[elrepo] ATI Radeon drivers and el repo kernel

[Nikki Locke]

I've just installed the el repo kernel, because I want to be able 
to use my new USB 3.0 PCIe card and disk.

Unfortunately, I also have an ATI Radeon graphics card, which 
requires a proprietary driver to work properly (I have a 
dual-head setup here).

And my main work is performed inside VMWare Workstation.

Neither the ATI drivers, nor the VMWare ones compile with the el 
repo kernel.

I have installed the kernel-ml-devel yum package, and I have 
edited /etc/sysinfo/kernel (which someone on the CentOs forum 
kindly told me about - I wonder if this should be documented 
somewhere more prominently?).

I hacked the ati and vmware driver sources to get them to compile 
- the ati change was pretty simple - I replaced a usage of

ioctl:   ip_firegl_ioctl,

with

unlocked_ioctl:   ip_firegl_ioctl,

However, even though the driver now compiles and installs, X will 
not start. Does anyone have any experience of either of these 
3-rd party drivers with the latest kernel, or have any advice on 
how to get things working again. Even suggestions for alternative 
graphics cards which don't require drivers (to operate 
efficiently dual-head 1920x1080, without drawing a lot of power, 
or having a fan to make noise in my silent computer) would do, at 
a pinch!

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Nikki Locke, Trumphurst Ltd.  PC & Unix consultancy & programming
http://www.trumphurst.com/