fglrx for xserver 1.4.2 dislikes libdrm 2.4.5 backport

[Kano]

For my next lenny based system I tested some ways of partitial updates based on ubuntu sources. Basically they work fine when you use the oss features only (well compiz might not work with updated mesa but thats not critical).

What is critial is when somebody with r500 wanted to use new mesa 7.3 but then wants to go back to fglrx. mesa 7.3 needs new libdrm for the dri part of it and therefore a new libdrm will get installed onto the system too.

If you have xserver 1.4.2 then you have to install the driver for older xserver (x710 variant), but that crashes on start. Why does it depend on libdrm at all?

All oss drivers have got no problem with that combination. I want to know why this happens.

Of course you can downgrade all packages back to original stage, but thats not what i want - as i can not put it into a repo which everybody could use, that will always be special purpose only. Because of that i could not even update the intel video drivers which only depends on new libdrm. fglrx is really the worst driver you can find...

[bridgman]

Kano, are you trying to use oss and fglrx drivers at the same time, or just switch from one to the other ? Is the problem that fglrx uninstall is not putting back the files it over-writes (we have to replace a couple of files in order to support features which X/DRI can't handle yet) or is this only a problem in complex cases like :

- install fglrx (saves and over-writes some files)
- update X
- uninstall fglrx (replaces files but then you lose something from the X update)

Actually it sounds like the issue might be not having the equivalent of an uninstaller for the oss code (eg 7.3 mesa). It would be possible to write something that flips environments from fglrx to oss and back but I imagine it's more useful to have install/uninstall scripts for both instead ?

[Kano]

You can be sure i know how to install/uninstall fglrx. It is just incompatible with libdrm 2.4.5 when xserver 1.4 binary is used. Of course i know how to switch between oss and fglrx.

[bridgman]

Yeah, I know that. I'm just trying to figure out what you *are* saying... if you know how to switch between oss and fglrx there wouldn't be crashing, would there ?

Is the issue that when you install mesa 7.3 and new libdrm then go back to fglrx without "uninstalling mesa/libdrm" (I put it in quotes because there aren't install/uninstall scripts for the oss drivers afaik) then fglrx doesn't work with the files that mesa over-wrote ?

[Kano]

When you use correct Debian/Ubuntu packages then those will use divert code. But libdrm is not diverted as nothing is replaced there.

[bridgman]

So is the issue that we need proper packages for mesa/libdrm as well, to handle the new libdrm installed there ?

[Kano]

Would be at least nice when it would not hurt. Basically xserver 1.4 is old enough to install fglrx for r300-r500 chips as well - so my system could provide better 3d support than for example next Ubuntu 9.04, but I can not provide iso images with updated libdrm which would work with fglrx, thats my problem.