Re: AMD Graphics on Debian 7.4

[ray <ray@aarden.us>]

> Would it be worth just trying installing multiarch?  With one of the 
> apt family.  (I use aptitude).  I agree that it is not obviously 

# apt-get install multiarch
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package multiarch

https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/Implementation says:
  Using multiarch

  "To enable the installation of multiarch binaries, apt and dpkg need   configuration changes. For example, if you have an amd64 system that you want to install i386 libraries onto, do the following:

  multiarch support is present from dpkg 1.16.2 (or 1.16.0 in Ubuntu) and apt 0.8.13.

  run dpkg --add-architecture i386

  run apt-get update to refresh the package cache with the newly added architecture" 

This seems to only provide for dpkg multiarch awareness and not the implementation.  From the above referenced webpage, it looks like the packages (Catalyst) must be built to use this.

Just for record, https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/Bootstrapping addresses how to assemble multiarch awareness but all the content was produced 3 years ago and appears to no longer be needed due to Debain maturation.
https://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary#wheezy
I updated to:

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

Ran:aptitude update

with no errors,
and:
aptitude -r install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') fglrx-driver

which ran without error except for the initial emission:
No candidate version found for fglrx-driver
No candidate version found for fglrx-driver
So I tried:
# apt-get install fglrx-modules-dkms
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package fglrx-modules-dkms


Similarly,
# apt-get install fglrx-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package fglrx-driver is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'fglrx-driver' has no installation candidate

I did see a reference to i386 files on http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Debian:
# sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-radeon
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  hyphen-en-us libfs6 x11-apps x11-session-utils x11-xfs-utils xinit xorg
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  task-desktop* task-gnome-desktop* xserver-xorg-video-all*
  xserver-xorg-video-ati* xserver-xorg-video-radeon*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 5 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 1,998 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 137565 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing task-gnome-desktop ...
Removing task-desktop ...
Removing xserver-xorg-video-all ...
Removing xserver-xorg-video-ati ...
Removing xserver-xorg-video-radeon ...
Purging configuration files for xserver-xorg-video-radeon ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...

And followed this up with:
sudo apt-get install fglrx-driver fglrx-control fglrx-glx fglrx-atieventsd fglrx-modules-dkms

which produced:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package fglrx-glx is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package fglrx-driver is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'fglrx-driver' has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package fglrx-control
E: Package 'fglrx-glx' has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package fglrx-atieventsd
E: Unable to locate package fglrx-modules-dkms

>From the same site, to get ia32 libraries:
sudo apt-get install fglrx-glx-ia32
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package fglrx-glx-ia32 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'fglrx-glx-ia32' has no installation candidate

It looks like there is a challenge with doing something with fglrx.

Am I missing something here?

I found an alternative at:  https://wiki.debian.org/Installing_ATI_fglrx_legacy_with_latest_kernel

This is a year old but it addressing building the driver package.  Is there any problem with this approach?

Thanks for all the input,
Ray







Ray