ATI fglrx = black screen; safe mode + startx = Ok??

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi

I’ve installed fglrx drivers with 1click install on openSuse11.3.

If i try to boot in “normal mode” I end up in black screen.

However if I boot in safe mode, then login and startx, everyting works ok

~> fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series
OpenGL version string: 3.3.10151 Compatibility Profile Context

Shows fglrx works OK, as well as overall performance is pretty good.

I’ve done

aticonfig --initial

radeon drivers is also blackisted

but running (if it means something)

# depmod -a; lsmod | grep radeon
radeon                868858  0 
ttm                    64561  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         32944  1 radeon
drm                   221516  3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit            6728  1 radeon

Any ideas how to fix?

2 
hwinfo --gfxcard | grep -i driver

?

3

Also, try booting with the nomodeset option:
SDB:Configuring graphics cards - openSUSE

4 

# hwinfo --gfxcard | grep -i driver
  Driver: "fglrx_pci"
  Driver Modules: "fglrx"
  Driver Info #0:
  Driver Info #1:

As for nomodeset, it helps :slight_smile:
But as far as i found out nomodeset isn’t the best thing to have, like *Specifying ‘nomodeset’ when the system boots basically tells the system to use an older set of software/drivers which does work (but may be slower or have some other issues that people would like to eliminate). *

Is there any way, how to troubleshoot this in reasonable amount of time, or its better to just modify grub and forget about it.

P.s. I moved away from radeon drivers, because they always keeps video card into maximum performance mode. And that causes a lot of heat, fan noise, and almost 25% less batter life. If there is any way how to get radeon divers into Battery saving mode, would be great :slight_smile:

5

Modifying Grub would be an acceptable solution. I don’t know why nomodeset is sometimes needed with fglrx. I don’t need it. Also I don’t know why radeon gets loaded if you said it is blacklisted and your xorg.conf is configured to use fglrx. Do you have the file /etc/modprobe.d/fglrx.conf with following content:

blacklist radeon

What happens if you boot in runlevel 3 without nomodeset? Does radeon gets loaded at this point? (check with lsmod). And what happens then if you run startx or init 5 from there?