[5897] in Release_7.7_team
issues with Dell hardware and ATI display drivers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (andrew m. boardman)
Wed Dec 26 16:03:35 2007
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:02:58 -0500
Message-Id: <200712262102.lBQL2wqM008017@pothole.mit.edu>
From: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
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The last few rounds of display drivers from ATI all have significant
problems. Unfortunately, our newish cluster Dell machines are fairly
useless without them. What they provide:
- latest: doesn't work at 1680x1050 (required for cluster monitors)
- latest-1: server won't exit properly
- latest-2: doesn't work on gx755 hardware (this is what's in 9.4.43)
Currently the 9.4.45 config directory has a hackish setup that installs
the latest kernel module and the latest-1 X drivers; this loses 3d
hardware acceleration but otherwise works.
For 9.4.46, I'm inclined to go back to the latest-2 driver, which gets
hardware acceleration back on the cluster machines, and hope for
something new and un-suckful from AMD/ATI soon.
Alternative #1: stick with the weird split setup. ("Hackish, looks good,
goes slow.")
Alternative #2: use latest-1 and modify dm to kill the server properly.
("Everything works, more work for us.")
Note that we don't actually need a new release in order to deploy new
drivers (they're recopied at boot time), but redeploying them mid-release
could be a bit of a support headache.
