Doesn't boot right after Graphics Drivers installed

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Okay, so until a few days ago I had a perfectly functioning openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.2 and it was doing everything just great, and then one of the updates it thought it had (I forgot which) had conflicts with practically all of my KDE stuff, and so after sorting through a thousand or so conflicting things when it wanted to install, I finally got it to agree that everything was supposed to work. This caused my computer, when booting openSUSE, to partially load the operating system (it showed the loading thing and stuff) and then suddenly decide that it instead wants to reboot. After trying to repair it with the repair thing on the DVD, which didn’t work, I decided I would just reinstall 11.1 and this time just not get KDE 4.2 on there.

I’ve used the same DVD that made it work perfectly fine for pretty much this entire time since 11.1 came out, it worked from a fresh install then, but now I’ve got a problem. It works great after an installation, but the drivers for my ATI Radeon Xpress 200 seem to cause the operating system to do one of the following:

  • Decide that it doesn’t exist anymore
  • Have the same problem that I had above where it starts to boot but then decides to restart the entire machine
  • Will boot, but then goes to a stupid thing with a black x (it looks like it’s supposed to be a cursor type of x) in the middle and nothing else

It seems to be perfectly functioning, though rather slowly, until I install said drivers for the most part. It’s all buggy and stuff until I deal with all those updates, but other than that it works fine. These are supposed to be the same drivers that worked before, does anyone know what’s going on?

My best theory is that there’s some sort of issue with what is probably a newer version of the driver I’m trying to install from the one that worked when I previously installed 11.1, and maybe that’s why the drivers are causing issues now that they didn’t before. I can think of a couple other things, but they’re even less likely than my best theory to make rational sense.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is or how to fix it, that would be nice.

(I’ve reinstalled like 5 times now in the past 3 days here, I’ve found no consistency with which problem it causes based on what I do to install them, I tried both from the ATI Drivers page and also from the SUSE ATI Drivers page with the 1-click Install, neither one works)

I’ve got a reasonably functioning Windows XP partition on the same machine, so it’s not like I’m in some horrifying rush to fix this, but it would be nice to have something that runs a little faster, and SUSE seems to have done a nice job of that so far, I’d like to have it back now. It’s nice to not have to turn the computer on and log into it half an hour before I plan to use it to wait for the stupid security junk to finish loading.

2

It’s certainly possible that the version you are using now is different than what worked previously. fwiw, I’m running 8.582 with the most recent kernel update.

But there can be other issues, too. A few things to try:

  1. Make sure fglrx is actually running. In a terminal as root do:
lsmod | grep fglrx

It should return one or more lines ref’g fglrx. If you get nothing returned, the driver is not loaded.

  1. Make sure 3D (OpenGL) is running. In YaST Graphics Card you should see the “Activate 3D” box checked. If it isn’t, you can try checking it there, but you may still have to do step 5 for it to be set up correctly. A good way to check is, in a terminal as root, do:

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

You should see several lines ref’g OpenGL and your ATI card.

  1. Disable compositing. This is done in the KDE Control Panel with the Desktop module. The interface has changed thru the last few iterations of KDE 4.x, so I can’t tell you exactly what it looks like on your system. Log out and log back in (restarts the X server).

  2. Reinstall the driver from YaST. Make sure the driver is matched to the kernel, i.e., if you’re running the pae kernel, then the pae driver. Else kernel-default with its matching driver. And that the X server package is also installed. Reboot.

  3. Rebuild the X server control file. This should be done (unseen) when installing from YaST, there is another ATI program that is called. It interrogates your hardware and sets up the file accordingly. To do this manually, open a terminal window, switch to root, and do:

init 3
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.mybackup
aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf
sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
init 5

That’s a zero on the sax2 line, not the letter ‘o’. The init 3 will drop the X server, and init 5 will restart it.

  1. Check the X server logfile. Personally, I would do this first, but you may not be familiar with what you see and, before posting any errors back here, the above should probably be attempted. Look for the “EE” lines; those are the errors. With the symptoms you’re seeing, it is highly likely the server is throwing errors which you’ll see in the logfile.

Hope something above helps. Good luck.

