Here is a quick recipe to getting the latest and greatest radeonhd open source driver for the R5XX/R600 driver series, but this time with dri support. Ubuntu Hardy already has a radeonhd package, but as expected is not updated from the git repo, and does not include the dri extensions. This is an update on previous posts for gutsy and feisty.
Install compile tools and git:
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config git-core
Install driver dependencies, now with dri deps also:
sudo apt-get install libdrm-dev x11proto-gl-dev mesa-common-dev xutils-dev \ x11proto-xf86dri-dev x11proto-fonts-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-video-dev \ x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-render-dev xserver-xorg-dev
Checkout the source code:
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd/
Last but not least, compile and install
cd xf86-video-radeonhd/ autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-dri make sudo make install
And you’re all set. Don’t forget to change the driver to radeonhd on your /etc/xorg.conf.
I’ll try to follow this up with the -ati counterpart… For now, go test. Feedback welcome.
You are Jesus.
I have spent all weekend working on getting Ubuntu/hardy installed and working with my 3870 X2, only to finally find out (after many clean installs and driver install attempts) that the X2 isn’t yet supported. Except for with these drivers.
You wouldn’t believe the hell I went through as a fairly n00bish linux user…
Thanks for your perfect commands, which yielded no errors like all others I’ve tried!
@Cory
Thanks for the feedback. Your post was almost lost in translation (i.e. when moving servers), but I’m glad I found it. Bye.
I installed all those dependencies. They are all available from Debian Lenny. So is xf86-video-radeonhd. I have my X1550 running on the radeonhd driver, but it’s slow and dri does not work. The xorg log shows that both the radeonhd driver and dri are loaded but then it chooses to not use dri. I haven’t been able to figure out why. Would you know why? Does the radeonhd driver have to be compiled the hard way? Or is there something that I’m missing?
In all other ways, this driver seems to be good.
@Bob
Hi Bob, you can always try to use the DRI option in your device section of xorg.conf.
Be mindful that enabling DRI, causes 2D accelaration to be disabled. This is still under development. For further information look to http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/radeonhd:DRI.
Actually, I tried that already. It doesn’t help. I’m wondering if my problem is that I’m running Debian Lenny configured to amd64. Are the above listed files, such as Mesa, configured to 7.1 for 64 bit?
@Bob
Sorry, but I can’t help you there. No experience with 64 bit systems, since all of my machines are 32 bit only. What you can try is see if any of the other radeonhd branches yield better results. Try a “git branch -r” on the source tree to see the remote branches. The CS branch has seen a lot of activity that might be useful: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYzNg.
I was able to download newer packages from Debian Experimental. I also had to build a new drm module. See this link: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/xorg-server/xorg-pkg-tools/files . This did not solve the radeonhd problem but now the radeon driver will do dri. glxgears is now running at 2500fps.
As near as I can tell, the 64 bit xserver has a bug that says, “Error: couldn’t find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig,” when using the radeonhd driver. The radeon driver works.
This is all encouraging. 3D with open source drivers is a big step. Thanks for your help.