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Hi, I'm Alfredo Matos, a research engineer, programmer and entrepreneur from Portugal. This is my old (and closed) blog. It exists only as an archive. For more information head over to alfredomatos.com or follow me on twitter.

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RadeonHD (git) on Ubuntu Hardy with DRI (3d) support

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.

Posted By alfmatos

12 Responses to “RadeonHD (git) on Ubuntu Hardy with DRI (3d) support”

  1. Cory SVensson says:

    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!

  2. alfmatos says:

    @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.

  3. Bob says:

    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.

  4. alfmatos says:

    @Bob

    Hi Bob, you can always try to use the DRI option in your device section of xorg.conf.

    Option "DRI" "true"

    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.

  5. Bob says:

    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?

  6. alfmatos says:

    @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.

  7. Bob says:

    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.

  8. Tom says:

    Thank you, worked for me in Ibex too.

    System Visiontek X1650 256DDR2

    Section “Device”
    Identifier “Configured Video Device”
    Driver “radeonhd”
    # Option “AccelMethod” “EXA”
    Option “DRI” “true”
    Option “UseFastTLS” “2″
    Option “BackingStore” “on”
    Option “MaxGARTSize” “512″
    Option “ColorTiling” “on”
    Option “EnablePageFlip” “on”
    Option “DisplayPriority” “HIGH” #BIOS or AUTO
    EndSection

    glxgears
    9839 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1967.755 FPS
    9830 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1965.954 FPS

  9. Tom says:

    Thanks again.

    I just got radeonhd working on a 2.6.30 kernel with Xv under Jaunty using your radeonhd compile guide. Kernel available here: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
    I recommend not updating to the latest. 2.6.30-rc1 works fine.

    For a super duper Kovensky mplayer-mt (multi threaded x264/mpeg decoder) build see: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7391005&postcount=38

    There are other mplayer-mt builds available but this is the fastest and best for the newer ATI cards. I also recommend using the rvm/testing repository for the latest smplayer. Install smplayer first (it installs/updates mplayer), then follow the guide to compile and install the Kovensky mplayer build. I tried the mplayer-mt build from the ppa below but it’s still not as fast as the kovensky build.

    Smplayer/mplayer-mt PPA:
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/testing/ubuntu jaunty main

  10. Tom says:

    Woops, ignore the jaunty-security line in the above comment.

  11. Tom says:

    Another nifty hint for adding ppa keys for all launchpad ppa repositories.
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1056099

  12. alfmatos says:

    Fixed. Thank You. All this information is quite useful. Maybe you should have your on post on this so I can link back. Thanks again.

About Me

Hi, I'm Alfredo Matos. I'm a research engineer from Portugal, with a passion for inventing new things and working on future technologies. I'm also a programmer and entrepreneur. For more information check out my main website alfredomatos.com.