Fedora 20 AMD catalyst driver

[Tibbar110]

I have not read through 10 pages. Had anybody gotten it to work?

[mikee]

got what to work?

[Tibbar110]

Using the catalyst driver.

[BlackSerpent86]

Reading the last page would be enough ;-)

Sent from my Sony Z1 compact using a Tardis

[mikee]

I am running on catalyst and F21. Go back if you need help installing.

[Mosga]

In case someone needs instructions to how to run Catalyst 14.12 on F21 64-bit system in comfortable setup (rpm packages, gdm, gnome and so on). They assume you know how and when to use terminal and how to edit system files. Note that I can't provide much support for these instructions but I'll refer to other instructions pages; this is just combination of things that others have posted + my fix to run gdm. I'm pretty sure they *will* work for you if you follow them closely and have understanding on what is done here. I know that there are simplier ways to install catalyst but they will ask you to sacrifice something (like remove gnome desktop, or install special versions of some packages, or replace gdm - and, for example, with lightdm I can't get lock screen to work properly - and so on). When following these instructions, you won't have to disable anything at all.

1. Download catalyst itself (amd-catalyst-omega-14.12-linux-run-installers.zip). Unzip it; go to fglrx-14.501.1003 folder. Download patch to suport kernel 3.17 from here. For the reference, the page I got it from is here - check that blog for updates in case kernel will be upgraded, the author might post updated version of that patch.
2. Apply patch and build RPM package. For that, do
   

   sh amd-driver-installer-14.501.1003-x86.x86_64.run --extract
   cd fglrx-install.*
   patch -p0 < ../3-17_kernel-patch.doc       # here it's assumed you downloaded patch into upper folder
   ./ati-installer.sh '14.501' --buildpkg RedHat/RHEL7_64a

3. Install package. "sudo rpm -i ../fglrx64_p_i_c-14.501.1003-1.x86_64.rpm"
   Generate xorg config file with "aticonfig --initial"
4. Disable radeon driver and modesetting - optional but recommended. It might be not strictly needed on all systems. Edit /etc/sysconfig/grub so that GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= includes "radeon.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=radeon nomodeset" among others things that are there. E.g. for me it's "quiet rhgb intel_idle.max_cstate=1 radeon.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=radeon nomodeset LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8" (just an example, don't use this full line), then regenerate grub config file with "grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg" for systems with UEFI firmware or "grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg" for systems with BIOS firmware or UEFI in legacy mode.
   You will need to undo these changes if you decide to rollback to opensource radeon driver.
5. To make gnome-shell and other clutter applications work, create file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/cogl-setup.sh. You can just execute these commands:
   

   sudo sh -c "cat > /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/cogl-setup.sh" << EOF
   export COGL_DRIVER=gl
   export COGL_OVERRIDE_GL_VERSION=1.4
   export COGL_RENDERER=GLX
   export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/fglrx/fglrx-libGL.so.1.2
   EOF
   sudo chmod +x  /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/cogl-setup.sh

   Note that you will need to remove this file if you decide to rollback to opensource radeon driver.
6. To fix fglrx version check when used with gdm, do the following (original instructions from here. This is some hardcore binary editing and you will need to do it again if you reinstall fglrx RPM. These changes might not work or be needed in future versions of catalyst. Do not remove file /amd_xversion created by this!
   

   sudo -i
   Xorg -version > /amd_xversion 2>&1
   cd /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/
   offset=`strings -td fglrx_drv.so | grep '/proc/%i/fd/0' | sed 's/^ *//' | cut -d' ' -f1`
   echo -ne '/amd_xversion' | dd conv=notrunc of=fglrx_drv.so bs=1 count=13 seek=$offset
   cd ../extensions
   offsetext=`strings -td libglx.so | grep '/proc/%i/fd/0' | sed 's/^ *//' | cut -d' ' -f1`
   echo -ne '/amd_xversion' | dd conv=notrunc of=libglx.so bs=1 count=13 seek=$offsetext
   exit

7. To fix a special gnome-shell instance executed from gdm (it won't follow xinitrc settings from previous step), edit /usr/share/gdm/greeter/applications/gnome-shell.desktop and change the line "Exec=gnome-shell --mode=gdm" to "Exec=env COGL_DRIVER=gl COGL_OVERRIDE_GL_VERSION=1.4 COGL_RENDERER=GLX LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/fglrx/fglrx-libGL.so.1.2 gnome-shell --mode=gdm".
   Please note that this part is not perfect - if gdm update will arrive, it will overwrite this file and break gdm again. So you'll have to redo this change after gdm update. Of course, there are other ways of doing this like applying this change every startup but it's still annoying. If anyone knows how to apply this fix in a better way - e.g. some xinitrc-type script that gdm executes before running gnome-shell.desktop that won't be overwritten during update - please kindly tell me! Something along of creating new type of DM session (similar to /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/gdm-shell.session) and changing session type in /usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults might work, but I'm unsure how reliable this is

[bulgakov]

Hi,

Binary patching the libraries does not work on "libglx.so" anymore. GDM crashes in Fedora 21 with the latest version of fglrx driver (Catalyst 15.7). Lightdm works though. It seems that there are some people reporting similar behavior on the blog post of the original author of the workaround:

http://oliverchang.github.io/2014/12...ent-2149837091

Has anybody faced the same problem?

[mikee]

I have 15.7 running on Fedora 22 after applying a patch for the 4.0.x kernels.. I don't recall where I found the patch.
I use lightdm and gnomeshell runs. I have not tried gdm. I know of at least one progam now (stellarium) that hangs
the computer with fglrx

[bulgakov]

Hi mikee,

I updated my system to Fedora 22 and I can confirm that the latest driver (Catalyst 15.7) works with LightDM and Gnome Shell. However, GDM does not work.

For those interested, following steps 5 to 7 did not work for me, that is, I have not applied the patches to fglrx_drv.so and libglx.so (only fglrx_drv.so contains "/proc/%i/fd/0") nor I have created the file cogl-setup.sh. Gnome Shell works fine too without altering gnome-shell.desktop file.

If somebody manages to make GDM work, please let us know