Building restricted drivers for XBMCbuntu

The simpler approach to build and install the restricted drivers is to run the driver installer on XBMCbuntu. The installer will take care of all installations and modify the config files accordingly.

However, this requires that a full build environment has to be available on the system, while the default XBMCbuntu build does not have the required packages for sake of being as much compact as possible.

As several users have experienced, a full build environment requires around 1 GB of space, and the XBMCbuntu permanent storage file can be filled up quite easily.

The following procedures are intended to tackle this issue; it has side effects and limitations but once you have a fully working build environment it does not have major disadvantages (IMHO).

Building NVIDIA video drivers

 * Method 1: build drivers on XBMCbuntu

NB. You have to have a LARGE persistent storage file for this, around 1 GB, or the process will not complete due to insufficient disk space.

Install the required packages:

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r)

then cd where the installer package is saved and run it:

$ sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run

Update : 185.18 drivers do not install properly using this method. The restricted img must be emptied so as to not conflict. Do the following;

$ mkdir /home/xbmc/temp $ sudo cp /.bootMedia/restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img /.bootMedia/restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img.backup $ sudo mount -o loop /.bootMedia/restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img /home/xbmc/temp $ sudo rm -Rf /home/xbmc/temp/ $ sudo umount /home/xbmc/temp

Reboot

$ sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run

If this does not work for some reason you can rollback the change by putting the usb stick in another machine and copying the backup back to the original filename


 * Method 2: build drivers in MIC

Assuming you have created a target in MIC for the creation of the XBMCbuntu image, you need to create a new target having all the necessary development tools ON THE SAME PLATFORM, so that the build target has the same system components as the XBMCbuntu target.

Once done, copy the driver installer script onto the target and perform the following steps in a chrooted terminal on the build target (ignore the error from mv):

$ sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run --extract-only $ cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1 $ mv * usr/bin $ pushd. Now a few symlinks need to be created in a few library directories:

$ cd usr/lib

$ ln -s libcuda.so.* libcuda.so.1 $ ln -s libGLcore.so.* libGLcore.so.1 $ ln -s libGL.so.* libGL.so.1 $ ln -s libnvidia-cfg.so.* libnvidia-cfg.so.1 $ ln -s libnvidia-tls.so.* libnvidia-tls.so.1 $ ln -s libvdpau_nvidia.so.* libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 $ ln -s libvdpau.so.* libvdpau.so.1 $ ln -s libvdpau_trace.so.* libvdpau_trace.so.1 $ ln -s libcuda.so.1 libcuda.so $ ln -s libGLcore.so.1 libGLcore.so $ ln -s libGL.so.1 libGL.so $ ln -s libnvidia-cfg.so.1 libnvidia-cfg.so $ ln -s libnvidia-tls.so.1 libnvidia-tls.so $ ln -s libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 libvdpau_nvidia.so $ ln -s libvdpau.so.1 libvdpau.so $ ln -s libvdpau_trace.so.1 libvdpau_trace.so $ popd $ pushd. $ cd usr/lib/tls

$ ln -s libnvidia-tls.so.* libnvidia-tls.so.1 $ ln -s libnvidia-tls.so.1 libnvidia-tls.so

Some files need to be moved to their appropriate place for Ubuntu:

$ popd $ pushd. $ cd usr $ mkdir lib/xorg $ mv X11R6/lib/* lib/xorg

and again some symlinks are to be created:

$ cd lib/xorg

$ ln -s libXvMCNVIDIA.so.* libXvMCNVIDIA.so.1 $ ln -s libXvMCNVIDIA.so.1 libXvMCNVIDIA.so

$ cd modules $ ln -s libnvidia-wfb.so.* libnvidia-wfb.so.1 $ ln -s libnvidia-wfb.so.1 libnvidia-wfb.so

$ cd extensions

$ ln -s libglx.so.* libglx.so.1 $ ln -s libglx.so.1 libglx.so

Then, the kernel module needs to be compiled:

$ popd $ pushd. $ cd usr/src/nv $ make SYSSRC=/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-11-generic module $ cp nvidia.ko /tmp $ rm *.o *.ko $ popd

$ mkdir -p lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/updates/dkms $ cp /tmp/nvidia.ko lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/updates/dkms $ cd ..

