-driver-installer-8.36.5-x86_64.run --extract fglrx-tmp
$ cd fglrx-tmp
$ su (...and enter root password)
# ./packages/Debian/ati-packager.sh --buildpkg sid
# cd ..
# dpkg -i fglrx-amdcccle_8.36.5-1_amd64.deb
# dpkg -i fglrx-driver_8.36.5-1_amd64.deb
# dpkg -i fglrx-kernel-src_8.36.5-1_amd64.deb

Then I rebooted into Single User mode and...

# m-a prepare
# m-a a-i fglrx
# modprobe -v fglrx
# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then I edited the newly written xorg.conf file to use driver "fglrx" instead of "ati," rebooted, and everything worked.

Note: If you're using Lenny, substitute "lenny" for "sid" in the build-packages step. Also, as should be obvious, this was on an AMD64, but the 32-bit (i386) driver should work the same.

h3xis · 04-20-2007, 10:41 AM

Alright, I did as you said (which wasn't much different than what I had done) and I'm still getting the same problem. Basically, it's not wanting to load the kernel module. After modprobe -v fglrx it gives me this error:

Code:

[fglrx:firegl_init_module] *ERROR* firegl_stub_register failed
FATAL: Error inserting fglrx (lib/modules/2.6.20.4/misc/fglrx.ko): Operation not permitted

This is, of course, done as root and fglrx.ko does exist in that directory.

BillyGalbreath · 04-20-2007, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by h3xis

Alright, I did as you said (which wasn't much different than what I had done) and I'm still getting the same problem. Basically, it's not wanting to load the kernel module. After modprobe -v fglrx it gives me this error:

Code:

[fglrx:firegl_init_module] *ERROR* firegl_stub_register failed
FATAL: Error inserting fglrx (lib/modules/2.6.20.4/misc/fglrx.ko): Operation not permitted

This is, of course, done as root and fglrx.ko does exist in that directory.

Try doing this:

Code:

rmmod radeon drm

Then try loading your fglrx module.

This often fixes the mentioned error.

h3xis · 04-20-2007, 11:01 AM

Well, I've been using the vesa driver, however, I went ahead and did as you said and I got

ERROR: Module radeon does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module drm does not exist in /proc/modules