3

Those would be nice if I could actually install it and make it work enough to test if it’s working. In none of the scenarios so far in the last several re-installations has the operating system actually functioned after installing the drivers. Unless you can tell me how to boot it into something that’ll function (no, the Failsafe mode doesn’t function) I don’t see HOW I can test it.

4

I got the impression that it ran poorly, but did sometimes run. If the X server is not properly loading at all, then you need to look at the X logfile.

But first . . . I did some testing on the machine I have that has an ATI card, and found some unexpected results with the ATI driver. Ordinarily, one should be able to invoke a different driver on-the-fly, e.g., the Failsafe boot option calls the vesa driver, or by booting to the command line and there running the utility program (sax2) which switches the driver X will use. But none of this works any longer. I’ve narrowed the reason down to one of two causes: When fglrx loads at boot it possibly puts a lock on the graphics device, preventing another driver access. The driver also apparently forces the loading of the AIGLX software (used by some drivers for compositing) in advance of X, which interferes with the execution of a different driver that doesn’t use AIGLX. The logfile was only marginally helpful in tracking this down. It does explain why the Failsafe boot option does not work.

All things considered, my suggestion is that we first look at the logfile, along with a hardware snapshot and your X configuration file. This is lengthy, but can easily be posted to the web and then you need only post the url back here. Be sure to do the following only after having just tried to boot normally.

So then reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Delete if the driver is locking up the system). At the grub menu, down below in the parameters bar, type the numeral 3 (allowing a space after anything showing). This will boot you into init 3, the command line without running X. Login as root. Then do the following:


cd /var/log
lspci > lspcifile
cat lspcifile Xorg.0.log /etc/X11/xorg.conf > postfile
curl -F file=@postfile nopaste.com/a

The curl command will return a url, just write that down and post the url back here (be good to first double-check it worked, with your web browser from Windows). You can reboot the machine after the curl command with:


shutdown -r now

Note that there is an alternate open source driver which you may be able to use, called “radeon”. It supports 8 different chipset versions of the XPRESS 200; what you post back may tell us if your machine uses one of these. But to switch to radeon will require deinstalling fglrx first, for the reasons I described above. So this should not be tried until we’ve looked at the log first. Note that this driver does not support 3D acceleration, so compositing (the fancy graphics like wobbly windows) is not supported. But if your device is supported, 2D (like Windows XP) should work fine.

5

Okay, so to test that, I would have to reinstall the Drivers again, and I just got everything else working rather smoothly (except the graphical stuff, which is choppy but running) so is there some way to set something so I can get back to this when the Drivers probably mess it up again, or will I have to just install them and hope we find a solution?

Also, you mentioned posting something to the web, perhaps I missed a detail but I don’t think I have anywhere to post things to the web, so how would I find a place to do that from my command line thingy you’re having me use to find this information when the Drivers cause the display not to work?

(sorry for the questions, I’m at that fun point in computer learning where everyone else asks me for help when there’s a computer problem but I still have only 10% of an idea what I’m doing when it comes to this kind of stuff)

6

What graphics driver are you actually using now?

Do you still have the ATI driver (fglrx) still installed, but a different driver configured for the X server? As I posted previously, on the machine I tested, just having fglrx installed, although not configured for us, still interfered with using alternative drivers.

As far as posting data to the web, that is what the curl command does ref’d in my above post . . . the “lspci” (short for “list pci”) command lists all the hardware that uses the machine’s pci bus, i.e., all the controllers, including the graphics chipset (XPRESS 200 is a model name; ATI has used upwards of a dozen different chipsets under that model). Doing “lspci > filename” redirects the command’s output to a text file. The “cat” command (short for “concatenate”) above combines the lspci output with the X config file and the X logfile, into a single text file. Then the curl command uploads that file to nopaste.com, a website designed for this purpose. So there is no need for a gui to post that data to the web.

7

Well, after the first three times that installing the Grahpics Drivers caused fail, this time when I reinstalled SUSE I just didn’t install them. sysinfo:/ in Konqueror says “Vendor: Mesa Project; Model: Software Rasterizer; Driver: 2.1 Mesa 7.2” for the Display Information. Now that I’m starting to get a better idea of what you’re explaining, I’ll probably get to installing it and, assuming it causes problems again (like it did the last three times) I’ll go get that information like you said.

