fglrx has support for powerXpress, aka switching from integrated intel card to the dedicated AMD one and viceversa. An xorg restart is needed. Additional symlinks are needed to make it working. I'll soon attach an experimental ebuild to do it. For the record i found a list of symlinks to be done here https://lists.launchpad.net/hybrid-graphics-linux/msg00714.html Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 272435 [details] EXPERIMENTAL ati-drivers ebuild with powerXpress symlinks note this is totally UNTESTED couse i don't own the hardware to test with. My laptop has the IGP disabled by factory, so use at your own risk. Any help is appreciated of course. @x11 team: if you have suggestions about ebuild polishing it is, of couse, more then welcome. the procedure to switch should be like that: 1 - install this experimental ati-drivers ebuild 2 - set opengl to ati with eselect opengl set ati 3 - make an xorg.conf with only the fglrx entry, a good way to do this is to remove the previous one and use aticonfig --initial. the intel driver section *must NOT* be present as i understand 4 - reboot the system (fglrx is fragile ;) ). of course be sure radeon kernel module is not loaded! 5 - start xorg and check the driver is working. by default you are using the AMD card 6 - run aticonfig --px-igpu to switch to the integrated graphic card, restart xorg 7 - run aticonfig --px-dgpu to switch back to the AMD card and restart xorg to check which card are you running on use aticonfig --pxl. If the ebuild doesn't work pls attach /var/log/Xorg.0.log and the output of ls -l /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/ and the output of ls -l /usr/lib/libGL*
OK, just a suggestion: wouldn't it be possible to make gentoo tools control this? something like: eselect opengl set ati --> ati support eselect opengl set ati-ati --> ati support (i think we can suppress this one, but just to have the ideia) eselect opengl set ati-intel --> ati's intel support. but probably this would be more of a eselect thing that an ebuild's thing. (IMHO, the right thing to do)
It would be nice, but you must use aticonfig to switch the graphics as far as i understand. I don't think simply switching the GL lib will do the trick. Again i can't test since i don't have the hardware, but any feedback is welcome
from the tests I made, the checks are made to the link itself (if it points to a fglrx libgl or to a mesa libgl). But they *need* to be those links and nothing else afaik :/
This might lead to a mod on eselect opengl, but it would not be easy. And in any case before doing that i need to be sure of what aticonfig wants and needs to make the switch. Thank you :)
ati-drivers-11.5 is in x11 overlay. I added the same symlinks also there since for normal use (without powerXpress) it is still working for me. Likely more symlinks are needed but i need some user testing
ati-drivers-11.9 has just been uploaded in X11 overlay. Finally it should have proper PowerXpress support. This support is based on this forum post https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6748306.html?sid=789ed92ff252599668e53fbbcaf8b936#6748306 . I want to thanks gdbalbuzard for this work and chickpea ( see commentshere https://bugs.sabayon.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2210 ) for pointing this out. The symlinks done with ati-drivers-11.5 are removed since they should not be needed anymore couse eselect is used. As i already said i don't have the hardware to test on, so if something is wrong please comment here, or open another bug blocking this one.
Well this is in portage now. I close this as resolved fixed. Enjoy
Solution (ait-drivers-11.9) in portage does not work. switchlibglx should not be a symlink. Driver checks write permissions on this file and it fails. This prevent X to start. switchlibglx must not be writeable for group and others.
Created attachment 289875 [details] Faster implementation of switchlibGL Original switchlibGL in portage is VERY slow and it is executed twice. Faster solution for this should be to ask eselect before changing opengl implementation. If everything is correct, do nothing. switchlibglx should by copy (not symlink) of this switchlibGL file
Thank you very much for the report. I just uploaded ati-drivers-11.9-r1.ebuild to X11 overlay. Can you try it please? Needless to say, if you have some patch to speedup eselect it is really welcome :) Cheers
