ATI 8.29.6 driver, fc6, and ATI9200/9250 card.

[jeffk]

Running FC6, an ATI 9250 card, and installed the latest driver following the directions on:

http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/?p=blog&i=NTU1MA

All went smooth, built my RPMs, installed them, modified the xconfig file, rebooted, opened up the nice looking ATI icon in my menu, and got the following message:

Driver does not provide the FireGL X11 extensions!
Panel components will operate only partially.

Went to the ATI homepage. Did some searching to find:

"As of driver version 8.29.6 support for the following products is no longer included:
* Radeon® 8500/9000/9100/9200/9250
* Mobility™ Radeon® 9000/9100/9200
* Radeon® IGP 9000/9100/9200
Users with these products should use driver version 8.28.8"

Downloaded the 8.28.8 .run script, used the following command-line:

sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.28.8.run --buildpkg Fedora/FC6

And now get the following build error:

ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
cat: /lib/modules/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6/build/include/linux/version-*.h: No such file or directory
Error:
kernel includes at /lib/modules/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6/build/include do not match current kernel.
they are versioned as ""
instead of "2.6.18-1.2798.fc6".
you might need to adjust your symlinks:
- /usr/include
- /usr/src/linux
error: Bad exit status from /tmp/ATI-fglrx-8.28.8-1-8569-root/tmp/rpm-tmp.64463 (%install)


RPM build errors:
Bad exit status from /tmp/ATI-fglrx-8.28.8-1-8569-root/tmp/rpm-tmp.64463 (%i nstall)
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install


Where do I go from here? Looks like ATI has left earlier card versions in the dust and I'm stuck with 8.28.8 and earlier. Is there a way of fixing this so I can get it to work? on livna, I'm only seeing the latest (8.29.6) for FC6. ARe there plans for ealier cards as well?

[Michael]

jeffk:

Welcome to the forums.

Have you tried using the open-source Radeon drivers rather than the fglrx drivers?

I should be able to backport the changes for Fedora Core 6 to the 8.28.8 drivers.

I should be able to post a legacy script in like an hour.

[niniendowarrior]

I agree with Michael. Try the open source ones. They should work much better.

[jeffk]

Thanks for the quick reply!

By "Open Source", you mean the ones that come with FC6?

I was running things under FC6 fine, with the standard Xorg drivers. Of course, I read everywhere about the proprietary ATI drivers, and thought I'd see an improvement.

If we aren't talking the stock drivers, what would be the repro name of these Open Source drivers? A link perhaps? I try and play legal with RPMs, but I'll tweak if needed...

[Michael]

The open-source drivers is the R200/300 driver shipping with X.Org v7.1. The drivers should have been enabled by default.

The benefit that the fglrx drivers have over the open-source ones at this time is Radeon X1k support (which doesn't effect you due to the Radeon 9200), aticonfig, and a higher level of gaming performance. For more information see http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=7481

If you are still interested in the fglrx drivers let me know and I can still write a legacy script for it.

[jeffk]

I'd be interested in trying them out. If there is a performance boost, at least in some areas, I think most users would be interested. Livna and other repos should have both 8.28.8 and the latest, rather than just the latest.

I'm suprised that ATI didn't branch things a little better when dropping support... perhaps they feel the Xorg drivers are mature enough.

I'm reading the link you indicated now. Looks like you did some work!

Thank you for the expertise and support. I'll have to mull through the board and see what other areas are supported as well.

[Michael]

I'm suprised that ATI didn't branch things a little better when dropping support... perhaps they feel the Xorg drivers are mature enough

Technically speaking, ATI hasn't "dropped" the support all together. The support for R200 generation components remain in a different development branch, so in the future ATI/AMD does have the possibility of releasing an updated "legacy" driver (similar to what NVIDIA has done), but don't expect such a driver anytime in the very near future.

If I recall correctly, the firegl_public code from new drivers will remain compatible with the 8.28.8 drivers for some time -- meaning you could drop in the firegl_public code from say 8.29.7 or 8.3x.x into the 8.28.8 driver package, and it should work out and compile fine (thus you can still compile that driver against newer kernels).

[jeffk]

You had talked about rolling a script to create a 8.28.8 driver compatible with the final FC6, even perhaps with the latest drivers in them.

Did you get a chance to complete, and can you provide a link?

[Michael]

Sorry, I had some other work that crept up. I'll try to get everything completed for that today or this weekend.

[Michael]

I didn't write up a script yet, but...

Here should be the updated and patched firegl_public code.

If you were to use the 8.28.8 driver installer and pass the --extract argument it would create a folder with the contents in fglrx-install/

From there if you use that tarball and over-write the contents in fglrx-install/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod it should be virtually the same as my 8.29.6 patch (it's basically a matter of doing it manually).

Then from there make your working directory fglrx-install/ and then run ./ati-installer.sh 8.28.8 --buildpkg Fedora/FC6 and it should hopefully generate fglrx RPMs that can be installed on Fedora 6.

I haven't tried it out myself, but it should work. If you run into problems just let me know (or if you're confused over the instructions).