SGFXI problem installing ATI drivers

[nandinga]

Hi all!

I've just downloaded and installed avlinux5-20110615-lxde-i386-en.iso

Im trying to install the ATI prop drivers because the open ones have an issue that makes the card overheat (over 80C).

I ran SGFXI from GRUB and everything went well until after it downloaded the driver fglrx 11-6. It recomended to hit <enter> in any question given, and the question was:

Code:

ATI Catalyst(TM) Propietary Driver 11-6
1) Install Driver 11-6 on X.Org 6.9 or later
2) Generate Distribution Specific Driver Package

The default answer was [1], which I accepted as recomended.

Then there was an immediate crash that told me the error was on a log file that ends as follows:

Code:

...
  Args: fglrx
  operation outcome: unset
Function: remove_module - Primary: End
Function: clean_dkms - Primary: Start
Function: clean_dkms - Primary: End
Function: preinstall_cleanup - Primary: End
Function: run_driver_installer - Primary: Start
  driver: 11-6
  direct fglrx install - no debs: options: 11-6 --install
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Error logs from fglrx install:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No error logs found from the run package installer!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  ERROR: (245) The fglrx installer exited with the error: 1
A copy of this driver installer error log is also here: /var/log/sgfxi/sgfxi.log

The file is attached for more info.

The card detected by SGFXI is:

Code:

series: ATI M92 [Mobility Raedon HD 4500 Series]
vendor: Dell
ram: 256M

EDIT: From the ATI Catalyst Control Center in Ubuntu, I can see the amount of ram is 512M, not 256M...

lspci gives me this in Ubuntu (where everything runs ok with ATI drivers):

Code:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M92 [Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series]

Any idea?

[GMaq]

Hi,

Thanks for providing all the info, unfortunately I can't really decipher what is wrong and I also have no ATi hardware myself to test. SGFXI is really an arms-length addition to AV Linux that I don't personally maintain. For the most effective assistance I suggest you ask at the SGFXI forum, generally the developer is pretty supportive. I know it is a pain to join yet another forum but that is where SGFXI is actually developed.

http://techpatterns.com/forums/forum-33.html

[trulan]

The sgfxi log doesn't report the actual error, which is very annoying.  Is there an install log/error report from the ATi driver package itself?

If it were my system, my next step would be (in addition to asking on the sgfxi forum) to try to diagnose the problem by building and installing the driver manually, without the sgfxi script.  With the NVidia driver, what I've done is:
1. Rather than simply running the downloaded driver blob, run it with an extract-only flag.
2. Manually build the module (make or some equivalent) - this will make it a lot easier to spot any errors it might actually be throwing.  This also makes it easy to try a few little patches if that's what's needed.
3. Manually install the module (make install or equivalent)

However, this is all just theory as I have no ATi hardware to test.  Maybe it'll help point you in the right direction.

[nandinga]

@GMaq: Thanks! It's more of a pain for my GPU to be running at 80C than it is for me to suscribe to another forum hehe. I've checked there and found this thread:

http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1864.html

This guy has a similar problem to mine, but they don't reach a solution.

Hey congrats for a really gerat distro!! I'm really willing to make it work.


@trulan: Congrats goes also to you!

The thing pointed me to /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log but the dir didn't even existed. I guess the driver install script didn't even had the time to start installing, since it crashed imediately after I accepted the proposed option.

I've tried to install myself (terminal open inside a running X session) and it also fails, but later. Now I get a log at /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log

Code:

Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.

Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/8.861/source ->
                 /usr/src/fglrx-8.861

DKMS: add Completed.

Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel.  Skipping...

Building module:
cleaning build area....
cd /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/8.861/build; sh make.sh --nohints --uname_r=2.6.39.1.avl.1 --norootcheck....(bad exit status: 1)
0
0
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to build fglrx-8.861 with DKMS
[Error] Kernel Module : Removing fglrx-8.861 from DKMS

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 8.861
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : update-initramfs

Notice that it says 2.6.39.1.avl.1 in the make.sh line. Could it be that it doesn't understand something about the AVLinux kernel?

