[elrepo-devel] ATI driver

[Phil Perry]

On 08/12/10 12:36, Marco Giunta wrote:
>> Hi list,
>>
>> One major problem is that we do not have the ATI hardware. Is there
> anyone who is interested in developing the package to be distributed
> through ELRepo?
>>
>> Akemi
>>
>>
>
> Hi,
> maybe I could help you; I have to manage a lot of workstations and most
> part of them have an ati video card; in the past, I've used dkms driver
> from Dag / RpmForge repository, but I would like to use kmod instead of it
> ;-P
>
> I didn't find any rpm created with kmod, so, almost an year ago, I decided
> to create one by myself. I took inspiration from RPMFusion ati driver, old
> Dag ati driver and from spec file of your nvidia driver.
>
> I've modified the 'nvidia-config-display', now named 'ati-config-display'.
> If you run it with 'enable' option:
>
>    - create by itself 'Files' section in xorg.conf
>    - add Ati driver module path in 'ModulePath' section in xorg.conf
>    - save previous xorg driver (ati, radeon, r500, ...) in a comment line
> in 'Device' section
>    - set 'fgrlx' as driver name
>    - rename the file '/etc/ld.so.conf.d/ati.conf.disable' as 'ati.conf'
>    - run ldconfig
>
> If you run it with 'disable' option:
>
>    - remove Ati driver module path in 'ModulePath' section in xorg.conf
>    - restore old xorg driver ( if comment line is present, otherwise it
> uses generic 'ati' driver name)
>    - rename the file '/etc/ld.so.conf.d/ati.conf' as 'ati.conf.disable'
>    - run ldconfig
>
> I've only OLD Ati video card, so these spec files are tested and work only
> with ATI Radeon card till X2100 Series  ( Ati driver 8.59.2) ...
>
> Here you'll find spec files, 'ati-config-display' and all file needed to
> create rpms:
>
> http://people.sissa.it/~giunta/ati-x11-drv/ati-x11-drv.tar.gz
>
> or if you want srpms, here you are:
>
> http://people.sissa.it/~giunta/ati-x11-drv/ati-kmod-8.59.2-1.nosrc.rpm
> http://people.sissa.it/~giunta/ati-x11-drv/ati-x11-drv-8.59.2-1.src.rpm
>
> I hope these files could be usefully to all ElRepo comunity ... ;-P
>
> Regards,
>    Marco
>

Hi Marco,

Nice job on the packages!

I'm particularly interested in your ati-config-display utility as that 
is something that we are missing. My python skills are non-existent, but 
diffing our nvidia-config-display against your ati-config-display I can 
probably just about figure out what you've done. Interesting that you 
handle the ldconfig stuff from there rather than in the package 
scriptlets. Would you be able to help in updating it if necessary to 
support the latest driver once we know exactly what is needed.

Also, as you have some experience with older cards, can you explain the 
position on support for older ATI hardware. From what I understand, 
older hardware is only supported by older driver revisions, which are 
still available for download. So we could provide legacy drivers for 
folks with older cards (like we currently do for nvidia)

Are these older series drivers still supported/maintained by ATI?

Which driver series support which cards - in other words, which would 
make good candidates for inclusion in elrepo as legacy drivers.

Apologies for all the questions - I'm a nvidia user so am not at all 
familiar with the ATI drivers.

Thanks for sharing your work with the community!

Regards,

Phil