How to patch sarge's X to support PowerPlay(TM)

Disclaimer

You are doing this at your own risk!

PowerPlay patches

First of all, who really needs a beer is Alex Deucher who came up with the patches to add PowerPlay to the radeon driver (you can find the path at http://www.botchco.com/alex/radeon/dynamicPM/hy0/).

I simply adapted the patch to the latest X found in sarge (4.3.0.dfsg.1-4 at the present). My patch is here. To use it you have to:

  1. apt-get source xserver-xfree86
  2. drop the aformentioned patch in debian/patches
  3. run dpkg-build
  4. go and get a coffee: if you run on a slow machine go and get dinner
    5. At the end you should have a bunch of debian pacakges, the most important for this patch been xserver-xfree which contains the modified radeon_drv.o and ati_drv.o. You can now dpkg -i xserver-xfree* and you should be set. To enable PowerPlay add Option "DynamicClocks" "True" to the Device Section of your XF86Config-4. I provide here the files (radeon_drv.o and ati_drv.o) that you can drop in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers: it should work only if you have the same version of X that I'm using!!