Anyway, just to try something as simirar as possible to your recommendation (maybe I did it completely wrong :p), I've tried navigating to path_to_extracted_driver_package/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/ which is the only place where there is somehing to compile if I'm not mistaken, and ran sh make.sh --nohints --uname_r=2.6.39.1.avl.1 --norootcheck myself, which gave me:

Code:

AMD kernel module generator version 2.1
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
rm -rf *.c *.h *.o *.ko *.a .??* *.symvers
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.39.1.avl.1/build SUBDIRS=/usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.39.1.avl.1'
  CC [M]  /usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
/usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:117:28: fatal error: linux/smp_lock.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [/usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.39.1.avl.1'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2

Any idea?

Thanks a lot!!

[trulan]

Code:

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.39.1.avl.1'
  CC [M]  /usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
/usr/src/sgfxi-downloads/fglrx-install-11-6/common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:117:28: fatal error: linux/smp_lock.h: No such file or directory

I suspected as much...it can't find the Big Kernel Lock (linux/smp_lock.h), ATi really needs to update their driver to build on the latest kernels...  I'll see if I can download the driver source and get the module to build.  I'll post back later...

[nandinga]

Yeah the guys at the other post commented something about that "Big kernel lock" (which I have no idea what it is...). If there is anything I can do to help you out just tell me.

Thanks a lot!!

[trulan]

The Big Kernel Lock was something big and bad that has finally been removed from the kernel.  Unfortunately, this has been breaking a number of proprietary drivers...

Well, I didn't manage to actually get the module built, but I did find this page.  It has two patches and a decent set of instructions:
http://www.mindwerks.net/2011/04/ubuntu-11-04-natty-with-fglrx-and-2-6-39/
The fglrx package has changed from 11-4 to 11-6, and you'll want to build your package for Debian/sid instead of Ubuntu/natty (or should it be Debian/testing? I'm not sure), but it looks like it should work.  The only catch is, I believe the ati installer wants to run as root (it fails for me trying to run ldconfig) and I'd really rather not do that on my system.

[Schprocket]

...it can't find the Big Kernel Lock (linux/smp_lock.h)...

Remember that was the one call which also messed up the make for the Realtek Wireless drivers as well, Trulan?

It seems that is a generic Linux kernel issue, or rather a generic manufacturer issue

[nandinga]

Thanks man, it looked so promising............. 

I've only noticed after actually tried and failed, that the post was talking about 64bit kernels. I've asked in the post itself if there was any solution for 32bit but I doubt it since ATI's web only gives you 64bit drivers and states something I still don't really know how to interpret: "32-Bit packages must be installed for 64-Bit Linux drivers to install or work."

The patches work perfectly (they simply delete the lines that refer to the big kernel lock thing), but it fails compiling:

Code:

=====================================================================
 ATI Technologies Catalyst(TM) Proprietary Driver Installer/Packager
=====================================================================
Generating package: Debian/sid
cp: cannot stat `/root/Downloads/ati/x710/*': No such file or directory
Package build failed!
Package build utility output:
dpkg-buildpackage: export CFLAGS from dpkg-buildflags (origin: vendor): -g -O2
dpkg-buildpackage: export CPPFLAGS from dpkg-buildflags (origin: vendor):

...

dh_installman: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
# amd64 needs some library redirection
dh_install -pfglrx-driver "usr/X11R6/lib/*.so*"           "usr/lib"
dh_install: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_install -pfglrx-driver "usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri"     "usr/lib"
dh_install: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_install -pfglrx-driver "usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux"   "usr/lib/xorg/modules"
dh_install: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
cp: cannot stat `./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux': No such file or directory
dh_install: cp -a ./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux debian/fglrx-driver/usr/lib/xorg/modules/ returned exit code 1
make: *** [binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary gave error exit status 2

I'm wandering, is there a way to install a 64bit 2.6.39 kernel in AVLinux?

Thx again!

[nandinga]

Hey another question. What is this kernel for?

http://www.bandshed.net/kernels/2.6.39.1.avl.1-radeonkms.zip

Thx!

[trulan]

If I'm not mistaken, the driver package is for 32 bit or 64 bit, and 32 bit libs must be installed for the driver to work on a 64 bit system.  But whatever the case may be on that, that isn't where it errored out for me.  On my computer it looked like it actually built the module.  Like I said above, on mine it failed with "ldconfig: command not found" which is just because it needs to be running as root to be able to run ldconfig.  I'm not sure why it is failing now for you...

