AMDGPU-Pro Driver missing in Mint 18 series

[BismarX]

Linux Mint 18 series OS does not provide proprietary AMD GPU driver.
It is essential to use hardware developers driver for better system performance.
AMD provides the driver for Ubuntu 16.04 here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-GPU-PRO-Linux-Beta-Driver%E2%80%93Release-Notes.aspx

This driver should be accessible via Driver Manager tool in Linux Mint 18 series (provided the PC has AMD GPU hardware).

[BismarX (karlis-martinsons)]

AMD stable GPU driver is available here:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-PRO-Driver-for-Linux-Release-Notes.aspx

[Vladimir (vladimirivanoviliev)]

Starting from Linux Mint 18.1 AMDGPU-PRO driver cannot be installed as it reports that the OS is not supported. This is due to the way the driver checks the distribution name:

```
function os_release() {
 [[ -r /etc/os-release ]] && . /etc/os-release

 case "$ID" in
 ubuntu)
  PACKAGES="amdgpu-pro amdgpu-pro-lib32 amdgpu-pro-dkms"
  ;;
```

When I replace the `ubuntu` string with `linuxmint` (which is the current OS ID), the driver installed correctly.

[Hugo Buddelmeijer (hugo-n)]

My 2cts: I had to upgrade the kernel from 4.4 to 4.8 to get the 17.10 AMDGPU-PRO drivers working on a fresh and fully updated installation of Linux Mint 18.1.

The 4.4 kernel resulted in this error in dmesg:
  amdkcl: exports duplicate symbol drm_modeset_lock_all_ctx (owned by drm)
See https://community.amd.com/message/2793291

[Hugo Buddelmeijer (hugo-n)]

It seems that only the first user that logs in can use the driver properly.

These are the errors that the second user gets on my machine, freshly installed and upgraded Linux Mate 18.1 (4.8.0-46 kernel) with a Radeon RX 480 card from MSI with the 17.10 drivers:

$ glxinfo
name of display: :20
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

$ glxgears
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual

$ xplayer
(xplayer:3905): Clutter-CRITICAL **: Unable to initialize Clutter: Unable to initialize the Clutter backend
(xplayer:3905): Xplayer-WARNING **: gtk-clutter failed to initialise, expect problems from here on.
Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.
Segmentation fault

xplayer also gives a dialog with the following error before segfaulting:
Couldn't load the '/usr/share/xplayer/xplayer.ui' interface. /usr/share/xplayer/xplayer.ui:300:33 Invalid property: GtkRadioAction.value
Make sure that Xplayer is properly installed.

Everything works properly in a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04.2 on the same machine.

[Hugo Buddelmeijer (hugo-n)]

Attached Xorg.20.log, relevant lines:
[ 136.525] (EE) /dev/dri/card0: failed to set DRM interface version 1.4: Permission denied
...
[ 136.831] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

(Note that it can't find other modules, because I removed them during debugging. The same problem occurs on a untampered Mint 18.1 Mate x64 installation; reinstalled on new partition to verify.)

Xorg.0.log shows these lines, which are missing in Xorg.20.log:
[ 105.401] (II) Applying OutputClass "amdgpu-pro" to /dev/dri/card0
[ 105.401] loading driver: amdgpu

The permissions on /dev/dri/card0 seems fine, but this is out of my league:

$ ls -l /dev/dri/card0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 226, 0 Apr 28 08:34 /dev/dri/card0

$ getfacl /dev/dri/card0
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: dev/dri/card0
# owner: root
# group: video
user::rw-
user:whicheveruserisloggedin:rw-
group::rw-
mask::rw-
other::---

Where 'whicheveruserisloggedin' could be the username of either account, depending on who is using the machine, irrespective of who logged in first. Both users are in the video group.

[Hugo Buddelmeijer (hugo-n)]

FWIW, here some investigation results on the multi-user support for amdgpu-pro 17.10 on Mint/MATE 18.1.

0) The problem: Only the first user that logs in gets GLX, the second user gets errors (/dev/dri/card0 permission denied, see above).
1) The amdgpu-pro driver works fine in Ubuntu 16.04: first user logs in, second user logs in, both have GLX.
2) So I installed mate-session on Ubuntu to get at least a MATE environment, but the problem reappeared when both users log in on MATE. No problem when the second user logs in on unity or xfce4. (I didn't try to vary the session manager of the first user.)
3) However, when the second user logs in with unity,xfce4 or mate, logs out, and logs back in with mate, then everything is fine and both users have GLX.
4) So installed xfce4 on Mint-MATE to test this workaround, but no luck: GLX is not available to the second user no matter whether he/she logs into xfce4 first.

So my plan is to give up on Mint MATE 18.1 for now, and use Ubuntu 16.04 with MATE because there the second user can use MATE+GLX with the login-logout-login workaround.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Did you try this with Mint 18.2? I've got the feeling it could be down to MDM vs LightDM.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Regarding the issue with os_release, it has to be reported to AMD directly.