Mesa drivers

[Hooten]

Hello, first of all i want to thank MX developers for their awesome os. MX finally stopped my distrohoping habit.

I want to ask you if is it possible to update to a newer Mesa driver version beyond Mesa 13.0.6 , like 18.1.x, and if yes how? Because i was trying to find out in the repos with no luck.

Thank you in advance.

[Stevo]

Stretch-backports currently has 18.1.6. https://packages.debian.org/stretch-bac ... 1-mesa-dev

We have the equivalent in a separate MX 17 Experimental repo when stretch-backports wasn't doing Mesa, and we wanted to keep it out of testing because some users would just update everything from there willy-nilly. But backports looks like your best bet now.

[Hooten]

Stretch-backports currently has 18.1.6. https://packages.debian.org/stretch-bac ... 1-mesa-dev

We have the equivalent in a separate MX 17 Experimental repo when stretch-backports wasn't doing Mesa, and we wanted to keep it out of testing because some users would just update everything from there willy-nilly. But backports looks like your best bet now.

Thanks for the quick respond. I just check in debian backports from MX package installer and there is indeed a newer version. But after i hit the upgrade button and after completion i checked to see if the updated version is installed and it's still the 13.0.6 version in my system. Is something wrong that i do? Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Jerry3904]

Not sure, but you might have to reboot. Then run this command to see the situation.

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inxi -G

[Hooten]

Not sure, but you might have to reboot. Then run this command to see the situation.

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inxi -G

Yes ofcourse i rebooted.
Here's the results:
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Venus PRO [Radeon HD 8850M / R9 M265X] driver: radeon
v: kernel
Display: server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: intel,radeon resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Mobile v: 3.3 Mesa 13.0.6

[Stevo]

Debian backports are configured in a way that makes them not appear as automatic upgrades. If not, your "upgrade" command would have updated everything from backports, hundreds of unrelated packages, which is not the recommended way to use that repo. Try using the backports tab in MX Package Installer, searching for "mesa", and marking for upgrade the packages that are already installed.

[Hooten]

Debian backports are configured in a way that makes them not appear as automatic upgrades. If not, your "upgrade" command would have updated everything from backports, hundreds of unrelated packages, which is not the recommended way to use that repo. Try using the backports tab in MX Package Installer, searching for "mesa", and marking for upgrade the packages that are already installed.

I have done that also with the same result unfortunately. I was trying to uninstall any 13.0.6 mesa driver but it gives me an error.

[Hooten]

Also to mention i've used through synaptic the "forced vesion" for the latest mesa driver version, but nothing changed.

[kmathern]

*** edit #2: please disregard this post and see next post, I found a way to do the Mesa upgrade using MX Package Installer ***

I wasn't able to get MX Package Installer to do the mesa upgrade, I think because it was changed recently (in the last couple months) to ignore packages beginning with 'lib', and basically all the packages in the mesa upgrade are libxxxx packages.

*** edit #1: Just noticed that I missed the "Hide library and developer packages" checkbox in MX Package Installer, with it cleared libxxxxx packages do show up in the search results. ***


These are the packages I upgraded: (note, they don't all include 'mesa' in their packagename, but they were all packages built from the 13.0.6-1+b2 mesa source)

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libegl1-mesa
libgbm1
libgl1-mesa-dri
libgl1-mesa-glx
libglapi-mesa
libgles2-mesa
libwayland-egl1-mesa
libxatracker2

I did the upgrade from the command line. First I editted the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list file with nano to enable the stretch-backports repo. Then updated repos with `apt-get update`. Then ran the following command to upgrade mesa:

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dpkg -l | grep $(dpkg -l | grep libgl1-mesa-dri | awk '{print $3}') | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo apt-get install -t stretch-backports --force-yes -y

Some additional packages also needed to be upgraded or installed, here's the apt-history listing of all the packages upgraded or installed during the mesa upgrade:

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$ apt-history 
2018-09-12 16:24:45 upgrade libxatracker2:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:45 upgrade libwayland-client0:amd64 1.12.0-1 1.15.0-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:45 upgrade libglapi-mesa:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:45 install libgles2:amd64 <none> 1.0.0+git20180308-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:45 install libegl-mesa0:amd64 <none> 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:44 upgrade libgles2-mesa:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:44 upgrade libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:44 install libglx0:amd64 <none> 1.0.0+git20180308-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:44 install libgl1:amd64 <none> 1.0.0+git20180308-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:43 install libglx-mesa0:amd64 <none> 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:40 upgrade libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:37 upgrade libwayland-server0:amd64 1.12.0-1 1.15.0-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:37 upgrade libgbm1:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:37 install libllvm6.0:amd64 <none> 1:6.0-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:36 upgrade libwayland-egl1-mesa:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:36 upgrade libegl1-mesa:amd64 13.0.6-1+b2 18.1.6-1~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:36 install libwayland-egl1:amd64 <none> 1.15.0-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:36 install libglvnd0:amd64 <none> 1.0.0+git20180308-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:36 install libegl1:amd64 <none> 1.0.0+git20180308-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:35 upgrade libdrm-amdgpu1:amd64 2.4.74-1 2.4.91-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:35 upgrade libdrm2:amd64 2.4.74-1 2.4.91-2~bpo9+1
2018-09-12 16:24:35 install libdrm-common:all <none> 2.4.91-2~bpo9+1

And here's the inxi report after logging out and then logging back in.

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$ inxi -Gxxx
Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8240 / R3 Series] driver: radeon 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:01.0 chip ID: 1002:9838 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 1600x900~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD KABINI (DRM 2.50.0 4.15.0-1-amd64 LLVM 6.0.0) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.1.6 compat-v: 3.1 
           direct render: Yes

Afterwards, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list file again to disable the stretch-backports repo, and run `apt-get update` again to reload the repos.

[kmathern]

I found a way to do the Mesa upgrade using MX Package Installer.

For all steps below make sure the "Hide library and developer packages" checkbox is unchecked.

1) 'Full App Catalog' tab, select Debian Backports as source, type 'mesa' in search box, upgrade all installed mesa packages that are shown as upgradeable (will upgrade and/or install 18 packages in total)
2) 'Full App Catalog' tab, select Debian Backports as source, type 'libxatracker2' in search box, upgrade libxatracker2 package that's shown as upgradeable (this will also cause libllvm6.0 to be installed)
3) 'Full App Catalog' tab, select Debian Backports as source, type 'mesa' in search box, upgrade libgl1-mesa-dri package that's shown as upgradeable (it was held back in step 1, it also causes libdrm-amdgpu1 to be upgraded)