Edit:  Oh wait, you are running it as root, and it acts like it can't find the /root/Downloads directory - what would happen if you would create that directory and move the ATi source into that?

The radeonkms kernel has the newer radeon driver (with kernel modesetting), this driver is typically the default on most Linux distros.  However, due to the extensive booting issues we had with AVLinux 4.2 on ATI hardware, and the significance that liveDVD/USB boot plays in AVLinux, we decided use the older Radeon driver rather than the newer Radeom KMS driver - both are included in the Linux kernel source, it's just a matter of selecting one driver or the other when building the kernel.  So you could install that kernel and see what happens, it is a different Radeon driver than is in the stock AVLinux 5.0 kernel.

[nandinga]

Yes, well it is searching there because there is where it is located. I've logged in as root, downloaded the driver, unpacked it (/root/Downloads/ati/), patched and built. The one that's missing is x710/ No idea what can that one be.

About the other kernel. I'll try it in a bit. Being the opensource one it may still have the overheating issue but who knows.

I'll get back to you after it's tested.

Thx!

[nandinga]

No luck with the other kernel :s ...overheats the same.

Thanks a lot trulan! I think I'll just wait for the developers of any the ATi drivers to fix it (the compiling for newer kernels in one or the overheating issue of the other). Seems that I'll have to stick to 50ms latencies until some time.

Also I was needing later to patch the kernel to make my Fast Track Pro work. YomGuy is adapting the patch for 2.6.39. Maybe when Ubuntu Oneiric goes live with 2.6.39, ATi developers do something about it and I can try testing that patch. I'll try it on AVLinux first, of course!

Well, if you happen to have any other idea just throw it at me! ;p

Best regards

[trulan]

Hey, I'm definitely interested in the patch for the Fast Track Pro, when it's ready.  I had looked at that for possible inclusion in the AVLinux kernel, but I had to admit pretty quickly that porting it forward past 2.6.34 was beyond my limited skills, and not really a good idea anyway since I have no hardware on which to test it.  Please let us know if/when there is a working patch for the .39 kernel.

And sorry about the ATI driver situation, hopefully the issues get fixed from one end or the other before too long.  As an alternate idea, you could try a Liquorix kernel (nothing newer than 2.6.38, of course, or you'll have the same driver problems.)  Also, the 2.6.33-rt kernel is still a good one, though I have no idea how that would play with the ATI drivers.

[nandinga]

Hmm... yep you're right. Should try older kernels still with the big kernel lock.

Hey I'll keep you informed about the patch. It would be great if it gets included in AVLinux! I'm also trying to get the original authors together in contact with the Alsa developers. Looks like the patch is not included yet because it was missing a "Signed-off-by" tag, so maybe we're in luck and the patch gets on Alsa before next AVLinux release next year.

I'll tell them about your interest in the patch.

Cheers!

[Piklik]

Hi

AVlinux 5.0.(1) seems great but it's a pity i have often issues with ati drivers! Exactly the same thing as you Nandiga! As you i wanted AVlinux to work with two screens that's all: Mixbus and his mixer each one a screen!

Here's a part of the error:

error: (245) The fglrx installer exited with the error:1

Previously i had a Debian Mint with liquorix, ati drivers worked well, no xruns, but for any reason (?) Grub couldn't boot and /boot disappeared (??)..! Then i decided to retry with AVlinux! Avlinux is attractive!

Well my question is why could it work with Debian Mint (i installed drivers fglrx by myself with synaptic) and seems so complicate? Working with two screens is a simple thing and natural now for me!

Gmaq... Yes i know Avlinux team work hard for this great distro and we have to see that with sgfxi's site!

The only thing i could do with this try is to have two screens with the command aticonfig --dualhead --layout ..... but the left screen is black i can see a cross-cursor moved within and then it is not interesting for me ;-)... By the way is it possible to activate the driver as Jockey does for KDE?

okay that's what i can say!
excuse ;e for my bad english

Keep it on!

Regards

[trulan]

Hi Piklik,

The problem with the ATI drivers is that they apparently have not been updated to support the 2.6.39 kernel used in AVLinux.  So using Synaptic to install the drivers, or Jockey, or any other installation tool, will fail with the same error, unless you have a driver that has been patched to work with 2.6.39.

