Comments on: Radeon KMS on Debian testing

By: Larry Doolittle

Larry Doolittle — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:44:28 +0000

Thanks for the page. I’m trying to resolve a black-screen problem with X on a Radeon RS780 (a.k.a. an ATI 790GX motherboard). See the Xorg mailing list, subject “could use help debugging black screen on RS780″

When I get to your step of building a fresh libdrm2, it ends with
dh_makeshlibs: dpkg-gensymbols -plibdrm2 -Idebian/libdrm2.symbols -Pdebian/libdrm2 -c4 returned exit code 1
make: *** [binary-arch] Error 1
A full log is at http://doolittle.icarus.com/~larry/libdrm-2.4.18-makelog
Other than the scary word-length issues (this is a 64-bit build), does this problem have an obvious solution? The machine is a fresh squeeze install.

By: Marek Straka

Marek Straka — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:22:46 +0000

I have compiled kernel 2.6.32.8 with KMS support, radeon driver from GIT and taken everything “mesa” from debian experimental. Now works my ATI mobility radeon X1800 after 4 Years I have buyed my laptop for the first time without problems.

By: stefan

stefan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:43:47 +0000

Okay, well basically if all you have to do is rebuild mesa, you can fetch the corresponding sources using apt-get source and then build the package using debuild. You’ll have to do that after building/installing libdrm2 (including the -dev package).

By: Marek Straka

Marek Straka — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:48:41 +0000

I am using debian Squeeze.
Look on the wiki “how to compile radeon” Section Troubleshooting KMS problems

“your xorg.log has error ….”
“You have not support for KMS, You have to rebuild it against libdrm_radeon and also to rebuild mesa against same new libdrm because mesa doesn’t have KMS support without libdrm_radeon either”

I have tried to compile MESA but “make” stopped with error. Upon advices from radeon support forum there is necessary to have also drm from git.

I stopped here:
git clone –depth origin git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm
cd drm
./autogen.sh –prefix=/usr –enable-radeon-experimental-api
… I am not sure here about parameters for debian.

By: stefan

stefan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:48:37 +0000

AFAICT the “radeon kernel module version is 2.0.0 but version 1.17.0 or newer is needed” error means that x.org doesn’t use the driver you compiled from git. Did you copy it to the right place?

Also, are you using testing/unstable?

By: Marek Straka

Marek Straka — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:32:53 +0000

Hi. I made it as you described. Compiled kernel 2.6.32, libdrm 2.4.15 and radeon driver from GIT. But I think it is not complete. It runs already but I get
$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
and in Xorg.log:
(EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed because of a version mismatch.
[dri] radeon kernel module version is 2.0.0 but version 1.17.0 or newer is needed.
[dri] Disabling DRI.

Upon http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo
ẗhere should be also Mesa compiled. Coud you describe a debian way for it?