I’ll be back shortly with said information, or otherwise if it for no apparent reason works I’ll be back with a message stating that.

8

Okay, so I posted that stuff with the command you said to postfile - nopaste.com (beta), so hopefully that’s helpful in figuring out what is going on.

Also, this time by installing the driver it seems to be starting to boot, then restarting the entire machine (bringing it back to GRUB and after like 8 seconds selecting openSUSE 11.1 again, to load again, to reboot again, endless cycle) if that’s helpful with the problem.

So it’d be nice to get this working again. Thanks for the help.

(by the way, that lsmod | grep fglrx thing didn’t do anything from the caommand line, and glxinfo | grep OpenGL said it was unable to open display, in case that’s important)

9

What is the make/model and type of machine; a laptop? Do you have more than one display (e.g., laptop screen plus attached monitor)?

10

It’s an HP Desktop, there’s one monitor with a native resolution of 1280x1024, not entirely sure how to find the exact model. The laptop (completely separate machine) is perfectly fine and not what I’m posting about, it’s just the Desktop with issues.

11

The X server configuration file is currently set up to use two drivers for two defined display configurations. The file was modified with openSUSE’s sax2 utility (YaST Graphics Card) and also with ATI’s configuration utility (aticonfig) which comes in the driver package. There appear to be some inconsistencies.

I’m going to suggest you try to start with a clean slate. We need to be absolutely clear at this point whether fglrx is now installed or not. The logfile you posted shows fglrx being loaded. Please do this:

Boot into init 3 (the numeral 3 in boot options on the menu), which should take you to a command line logon prompt. Logon as root. Then do:

cd /etc/X11
modinfo fglrx

If fglrx is installed, the modinfo command will see it (again, be sure you logged on as root) and you’ll see quite a few lines of output. If there is no output, re-verify the status with:

zypper search fglrx

The package names supplying fglrx will be listed; if one is installed, there will be an “i” in the left-side column. If there is, make sure that the installed version - “default” vs “pae” - matches your installed kernel (the command “uname -r” will give you that).

So, now assuming you have fglrx installed and it is the matching version to your kernel, do:


mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.removed
sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

The sax2 command should bring up the YaST Graphics Card gui. Check the configuration, and be sure to save it. Now do:

more xorg.conf

Scroll thru the file and verify that your Planar monitor is in the Monitor section and that in the Device section the driver is fglrx. Then do (a little rain dance to the graphics gods might be appropriate at this step):

startx

If on the other hand fglrx is NOT installed, then give a try with the radeon driver instead. So after running the fglrx verification commands above which show nothing installed, do:

mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.removed
sax2 -r -m 0=radeon

Again, check and save. And then again, do:

startx

Report back.

12

Modinfo says that it can’t find fglrx, which is strange because that’s been installed successfully every other time before (that was one of the pieces of data about the display stuff every other time) and zypper couldn’t find anything to do with fglrx anywhere.

Since fglrx claimed to not exist on my machine, I went with that radeon thing you said, which caused it to make the screen go blank and the machine to sit there seemingly doing nothing.

(at least it didn’t reboot itself into an endless cycle, so clearly we’re getting somewhere)

I’m thinking unless I missed one of your steps (typed everything you said to how you said to type it, so I don’t think I did that) finding a way to make fglrx be there might be easier.

(that is my first guess, anyway, just a guess)

(also, how does that penguin rank thingy change? I know it’s not relevant to this at all, but I have to just ask that as a side note)

13

fglrx is only installed from the ATI repository, which must be added via YaST Software Repositories or it is added as a step in the “1-Click Install”. If zypper didn’t find it, that means the repository has not been added.

It appears you have tried a number of from scratch installations; how have you been installing fglrx each time?

I don’t know what you are referring to re “penguin rank thingy”.

14

I’ve been installing the driver every time. There was one time that I used the 1-click install, the rest of those times I just downloaded the driver off the ATI page. I wouldn’t know right off the bat how to add the repositories for that, especially not by a command line.

Also, below your username on the post is says you’re a “Shaman Penguin” and it says I’m a “Puzzled Penguin” on mine. (again, less important than the non-functional Graphics Drivers)

15

Just a side note, it’s around 20:18 for me as I make this post here, tomorrow I’m gone (out-of-state kind of gone) for a few days, so if this isn’t solved by like tomorrow morning or so, it’ll be a while before I reply again about anything.