Create a new loopfile of a reasonable size (80 MB should work) with:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img bs=1M count=80 $ mkfs.ext3 restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img -F

and populate it by mounting the image file and copying all the files above:

$ mkdir Image $ mount -o loop restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img Image $ cp -RP NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1/* Image $ umount Image

There is however a final step, ie. having the new module automatically loaded. For this we need to have an updated modules.dep inside the restrictedDrivers.nvidia.img. My way of doing it is to boot XBMCbuntu with NVIDIA drivers in safe mode, run a "sudo depmod -a" and copy the resulting /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/modules.dep (and /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/modules.dep.bin if there) over to the same location in build environment again, and reiterate the population of the .img file.

Installing driver from repositories
Certainly less involved and is up-to-date with all Ubuntu variants that are still supported, If you have a EOL Ubuntu or variant repositories may not have the driver your looking for. Its a more reliable, faster to install and works well.


 * see also: XBMCbuntu

Building ATI/AMD video drivers

 * Method 1: build drivers on XBMCbuntu

NB. You have to have a LARGE persistent storage file for this, around 1 GB, or the process will not complete due to insufficient disk space.

Install the required packages:

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r)

then cd where the installer package is saved and build the driver packages:

$ sh ati-driver-installer-9-1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/hardy

Finally install the packages:

$ sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb fglrx-kernel-source_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

and create a default initial configuration with:

$ sudo aticonfig --initial -f


 * Method 2: build drivers in MIC

Assuming you have created a target in MIC for the creation of the XBMCbuntu image, you need to create a new target having all the necessary development tools ON THE SAME PLATFORM, so that the build target has the same system components as the XBMCbuntu target.

Once done, copy the driver installer script onto the target and perform the following steps in a chrooted terminal on the build target:

$ mkdir Files $ sh ./ati-driver-installer-9-1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/intrepid $ dpkg-deb -x fglrx-amdcccle_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files $ dpkg-deb -x fglrx-kernel-source_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files $ dpkg-deb -x fglrx-modaliases_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files $ dpkg-deb -x libamdxvba1_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files $ dpkg-deb -x xorg-driver-fglrx_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files $ dpkg-deb -x xorg-driver-fglrx-dev_8.573-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Files

You have now all the files needed in the "Files" directory, minus the kernel module. In order to create the kernel module we are going to build it manually:

$ cd ./Files $ pushd. $ cd usr/src/fglrx-8.573/ $ ./make.sh --uname_r 2.6.27-11-generic $ cp 2.6.x/fglrx.ko /tmp $ cd 2.6.x $ make clean $ popd $ mkdir -p lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/updates/dkms $ cp /tmp/fglrx.ko lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/updates/dkms $ cd ..

You can now create a new loopfile of a reasonable size (80 MB should work) with:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=restrictedDrivers.amd.img bs=1M count=80 $ mkfs.ext3 restrictedDrivers.amd.img -F

and populate it by mounting the image file and copying all the files above:

$ mkdir Image $ mount -o loop restrictedDrivers.amd.img Image $ cp -RP Files/* Image $ umount Image

There is however a final step, ie. having the new module automatically loaded. For this we need to have an updated modules.dep inside the restrictedDrivers.amd.img. My way of doing it is to boot XBMCbuntu with AMD drivers in safe mode, run a "sudo depmod -a" and copy the resulting /lib/modules/2.6.2X-yy-generic/modules.dep (and /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/modules.dep.bin if there) over to the same location in build environment again, and reiterate the population of the .img file.