Fix the build problem with ATI drivers on Ubuntu/Gutsy

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The later “Catalyst” version of the ATI proprietary drivers, 8.2 (8.45.5), 8.1 (8.45.2), and 7.11 (8.43.3) do not have this problem, so this page is now obsolete.

The previous non-Catalyst version, 8.42.3, solved a long-standing problem with the ATI proprietary drivers for the first time: not being able to run Compiz or Beryl easily because of lack of support for compositing.

The driver packages, for all versions, allow you to build .deb packages for a variety of distributions, including Ubuntu/gutsy, like this:

$ sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy

Unfortunately, on x86_64 (aka amd64), building the 8.42.3 package failed with an error message about missing files in X11R6/lib:

# amd64 needs some library redirection

[snip]

dh_install -pxorg-driver-fglrx "usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri"     "usr/lib32"
cp: cannot stat `./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri': No such file or directory
dh_install: command returned error code 256
make: *** [binary] Error 1
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.E10832

The problem was that ATI's build script looked for some 32-bit libraries, common to both the 64bit and 32bit drivers, in the wrong place.

Solution

The solution is very easy, you just do the following:

  • Extract the package
  • Copy missing files to their correct location
  • Build the package

Assuming that you've downloaded the package into the “current” directory, all you do is:

$ bash ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run --extract ati-driver
$ cd ati-driver
$ cp -r arch/x86/usr/X11R6/lib arch/x86_64/usr/X11R6/
$ ./packages/Ubuntu/ati-packager.sh --buildpkg gutsy

The packages should build correctly.

After doing this, I was able to install the packages and follow this guide to get Compiz working on Ubuntu/gutsy on an Athlon64 with an ATI X1550.

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3 Comments

you could do a symlink insted of copying the libs directory and that would work fine too :)

Hi Mauro,

I seem to remember that I tried that first and it didn't work, but I can't be sure now: it was such a long time ago.

Emmet.

it helped me in fixing my problems
thanks