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It has been 5 months! I didn't upgrade the AMD Catalyst driver and also the kernel (I sticked with kernel 3.4.x). This week, I got time for upgrading the kernel to 3.7.x and also trying to install AMD Catalyst 12.10. As usual, the fglrx module of AMD Catalyst 12.10 could not be compiled smoothly because of incompatibilities between kernel 3.7.x and this fglrx module. Fortunately, I found the patch from arch linux (also as usual ... :) ... my favorite place for searching any patches) from this link then I make a little bit modification. You can download it from my google docs link.
How to patch?
I used the following steps to install AMD Catalyst-12.10 for kernel 3.7.1 (of course, you just change the kernel directory on these steps if your kernel version is not 3.7.1) and patch the fglrx module:
change directory to the path where the installer is
Last time, I have shared to you about how to activate right-click on clickpad by patching and recompiling the source of synaptics, at that time, synaptics version 1.4.0. Pat has upgraded the synaptics in Slackware- or Slackware64-current to version of 1.6.2. When I read the source of synaptics-1.6.2, I found that the click function of clickpad can be performed by clicking the clickpad using one, two, and three finger(s). I set the clickpad configuration for X-server, saved in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/clickpad.conf, as below:
By this configuration, I activate the behavior of click functions, vertical- and horizontal-scroll using two fingers, and also vertical-edge- and horizontal-edge-scroll that are very convinient for me. Click functions on my laptop can be performed such like this:
Finally, AMD Catalyst 12.6 has been released officially last Thursday (28-JUN-2012). Please note that this version only supports Radeon HD5000 series or newer as stated on AMD website. For HD4000 and older series, it is better if you stick on current driver that you are using now. This unofficial AMD Catalyst's wiki may help you to decide which version you want to install on your computer.
It has been working nicely on my laptop with kernel-3.4.2 and xorg-server-1.12.2 installed since yesterday. For anyone that uses linux kernel 3.4.x, please follow my step that I have written last time: "AMD Catalyst Patch for kernel-3.4.x". I still compile the kernel-3.4.4. This Catalyst driver should be able to work nicely too on it. I will update this post soon after I finish to set up my laptop with this new kernel.
AMD also released the 12.7 beta version at the same day of 12.6 that will improve performance optimizations for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series. You can checkout this link. However, this beta version is not for linux ... :(
After I postponed for more than a month because of incompatibility issue between xorg-server-1.12.1 and the latest AMD Catalyst driver (that is, 12.4), finally, I can use xorg-server-1.12.1 "normally" with the beta version of AMD Catalyst driver, that is, AMD Catalyst-12.6 Beta. I have tested this combination for two days and there is no problem so far. However, since the driver is beta version, there is such kind of logo at the bottom right of the display that give notice that the driver is for testing use only. As for me, it is OK since I believe that AMD will release the official release version soon.
After the kernel-3.3.x has been terminated (EOL), I decided to move to kernel-3.4.x. Unfortunately, this moving was not so easy since fglrx module could not be compiled for the kernel-3.4.x, in other words, this module needs to be patched. Referring to two references that I have written below, I have got the patch and have successfully patched fglrx module of AMD Catalyst-12.4 and AMD Catalyst-12.6Beta. You can download the patch from this link or just copy-paste a few lines below to your favorite text editor and saving it to a file:
--- lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c +++ lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c.new @@ -4181,7 +4184,11 @@ static int kasInitExecutionLevels(unsigned long level_init) { unsigned int p; KCL_DEBUG5(FN_FIREGL_KAS, "%d\n", level_init); +#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= KERNEL_VERSION(3,4,0) + for_each_possible_cpu(p) +#else for_each_cpu_mask(p, cpu_possible_map) +#endif { KCL_DEBUG1(FN_FIREGL_KAS,"Setting initial execution level for CPU # %d\n", p); preempt_disable();
When I compiled lilypond-2.15.36, I found this error:
cat out/feta-braces-a.otf-table out/feta-braces-b.otf-table out/feta-braces-c.otf-table out/feta-braces-d.otf-table out/feta-braces-e.otf-table out/feta-braces-f.otf-table out/feta-braces-g.otf-table out/feta-braces-h.otf-table out/feta-braces-i.otf-table > out/emmentaler-brace.otf-table echo '(design_size . 20)' > out/emmentaler-brace.otf-gtable echo feta-braces-d feta-braces-c feta-braces-i feta-braces-e feta-braces-h feta-braces-a feta-braces-g feta-braces-f feta-braces-b > out/emmentaler-brace.subfonts printf 'emmentaler-brace' > out/emmentaler-brace.fontname cd ./out && /usr/bin/fontforge -script emmentaler-11.pe Copyright (c) 2000-2011 by George Williams. Executable based on sources from 13:48 GMT 22-Feb-2011-ML-TtfDb. Library based on sources from 13:48 GMT 22-Feb-2011. Cannot open /usr/local/src/Music/lilypond-2.15.36/build/mf/out/feta11.pfb The requested file, feta11.pfb, does not exist MergeFonts: Can't find font: feta11.pfb Called from... emmentaler-11.pe: line 17 make[1]: *** [out/emmentaler-11.svg] Error 1 make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs.....
This error is caused by the use of -jN option when compiling lilypond (I used this instruction: make -j4 all). I used that option in order to maximize CPU cores utilization, however, this option can lead the compilation process into race condition. In the case of lilypond compilation, feta11.pfb is needed by one of compilation thread/stream before other thread/stream compiles it. When I omitted the -jN option, the compilation was successful.
In conclusion, be careful when we use the -jN option. This option can make the compilation process faster because the compilation process uses more than one CPU core, however, the race condition can occur in some cases.
I just upgraded the kernel to 3.3.1 (my own compilation) then tried to recompile the fglrx modules for this new kernel. No problem in compilation, as well as in use. I have tried AMD Catalyst 12.2 and 12.3, both are no problem on my system with kernel 3.3.1. If you want to upgrade your kernel to 3.3.1 and AMD Catalyst 12.2 or 12.3, you can upgrade them ... without problem, hopefully.