HELP NEEDED! (openSuSE 13.1: StartX crashes after installation of ATI proprietary driver)

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

First of all be aware that I’m a novice linux user, who managed to make himself familiar with basic operations after spending tons of time searching on the net every time something needed to be done…

After installing AMD fglrx using “One click install” link at (http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx), my system always freezes upon boot.

To be more specific, it gets all the way until:
[OK] Started /etc/init.d/after.local Compatibility.
and then halts (FROZEN), no keyboard input as well (i.e. Alt+F1 or Alt+ctrl+Del)!

If I try booting in recovery mode it halts at the following point:
" Starting /etc/init.d/after.local Compatibility…
[OK] Started /etc/init.d/after.local Compatibility.
[OK] Started LSB: Automatically install DKMS modules for new kernels."

In the later case I can use Alt+F1 which then takes me to (tty1) to perform console login.

From that point, I can login in and get su rights. Then, if I type:

startx

screen displays some lines fast which I’m unable to read and immediately clears, turns black displaying only the following underscore character on top:
_

Needless to say that system halts again, is frozen and takes no input at all (i.e. keyboard etc.)
The only way to interact with my pc is by pressing the power-off button instantaneous and after a while it shuts down.

Any help will be highly appreciated!

#2

And what graphics card do you have? The fglrx driver only works with HD5000 and up.

You can remove it again by running this as root:

zypper rm fglrx_xpic_SUSE131

or for the 64bit version:

zypper rm fglrx64_xpic_SUSE131

Or use YaST, that works in text mode as well.

Did you install the correct version? (32bit or 64bit corresponding to your openSUSE version)

#3

I used the 64bit version, as for the card is HD7770.

Executing:
zypper rm fglrx64_xpic_SUSE131

I get

"
Additional rpm output:
redirecting to systemctl stop atieventsd
redirecting to systemctl stop fglrxebuild
[FONT=century gothic]/sbin/ldconfig: /usr/lib/libOpenCL.so.1 is not a symbolic link

/sbin/ldconfig: /usr/lib64/libOpenCL.so.1 is not a symbolic link

[/FONT]warning: file /etc/modprobe.d/50-fglrx.conf: remove failed: No such file or directory

There are some running programs that use files deleted by recent upgrade. You may wish to restart some of them. Run ‘zypper ps’ to list these programs."

Upon restarting in recovery mode, system halts exactly at the same point as before.

#4

If that might be considered of any help, I noticed that:

modprobe radeon

returns:

FATAL: Error inserting radeon (/lib/modules/3.11.6-4-desktop/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon.ko): Invalid argument

#5

Well, if that file was missing, it’s no wonder that fglrx didn’t work.
That file contains the blacklist for the radeon kernel module. If the radeon kernel module is loaded on boot, the fglrx module cannot be loaded because your card is already in use.

Try to install fglrx again. Do you have that file then?

Upon restarting in recovery mode, system halts exactly at the same point as before.

And what about normal mode?

The radeon driver won’t work in recovery mode.
That mode uses a generic driver like fbdev or vesa that should work with all graphics cards.
As to why this is not working for you I don’t know. There was a bug in the generic modesetting driver in openSUSE 12.3 that could cause this, but I thought it was already fixed.

#6

This is normal because previously I had already tried to revert to radeon native drivers following instructions in step4 from here:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Configuring_graphics_cards

In normal mode now boots fine going into KDE.

#7

Thank you for the precious help wolfie323,

I believe that the trick for some reason was in uninstalling the proprietary driver package.
Of course I’m aware that existing “problems” got somehow “buried under the carpet” for now and did not exactly vanish but for the time being I think I can live with that.

Tomorrow is a new day and I can take it all over again from start.