The first thing to try if you want dual monitor support is installing this alternate kernel in AVLinux:
http://www.bandshed.net/kernels/2.6.39.1.avl.1-radeonkms.zip
It is built with a newer open source ATI driver that has more features but is also prone to problems with booting the live dvd on some hardware.  It should have much better support for dual monitors on ATI graphics cards.

You could also install a Liquorix kernel in AVLinux, then the proprietary ATI drivers should work.  You would need a 2.6.38 or older Liquorix kernel to avoid this issue.

Anybody with ATI hardware who can crack their way to a successful ATI driver installation (see the patches I linked earlier in this thread), any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[trulan]

Here's a bug report on AMD's unofficial bugzilla, any of you affected with this issue should report it here:
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=146

Also, from the looks of things over at the sgfxi forums, sgfxi cannot install the ATI drivers if dkms is present (and AVLinux uses dkms, mainly to support VirtualBox), so there are at least three problems going on here:
1: sgfxi fails to install the ATI drivers due to dkms being present.
Possible workarounds:
  a. Download the ATI driver directly from ATI's site and install it yourself.
  b. Install the fglrx-driver package from the Debian repos (try the squeeze-backports repos for this:  http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=1513.0)
  c. Purge dkms from your system, then use sgfxi (potentially dangerous, try this only if you know what you are doing.)
2: smp_lock.h (the big kernel lock) has been removed in 2.6.39.
Workaround:
   Patch the ATI driver.
3: SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED has been removed or significantly changed in 2.6.39
Workaround:
   Patch the ATI driver.
All three problems will need to be addressed to get a working driver.

[nandinga]

Just reported there. Let's see if they say something.

[nandinga]

Hey just one thing. To install liquorix kernel, I just use their repo right? or you have some tweaked liquorix kernels at http://www.bandshed.net/kernels/ ?

I saw somewhere a list with the explanation of what was each one of those kernels in the FTP, but I can't find it anymore. Maybe it would be good to have a readme file there with that info.

Cheers!

[trulan]

Kernel ftp info is right over here:
http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=1243.0
The Liquorix kernel in there should be fine. There's no significant tweaking from the regular Liquorix kernel.  You can also use Liquorix's repos, though I think you'll need to use the 'past' repos, otherwise you'll just get a 2.6.39 kernel...

[nandinga]

Ue!!

Good news! the driver installed and I have no more overheating!!

SGFXI didn't work but a regular download & install did perfectly.

THe bad news is that I don't have sonud from ny integrated soundcard. That's somehow bad BUT if I get my Fast Track Pro running it would not be such a problem. That in turn is difficult because the patch is for 2.9.31. Maybe I'll try a liquorix kernel from the repo.

If not, I'll have to try a bit to see if I can get the sound out of my card. It's recogniced and even jack reports the correct number of inputs and outputs. Alsa volumes are up so not sure what's happening but can't be that bad I think. The bad thing is that I only managed to get 11ms latency, while with the regular AVLinux kernel 2.6.39 (with my card overheating) I've got 5ms and think I could have pushed a bit more!

I'm a bit tired now about this so I'll enjoy a bit of my vacations out somewhere and then come back to this. Or maybe just wait for ATI to update their drivers so they work in 2.6.39, and for yomguy to finish the patch for the FTP. In fact, I think that would be the best, so I'll be up to date with everything working without that much workarounds.

Ah! he said he'll contact you when that's ready, in a week or two he said 

[nandinga]

Hey and again, thanks a lot! 

[trulan]

Well, here's another how-to on patching the ATI driver, just for reference:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/ati-and-the-2-6-39-kernel-889546/

It looks like it should be a valid way to install the ATI driver on the 2.6.39 kernel, but there may be deeper changes needed to get good 3d performance.  I'll be keeping my eye on this issue and posting information as I find it.  Also, I'm keeping my eyes out for a cast-off ATI card that I can throw in my desktop to be able to actually test ATI support, until then, we'll have to rely on those of you users who have ATI hardware to test potential fixes.

[nandinga]

Hey! Thanks trulan

It's in fact the same guy, and the same procedure :p

It didn't work for me but I might have some garbage from past experiments around. Day after tomorrow I'll get to it again, second sprint! xD I'll try it on a fresh install, on AVLinux and Ubuntu.

I'll keep you informed!

