ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

Enunes · 2009-08-06 06:21:18

Hi,

my current notebook has an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 card. My computer is an (old) HP nc8430. ATI dropped support for that card a few months ago so I can't install newer proprietary drivers from ATI. The catalyst-old driver from AUR is the last proprietary driver package which will support my card, however it doesn't seem to support newer kernel and xorg.

I am currently using the xf86-video-ati open source driver but unfortunately it doesn't fit my needs. Neither do the radeonhd driver. I can't run heavier graphics applications on them and I do some bedroom code using OpenGL so I would greatly appreciate if I could put catalyst-old to work. That is, if I can't put it to work, I will probably be prevented of doing my stuff for >year when I will be able to get a new computer.

The package dependencies are:
catalyst-old: catalyst-utils-old>=9.3 kernel26>=2.6.29 kernel26<2.6.30
catalyst-utils-old: fontconfig gcc-libs libsm libstdc++5 libxcursor libxi libxrandr netkit-bsd-finger xorg-server<1.6.0

I currently have:

[erico@hp ~]$ Xorg -version

X.Org X Server 1.6.3
Release Date: 2009-7-31
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.30-ARCH i686 
Current Operating System: Linux hp 2.6.30-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 31 18:10:38 UTC 2009 i686
Build Date: 03 August 2009  08:45:00PM

Might be needless to say, but attempting to makepkg catalyst-utils-old complains that I don't hit xorg-server<1.6.0 dependency.
I know keeping kernel/xorg from upgrading might not be a good idea, but I'm willing to try it.
I have had catalyst-old working on a past installation, and my computer didn't seem to have any issues with that kernel version. (I stopped performing system upgrades cuz those dependencies wouldn't allow me, though).

1) What are somewhat the chances it will break my system?
2) Is there a way to prevent those packages from updating when I want to perform a full system upgrade? In the same sense, I would want a full upgrade check to ignore the kernel packages.
3) Is there a way to safely downgrade my kernel and xorg by, say, pacman?
4) Do Archlinux repositories still contain older versions of such packages, or I would have to download them from, say, source, and build them myself?

I never performed kernel downgrade myself. It seems daunting to me. I ask for guidance in that process, starting by those questions.

Thank you in advance!

djszapi · 2009-08-08 01:03:47

Welcome to the forum, Enunes!

Did you read this ?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade_packages

You can see here older packages:
http://arm.kh.nu/

DonVla · 2009-08-08 01:42:59

hi Enunes,

pkgman has a metapackage function which may be helpful:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 64#p588564
it´s useful when trying to downgrade packages. it grabs older packages from the site djszabi mentioned and moves them to a local repository you have to set up (-> wiki) - then you can smoothly install all packages with pacman.
though when trying to hold xorg at a specific version maybe you´ll get into (dependency) hell´s kitchen.
on the other hand you figuered out all deps so you can give it a try. you can always revert this...

ps: your questions
1) i guess when doing right it won´t break much. sure you cannot upgrade apps which require a higher xorg version for example.
2) in pacman.conf the "holdpkg" var.
or set up a local repo and put it in the first place in pacman.conf (wiki is again your friend).
that´s the way i am handling this (through pkgman)
3) see above
4) you don´t need to rebuild older official packages. use http://arm.kh.nu/ , though you have to trust this site. i do.
all about pacman: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cat … _(English)
vlad

Last edited by DonVla (2009-08-08 02:06:13)

flamelab · 2009-08-08 02:08:24

Don't try to build catalyst-old. It has serious issues (fglrx 9.3), it needs an old kernel, you also need to install the kernel depended packages, revert your whole system in a situation that will not be easy to handle. You have to downgrade Kernel + deps, Xorg + deps, add appropriate patches.

You'd better stay with xf86-video-ati, or even xf86-video-ati-git which has better performance.

Last edited by flamelab (2009-08-08 02:18:26)

The Avatar of Time · 2009-08-09 10:51:01

Hello,

I have/had a similar situation: I have an ATI X1200 card, which isn't supported by the newer Catalyst drivers. I also had a hell of a time trying to either downgrade the system manually to use an older version of Catalyst from arm.kh.nu or trying to get catalyst-old from AUR working.

My solution probably won't be acceptable to most, since it involves no longer keeping my system up to date with the Arch repos. But since the computer in question's most important role is to be hooked up to a TV, via S-Video, to watch movies, and the xf86-video-ati/radeon wouldn't detect it's S-Video port, it is a good enough solution for me. I'd rather have an outdated system that does what I require than an up to date one that doesn't.

What I did, instead of fighting with dependencies to manually downgrade the system, was to grab the 2009.02 Core installation disc and install the base system. I then edited /etc/pacman.conf and added the core, extra, and community repos from arm.kh.nu of the date 2009-11-2 (same date as the installtion disc). Obviously I commented out the normal core, extra, and community repos in pacman.conf as well.

Then 'pacman -Syu' should declare that your system is up to date. I then installed all the packages I needed, catalyst, xorg, and so on, from the ARM repos I added. So far things are working ok, for the most part. Of course you could use slightly newer repos than I did, up to when catalyst dropped your card. I'll be updating a bit further, but this was a good starting point.

My only real complaint with this method is that I want to run KDE4 and the 4.2 version I installed isn't very good. I'm much more impressed with the current 4.3, which I have running on another computer. I'm hoping to figure out a way to update to KDE4.3 while still keeping the xorg-server, kernel, and catalyst that I require, but that's a post for another thread I think.

Anyway, good luck with your system.

Oh, and on another note, the man that created arm.kh.nu deserves a medal. A very shiny one made of something quite expensive. That/those repos are a godsend.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-06 06:21:18

ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

#2 2009-08-08 01:03:47

Re: ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

#3 2009-08-08 01:42:59

Re: ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

#4 2009-08-08 02:08:24

Re: ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

#5 2009-08-09 10:51:01

Re: ATI catalyst-old - Downgrade guidance

Board footer