Posts Tagged ‘testing’

There are two  processes to installing ATI proprietary drivers the hard way Debian Squeeze is similar to what is done to enable nVidia drivers. I call this the hard way because there are a lot steps and it requires pulling packages from unstable and compiling the module with module assistant. The hard way has not always worked for me. The easy way is installing the driver provided by ATI themselves.

THE HARD WAY

The first thing to do is to enable the unstable repositories to your /etc/apt/source.list:

# UNSTABLE
deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

Now run aptitude update then you need to set the priorities of your repositories so that apt-get upgrade does not default to unstable by editing /etc/apt/prefernces:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

Now it is time to install the components needed for fglrx (ATI Driver) from unstable (as root):

aptitude -t unstable install fglrx-source

The next step is to make sure module assistant is installed from testing/squeeze and create the module(as root):

aptitude install module-assistant

m-a a-i fglrx

Once that is completed configure Xorg. Assuming you are in X, switch to a new terminal by pressing ALT-CTL FX (where FX represents f1 – f12) and implement the new driver.

Login as root:

invoke-rc.d gdm stop

once that is done create the xorg.conf file

Xorg -config

now edit /root/new.config.org and replace the display device from radeonhd to fglrx. As mentioned above I have had mixed resolts with this method. Sometimes it seems to work sometimes it doesnt. However, downloading directly from ATI seems to always do the trick.

THE EASY WAY

download the appropriate file from here. Then you need to make sure it is exacutible and install from terminal:

chmod +x (filenamehere)

as root:

./(filenamehere)

this will pop up an automated install script to follow and once dead you should simply need to reboot you computer.

Make sure sources are enabled and you have contrib and non-free enabled in /etc/apt/srouces.list and include the unstable branch with squeeze.

deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

# UNSTABLE
deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

Now update apt.

as root:

echo ‘APT::Default-Release “testing”;’ >/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00defaultrelease

aptitude module-assistant linux-source-2.6.30

apt-get -t unstable install fglrx-control fglrx-driver fglrx-source

m-a a-i fglrx

aticonfig –initial

restart X or reboot system

Might work on lenny and/or 64bit variations

NOTE: These instruction apply to the 2.6.32-2 kernels

Make sure sources are enabled and you have contrib and non-free enabled in /etc/apt/srouces.list and include the unstable branch with squeeze.

deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

# UNSTABLE
deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

as root edit /etc/apt/prefernces and add:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

as root:

aptitude install nvidia-kernel-source/unstable

aptitude install module-assistant

m-a prepare

m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source

aptitude -t unstable install nvidia-glx nvidia-libvdpau1 nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

OPTIONAL: remove or quote out the unstable/sid entry in /etc/apt/source.list and run apt-get update

as root

nvidia-xconfig
mv /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Start or restart Xorg (might require reboot)

Squeeze is the current testing branch of Debian. It does not have the stability of Lenny, but has more updated packages. However, what It is my experience, that what Debian calls testing, is considered stable in other distributions (e.g Ubuntu). Packages are updated more frequently and minor breakage is a possibility. With this in mind, upgrading to Squeeze is relatively easy.

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace instances of lennys with squeeze, except your security patches. Check information for availability of squeeze with any third party repositories.

Now the fun begins (as root)

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude
sudo aptitude full-upgrade

Enjoy!