[trulan]

Well, good news (I think), I have procured a very old Dell laptop that has an ATI graphics controller.  I'm installing AVLinux on it now, I'll keep you posted on my progress (or lack thereof) with the ATI driver.

Edit:  Unfortunately, the ATI chip is too old to be supported by the ATI proprietary driver.  So that's a dead end.

[Piklik]

I followed the procedures and links you posted but nothing change nor dkms nor driver ati*.run! The install and configuration went well but i have always one black screen with a cross-cursor that move but useless... In the ati control panel or amdcccle the two screen are detected but it is not like usual when it shows numbered screen 1&2, otherwise i can arrange them (left right ...) in the past i tried this i remember... It is more simple now with certain distros (i'm not comparing) with installation of fglrx by synaptic and jockey (Kubuntu).. At the moment i'm waiting for a solution and working with just one screen as in the past ;-)...

[trulan]

This is being pretty frustrating... The instructions I posted above do indeed work to a point, (I tried them in a fresh virtual machine installation), the installer runs and installs something, but it still fails to install the dkms module.  What's worse, it also fails to uninstall cleanly, which probably explains the black screen thing.

For another test, in my 'throwaway' virtual machine, I did the following:
1. Enabled the Testing/Wheezy repositories in Synaptic; reload.
2. Searched for fglrx and checked the boxes to install fglrx-modules-dkms, fglrx-driver, fglrx-source, and fglrx-control.  (This removes cmake and a few xorg drivers, and upgrades libc6 and the entire X server.)
3. Hit 'Apply' and let synaptic do its thing.
Results:  It looks like it might have worked.  As I still have no ATI hardware to test I can't be sure.  Be advised, this procedure should be considered very experimental, don't try this unless you are willing to reinstall your system should something go wrong.
To do:  It may be possible, and safer, to install the fglrx driver using the Squeeze-backports repos, this needs further investigation.

[nandinga]

SUCCESS!!!!! 

Well I've done a clean install of AVLinux and followed braintooth's post (the last link you've sent, trulan). It worked perfectly. I'm running the default kernel and have no overheating. I've even tried the desktop effects and they look nice and fluent.

Off topic: I've also done a fresh install of Ubuntu Natty to try the patches from braintooth's post (the link you've sent, trulan) on the 2.6.39_rc4 kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

I've started by updating everything and trying their graphical installer for propietary drivers (it appears as a status bar icon that recomends the appropriate drivers for your hardware). I think I remember it succeeding when Natty was released although the driver was sluggish. Now it simply failed and Apport popped up to report the issue, and took me to this bug in launchpad

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/776895

They seem to have a solution there. There is this PPA at

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates

with some patched fglrx modules, but even though they report those to work, in my case I've ended with that distro being unbootable. The good thing is that it looks like they're really working on it. Probably Ubuntu has more influence over ATI than us on the unofficial bugtracker so I guess by october, when Ubuntu Oneiric is released, probably the driver will be working out of the box, and thus SGFXI and all.

Well, thanks for your support trulan, and thanks for a great distro to you all involved!!

Cheers!

[trulan]

Thanks, nandinga, for your work on this, and congratulations on your success!

Here, then, is an updated and simplified guide for installing the ATI proproetary driver vesion 11-6, copied and pasted from braintooth's post, and tweaked for AVLinux 5.0.  First, download the ATI driver package:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Now, for the guide:
---------------------------------------------------------
Set up a folder named ATI in your home directory and place the ATI driver and the following patches in it. The patches can be found at the following links, best to right click and 'Save Link As..'
http://www.mindwerks.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2.6.39_bkl.patch
http://www.mindwerks.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/no_bkl.patch

Now extract the files from the ATI driver package:

Code:

sh ./ati-driver-installer-11-6-x86.x86_64.run --extract ati

Change to the created folder and check for the driver version:

Code:

cd ati
./ati-packager-helper.sh --version

The 11.6 driver gave me a version number of 8.861.

Now to apply the patches:

Code:

cd ati; for i in ../*.patch; do patch -p1 < $i; done

Now is when we need the driver version number. For me it is the 8.861 from earlier. If you are not using the 11.6 driver, your version number will be different:

Code:

su
./ati-installer.sh 8.861 --install

To set the xorg.conf file:

Code:

aticonfig --initial

and now to reboot...