AMD Unsupported hardware watermark

[mrchilly0]

I just installed 4.1_64 I have an X1600 card in my laptop. I didn't see any errors during the world upgrade, but now when I log in, I have an AMD Unsupported Hardware watermard in the bottom right hand corner.
Has anyone else experienced this? Anyone have a clue on how to get rid of it?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Haven't seen this myself, but I expect it's due to the new AMD ATI Catalyst 9.4 driver. I have a Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU in my laptop and, like you, the new Catalyst 9.4 driver does not support it, as AMD has decided to stop support of older GPUs in the new driver. You can see the list of supported AMD ATI GPUs in the release notes for the Catalyst 9.4 driver over on the AMD Web site. The solution would be to install the Catalyst 9.3 driver (x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.593-r10). The ati-drivers-8.600-r10 package in the SL SVN repository pulls in the alpha Catalyst 9.4 driver from an Ubuntu repository, as Ubuntu seems to get the fglrx alpha drivers first these days.

[brokenpike]

I got the watermark during 4.1 KDE 64 installation.
Toshiba L305d s5895 TL-60 (notebook) processor, ati graphics

Ubunt 9.04 and Sidux both install without issue.

Cheers

[Fitzcarraldo]

Which version of the AMD Catalyst for Linux (a.k.a. fglrx) driver have you got installed? You can check using the command equo search ati-drivers if you are an Entropy user.

I've just had a look at the Press Release for SL 4.1 KDE, specifically the Sabayon Linux x86-64 4.1 Packages in that Press Release, and the Entropy version of the AMD Catalyst for Linux (a.k.a. fglrx) driver is x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.593-r11#2.6.29-sabayon, which is the Catalyst 9.3 driver and thus should support the older AMD GPUs that have been excluded in the new Catalyst 9.4 driver. A bit of Googling threw up the following:

AMD "Unsupported Hardware" On Linux
Posted by Michael Larabel on July 25, 2007
With the fglrx 8.39.4 driver (or newer), there's a chance you may run into a watermark (similar to the AMD testing watermark) saying that your hardware is unsupported when in fact it is supported. If you run into this unsupported hardware watermark, it's likely that /etc/ati/control is missing. If that's the case for you, try reinstalling the driver or manually copying the control file. The driver contents can be extracted using the --extract argument and the control file is located in common/etc/ati/. If you experience this problem, create a thread in the Phoronix Forums with what distribution you are using and how you had installed the driver initially (and whether adding the control file had removed the watermark).

So have a look to see if the binary file /etc/ati/control is missing. I have it, but then I installed the driver using Portage, not Entropy so do not have the same setup as you:

Code: Select all

acertm8215 fitzcarraldo # locate /etc/ati/control
/etc/ati/control
acertm8215 fitzcarraldo #

Another difference is that I built the driver using the Portage ebuild ati-drivers-8.593-r10, with the 2.6.29 kernel, whereas you presumably have installed the driver ati-drivers-8.593-r11#2.6.29-sabayon pre-packaged for Entropy. The latter was built by one of the SL developers using the ebuild ati-drivers-8.593-r11 in the SL ebuild repository. I notice that the difference between these two ebuilds is:

Code: Select all

acertm8215 ati # diff /usr/local/portage/layman/sabayon/x11-drivers/ati-drivers/ati-drivers-8.593-r10.ebuild /usr/local/portage/layman/sabayon/x11-drivers/ati-drivers/ati-drivers-8.593-r11.ebuild
133c133
<                 epatch "${FILESDIR}"/8.600/${PN}-8.600-acpica-2.6.29.patch
---
>                 epatch "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-2.6.29.patch
acertm8215 ati #

I believe the 8.593-r10 version of the driver for the 2.6.29 kernel is not in the Entropy repository, so you could try installing that version via Portage instead of Entropy:

Code: Select all

emerge --sync
layman -S
emerge -1v =ati-drivers-8.593-r10

To reiterate, ati-drivers-8.593-r10 installed under the SL 2.6.29 kernel via the Portage package manager does not exhibit the AMD watermark problem on my laptop with an ATI GPU, so you could try installing that until the developers investigate and find out why the Entropy package ati-drivers-8.593-r11#2.6.29-sabayon is not installing the binary file /etc/ati/control.

Oh, and please file a bug report for this. To do so, click on the link Bugs in the list of links in the top right of this SL Forum page.

[balliet]

I recently upgrades to kernel 2.6.29 and the "AMD Unsupported Hardware"watermark is now present. I overcame the problem when I had it during the Gnome/KDE LiveDVDs. I have tried all the suggestions for overcoming this watermark and none of them have worked for me. I have submitted and updated a bug report as I know that this is a new problem related to the ati-driver implementation. Over the past two years I have had no video related problems, so I am sure something has changed for the worse as ATI has stopped active support for what they are calling legacy gpu boards.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I have tried all the suggestions for overcoming this watermark and none of them have worked for me.

Including copying the file control into the directory /etc/ati/?

[balliet]

Including copying the file control into the directory /etc/ati/?

The control file was there, but I still got the watermark.

In mid -May the watermark mysteriously disappeared following a reboot. I did nothing to make it go away that I was aware of. Two days ago I lost a hard drive and had to rebuild my system, so now the watermark is back with the 2.6.29 kernel. I will try all the suggestions again and hopefully it will mysteriously disappear again just like it did before.

Problems like this just make life enjoyable as retirement gives plenty of free time for problem resolution.

Balliet

[Fitzcarraldo]

Curious, because I'm still using the 2.6.29 Sabayon kernel with the fglrx (AMD Catalyst) 9.3 driver, specifically ati-drivers-8.593-r10, and still don't have any problem.

Which specific version of SL did you install last time? Was it SL 4.1 GNOME version (which comes with ati-drivers-8.593-r10 and the 2.6.29 kernel) or the SL 4.1 KDE version (which comes with ati-drivers-8.593-r11 and the 2.6.29 kernel)? Below are the differences between the two ebuilds:

Code: Select all

$ diff ati-drivers-8.593-r10.ebuild ati-drivers-8.593-r11.ebuild
133c133
<                 epatch "${FILESDIR}"/8.600/${PN}-8.600-acpica-2.6.29.patch
---
>                 epatch "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-2.6.29.patch
457c457
<       /usr/bin/eselect opengl set xorg-x11
---
>       /usr/bin/eselect opengl set --use-old xorg-x11

If you installed from the SL 4.1 KDE LiveDVD, have you tried installing using Portage the 8.593-r10 (or earlier) version of the driver to see if it gets rid of the problem?

[balliet]

I just installed ati-drivers-8.593-r10 and the watermark problem is gone. I hesitated doing this for the old problem of flickering videos--including gooleearth-- had been fixed. I did not know if the upgrade of the kernel or X11 or something else was the fix, but with the flickering problem resolved I was willing to have the watermark be shown.

When I rebuilt my system I installed sl 4.0 r1 and did all the upgrading procedures get to the most current system, as I like to use KDE, gnome, and e17 rather than just one desktop manager.

Thanks much.

Balliet

[Fitzcarraldo]

I just installed ati-drivers-8.593-r10 and the watermark problem is gone.

Thanks much.

You're welcome. Glad you got it working.

BTW, the flickering video problem was fixed by AMD in the Catalyst 9.3 driver (which is what ati-drivers-8.593-r10 in the Sabayon overlay installs), as confirmed in the following Phoronix article and video: AMD Catalyst 9.3 For Linux Brings OpenGL Composite Support.