Installing ATI drivers (fglrx) causes statup issues/failure

Ok, so clean install of OpenSUSE 12.1 onto a new laptop. Everything works fine until I try to install the ATI drivers. After the required restart the startup gets as far as showing the cursor with the loading icon and then stays there, forever. I have tried this twice so far; the “easy way” using the yast 1-click install and the “hard way” building the fglrx drivers manually as described here SDB:ATI_drivers.

Anyone have any ideas? -nomodeset doesn’t work but fallback mode does.

Using Gnome3, ATI card is a 6990m, posted here instead of the laptop section because this has previously happened to my desktop (5770) and the solution then was to reinstall and try again, something I have already attempted twice here.

Does it mean that you have an ATI card on your desktop currently working with Gnome-shell and the flgrx driver?

As far as I know, no matter how you install it, the ATI proprietary driver has problems with Gnome3: Bug 99 – Graphical corruption with gnome-shell.

I guess that does mean that my desktop works, although I don’t use linux that much on my desktop so there may be glitches that I haven’t noticed. Although looking at that bug report I have never had graphical issues like shown there. My issue is that it gets as far as loading the cursor on startup and stops there, the top bar never appears. However Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace work, but both end up returning to the same screen.

What drivers would you recommend? Should I stick with the base ones?

So you’re using Gnome3 on openSUSE 12.1 on your desktop? Have a look at this post: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/468836-no-acceleration-ati-proprietary-driver-opensuse-12-1-a-7.html#post2418203.

I don’t know how Gnome-shell is doing with the open source driver, but it can hardly be worse. So if works better, use the open source driver for now. You could install the atiupgrade script, a method you haven’t tried yet. It’s not going to help today. However you could just type **atiupgrade **from time you time in a root terminal to check if a newer driver has been released (the scripts checks on ATI website). As long as it asks if you want to install version 11.12, say “no”, because it doesn’t work. If it’s a newer version, you can try it, as many people (full of hope) probably will. It’s impossible to know if it will be fixed in days … or months. Also I wonder if Gnome3 developers are not partly responsible for that mess. (?) Gnome-shell doesn’t seem to work either on many Nvidia Legacy and GeForce FX cards.

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:36:02 +0000, elexis wrote:

> I guess that does mean that my desktop works, although I don’t use linux
> that much on my desktop so there may be glitches that I haven’t noticed.
> Although looking at that bug report I have never had graphical issues
> like shown there. My issue is that it gets as far as loading the cursor
> on startup and stops there, the top bar never appears. However
> Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace work, but both end up returning
> to the same screen.
>
> What drivers would you recommend? Should I stick with the base ones?

I personally am sticking with the radeon driver until AMD/ATI get their
act together with GNOME3 compatibility.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

Would you be able to provice a link to those drives?

Right now the priority is to find a working set of drivers that make much more efficient use of the card, as a 6990 going flat out isnt exactly battery friendly.

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:16:02 +0000, elexis wrote:

> hendersj;2423520 Wrote:
>> I personally am sticking with the radeon driver until AMD/ATI get their
>> act together with GNOME3 compatibility.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
> Would you be able to provice a link to those drives?

The radeon driver is the open-source driver that’s included with the
distribution.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C