Oneiric 64-bit and AMD/ATI proprietary drivers

[Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:51 PM, tv.debian at googlemail.com
<tv.debian at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 11/01/2012 20:37, Mark Greenwood wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Jan 2012, at 18:20, O. Sinclair wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/01/12 17:48, Mark Greenwood wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 11 Jan 2012, at 14:43, Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 9:17 AM, O. Sinclair<o.sinclair at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 11/01/12 14:06, Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 6:24 AM, O. Sinclair<o.sinclair at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Am about to officially give up.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have an HP Pavillion dm4 laptop with the dreaded hybrid graphics,
>>>>>>>> in my
>>>>>>>> case in Intel integrated and an ATI HD5450 "discreet" card.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 11.04 I used 32-bit PAE and there it worked. But as I have 4Gb
>>>>>>>> RAM
>>>>>>>> decided to opt for 64-bit when installing 11.10.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Most things work well, there are some fairly odd apps that are only
>>>>>>>> 32-bit
>>>>>>>> but I have no major problems (except new KDEPIM but that is separate
>>>>>>>> issue).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> However - installing AMD/ATI Catalyst drivers fail one way or the
>>>>>>>> other.
>>>>>>>> If
>>>>>>>> I do from "additional drivers" I just get a message it fails. If I
>>>>>>>> do
>>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>>> Muon dito. If I use cli command apt-get or aptitude it can go all
>>>>>>>> the way
>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> configuration.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> And that is where I get stuck whether I use downloaded from AMD
>>>>>>>> package,
>>>>>>>> build packages, run the installer or whatever I do. Have been thru
>>>>>>>> countless
>>>>>>>> sites with instructions and forums.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The last step here is normally "aticonfig --initial -f" with or
>>>>>>>> without
>>>>>>>> -f.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I either get an error "PowerXpress error: Cannot stat
>>>>>>>> '/usr/lib64/fglrx/switchlibGL': No such file or directory" or "no
>>>>>>>> supported
>>>>>>>> adapter present".
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So finally my question here: has anyone managed to get the hybrid
>>>>>>>> graphics
>>>>>>>> with ATI/AMD working in 11.10 64-bit or are there ohters who have
>>>>>>>> spent
>>>>>>>> (too
>>>>>>>> much) time installing and failing?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, I have installed them.  I just installed these packages (using
>>>>>>> aptitude, should work with apt-get):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> fglrx-updates
>>>>>>> fglrx-updates-dev
>
>
> Hi, taking the thread from here since I missed the beginning. I would stay
> away from those packages, they are broken and will break your system. You
> should try to *purge* all fglrx related packages, then reinstall
> libgl1-mesa-glx and libgl1-mesa-dri (you will see that update-alternatives
> is correcting dead links errors), and only then install the fglrx packages,
> NOT the "updates" ones. I had trouble with this packages on all my AMD
> systems (amd64).

These are working just fine for me.  My A8 CPU won't work correctly
with the plain fglrx packages.  I can't remember what happen when I
installed from ATI site (some odd problems).  Anyway, fglrx-updates
packages works fine for me (and have been working correctly for a few
months now, and I have gone through at least one upgrade for these
packages).

> Regarding the switcheroo nature of your laptop, I can't comment since my
> system are "simple" discreet or on-board graphic chips.
> Off course be sure to purge ALL file installed from the AMD catalyst
> installer before going any further.

Yeah, it is needed to completely purge all of what was installed from
the AMD catalyst, or you will have problems.