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Date:      Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:22:22 -0400
From:      Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>
To:        Norberto Meijome <freebsd@meijome.net>
Cc:        freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Anyone using thinkpad R series?
Message-ID:  <rmivengxchd.fsf@fnord.ir.bbn.com>
In-Reply-To: <20060920235022.110239cb@localhost> (Norberto Meijome's message of "Wed\, 20 Sep 2006 23\:50\:22 %2B1000")
References:  <450F137F.6060000@dougbarton.us> <rmi3bam1yuk.fsf@fnord.ir.bbn.com> <20060920235022.110239cb@localhost>
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Norberto Meijome <freebsd@meijome.net> writes:

> really?! wow.. where where where :)

Here's the (on a public list) message:


  From: Brian de Alwis <bsd@cs.ubc.ca>
  Subject: ATI Proprietary driver on X11 and NetBSD (was Re: Thinkpad T60 mostly works - trouble with wm(4))
  To: Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>
  Cc: port-i386@NetBSD.org
  Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:36:52 -0700

  > Someone (who I won't name unless they want to speak up
  > in public) tells me they have a binary ATI driver working; they and I
  > hope to get that into pkgsrc.

  Well that'd be me.  And as I am on a hard paper deadline and then
  travelling (not to mention that this was surprisingly easy), I'll
  post what I've figured out so far.  Basically, it's possible to
  get multi-screen/dual-head working using the XFree86 4.5.0 bundled
  with NetBSD.  Haven't looked at the OpenGL or XVideo.


  This was prompted by a FreeBSD port of an older set of the ATI
  drivers by Chris Gilbert.  Looking through it, I realized that the
  port involved only recompiling the user-land components, and that
  he was able to use the ATI binary drivers as is.  He is currently
  working on porting the kernel driver, though that's only appears
  to be necessary for 3D.

  So I fetched the latest ATI drivers (8.27.10) from

      www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-8.27.10-x86.run

  and extracted them:

      ./ati-driver-installer-8.27.10-x86.run --extract /var/tmp/ati-driver

  This includes drivers for
    * XFree86 4.3.0 and later (in .../x430/)
    * X.Org 6.8.0 (x680/)
    * X.Org 6.9.0 (x690/)
    * X.Org 7.1.0 (x710/)
  There are some helper programs in arch/x86/usr/X11R6/bin, particularly
  aticonfig.

  As I have the stock XFree86 4.5.0 provided with NetBSD, I then did:
      cp x430/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o \
          /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/
      cp x430/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux/libfglrxdrm.a \
          /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/

  Surprisingly, with an appropriately configured XF86Config, that's
  enough to get it working.

  You can use the aticonfig program to process and setup your XF86Config
  file.  It does a mostly nice job.  Basically all you need is a
  device section as follows:

      Section "Device"
              Identifier  "fglrx0"
              BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
              Driver      "fglrx"
              VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
              BoardName   "firegl"

              Option      "VideoOverlay" "on"
              Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
              Option "EnablePrivateBackZ" "yes"
              Option "no_dri" "on"
              # Need to have SWCursor on to enable a real cursor on screen1,
              # but leaves mouse turds on screen0.  Unfortunately can't
              # configure to only use software cursor on driver 2. Sigh.
              #Option "SWCursor" "on"
      EndSection

  Apparently XVideo support is only available for the X.Org drivers.
  I haven't installed X.Org to try yet.

  You can play with ServerLayouts to try Dual-Head with Xinerama, or
  setting up Multiple Screens.  I found I needed to toggle back to
  to the console VT at least once for it to pick up the second monitor.
  I've appended my XF86Config with two working layouts here.  Note
  that this doesn't work perfectly:

    * without the SWCursor option, the cursor doesn't appear on the
      second screen;

    * with the SWCursor option, the mouse leaves little turds on both
      screens.

  This is a known problem under Linux too, and is apparently fixed
  by using the kernel module.

  I found in my exploration that it was easy to get to a hosed state
  where you are flying blind.  If you want to play with this, I'd
  suggest having some way to restore your video; I saved a known
  working XF86Config file somewhere and then set up a little script
  to use it:

      #!/bin/sh
      X -xf86config /etc/X11/XF86Config.reset vt02 -nolisten tcp "$@"

  Some useful sites:

      http://debian.wgdd.de/temp/fglrx_man/fglrx.4x.html
      http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Monitors#With_the_proprietary_binary_d
  river
      http://ati.cchtml.com

  Brian.

  -- 
  Brian de Alwis | Software Practices Lab | UBC | http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~bsd/
    "Amusement to an observing mind is study." - Benjamin Disraeli

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