battling fglrx
Posted by ark, ,
There were new dns exploits around and when I ran apt-get dist-upgrade it had some bind and ssl packages in the list so I thought it would be important to do the upgrade. It also upgraded my kernel which I think is where the problems started.

Then my xbmc started being really slow. Like 1 frame a second slow. Of course vlc was just fine. fglrxinfo reported the Mesa drivers which meant I wasn't getting hardware video acceleration like I should be. What followed was a long list of frustration and I'm going to document what's working in the hope that when this happens again I'll be able to get it working quicker. Let it be known. I barely understand what half of these commands do but in the end I got it working.
$dpkg -l '*fglrx*'
# then remove all of them
$rmmod fglrx intel_agp agpgart
$depmod -a
$ls -l /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
# remove it if it's there
$apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r)
$apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx-envy
$Xorg
$glxinfo | fgrep -i dir
direct rendering: Yes
$fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X300/X550/X1050 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7659 Release
$glxgears
7921 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1584.096 FPS
7855 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1570.389 FPS
7796 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1559.176 FPS
$fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
1871 frames in 5.0 seconds = 374.200 FPS
1971 frames in 5.0 seconds = 394.200 FPS
2018 frames in 5.0 seconds = 403.600 FPS
2005 frames in 5.0 seconds = 401.000 FPS
I also found out that my mceusb2 lirc remote receiver can look for more than one remote at a time. I found the TIVO_Series_1 worked great and now I can move on to stage 2 of my control. I plan to have a small python script looking at the output of irw and when it detects the xbmc remote it will switch the receiver on and change inputs on the video switch. When it sees the tivo remote it'll switch everything back. I need to work out the secret url's to hit to control the destiny networks d3k (which controls the receiver and video switch) so I'll have to fire up a windows machine to do that (it's internet explorer only). If I get the lirc dongle to emit IR then I can avoid much of the d3k which will suit me just fine.

I also got spdif out working so now I have dolby surround sound in the movies I watch. I was expecting trouble, but it really was as easy as connecting the cable and changing audio output to be digital. Awesome! We're really close to a pretty good working system. After all that, Mame is next on the list!

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