It occurred to me that this might be something relevant to mention at some point in time.

16

So with the driver download from the ATI site, you were then also first installing the compilation dependencies (like the kernel headers, gcc, etc.)? And running the installation script from the command line? That process, and even the dependencies, has changed over time; I strongly recommend using the driver package from the ATI repository. That is what you will get with the 1-Click, but that method is not foolproof. The most reliable installation process is to add the repository and install with YaST; if the gui is not available yet then that can be done from the command line.

Given your time constraint (and I am tied up today, too), let me suggest we try to get you a basic working gui, with the vesa driver (or failing that, a framebuffer driver). When you boot, do you get the graphical splash screen (not the menu, but the green SuSE screen with the small progress bar)? Try this: Boot into init 3 (again, the numeral 3 preceded by a space, in the menu boot options), at the command line prompt login as root, and do:


cd /etc/X11
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.0618
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa

Hopefully sax2 will run; you may only get 800x600, or you may be able to get 1025x768. Save the configuration and then do:


startx

Result?

Then penguin classification is based upon number of posts and reputation, starting when this new forum site was launched early last year IIRC (i.e., posts to the old boards aren’t counted). The old salts here tend to be good generalists each with our own areas of specialization.

17

I neglected to include the following; please do this before doing the startx:

hwinfo --gfxcard > card
curl -F file=@card nopaste.com/a

And post back the url.

18

I do get a graphical loading thing after booting. Also, a little side note, your instruction to make it go into command line has been unnecessary, I’ve noticed that without placing the 3 there it seems to have memorised that I went there before (raising the question of how to change it back) so solving that will probably be necessary.

Anyway, I used the sax2 thing to change it, and it said input out of screen range or something along those lines on my monitor when I tried to do that after sax2 went through some lines about not finding X and starting its own.

I got that new information now, it’s at card - nopaste.com (beta) and I can’t help but notice that now it thinks there are two drivers.

I had to reboot after doing the sax2 thing, so that’s probably relevant to it not working, but when I tried startx it had the following:

xauth: creating new authority file /root/.serverauth.3838
xauth: creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority

X.Org X Server 1.5.2
Release Date: 10 October 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: openSUSE SUSE LINUX
Current Operating System: Linux linux-3sdb 2.6.27.23-0.1-pae #1 SMP 2009-05-26 17:02:05 -0400 i686
Build Date: 27 February 2009 02:03:33 PM

 Before reporting problems, check [X.Org Wiki - Home](http://wiki.x.org)
 to make sure that you have the latest version.

Module Loader present
Markers: (–) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: “/var/log/Xorg.0.log”, Time: Thu Jun 18 09/21/53 2009
(EE) Unable to locate/open config file
New driver is “ati”
(==) Using default built-in configuration (30 lines)

Fatal server error:
Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices

giving up.
xinit: connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

After that, it just went back to the red thing that wants me to input a command. Depending on how quickly things get packed, I might or might not be back on again in time today. If I’m not, I’ll probably check back at least once before I’m back (laptop useful for that) but even so I won’t be able to do anything again until later in the day either Sunday or Monday (Pacific Time), depending on how things play out.

Thanks for the help though, if nothing else I have a much better idea of WHY it’s doing this. If worst comes to worst, I’d imagine after one more completely fresh installation (if it even got to that) and I’d be able to get it to work on my own.

(I’ll still gladly take the help, that’s just one of the worse scenarios possible if something completely strange, unusual, and unpredictable happens) :slight_smile:

Also, I’m not sure why but the spacing for what the machine said after I told it to startx doesn’t seem to show up in previewing the post, hopefully the tabs and double spaces aren’t overwhelmingly important, can’t get them to show up.

19

Okay, now I’m back and able to finish up fixing this thing. :slight_smile:

20

Sorry if this seems impatient or something, but really, are you going to be back soon? I’d hope that I could get a solution soon, it would be nice to not have to wait forever on my Desktop before I can actually use the machine.

(XP boots up a fraction of a minute faster than SUSE, which is significant for boot-up time, but is overall extremely slow compared to SUSE because XP has to wait around forever as all the Anti-Virus junk to load every time someone logs in)