This Howto is for the Xpress 200m, I haven’t found all these steps to be needed on other chipsets. You shouldn’t try this on other chipsets unless nothing else works.
Step 1 Getting into the System After Black screen of Death
After the fresh install has finished you should get a black screen of death on any system running a Xpress 200m.
once you reach grube erase the kernel boot options and type:
3
Hit enter and wait until it asks you for your login name. Enter your login and password then enter super user mode.
su
You will be asked for the root password. Enter it then enter
kdm
Now the kdm should come up login normally and everything should work just fine.
Once you have entered kde do a few tests to see that everything is working. (Sound, wireless, etc)
Upgrade to Kde 4.3.4 Here is the howto I used to do so. Howto Upgrad to kde 4.3.4
If one has to work with the xpress 200m you might as well have the latest bug fixes on your side.
Step 2 Running Sax2 (generating a xorg.conf file)
Xorg preparatory steps:
Enter a super user file manager window (you can find them under system in the start menu)
Go to /etc/X11 and remove all xorg.conf, xorg.conf.install and back them up in your home folder. I would also tar.gz them and rename the compressed file to hide them from the system.
Open a terminal and Enter su mode once there enter
init 3
Once you have entered init 3 it is time to run sax2
Sax2 -r -m 0=ati
If this doesn’t work the first time do it again this time from startup enter init 3 login and enter su and run sax2 with the same options.
Once this is done you will have a brad new xorg.conf file. Repeat the init 3 and kdm steps to login again. You will get one normal startup after every time you do the init 3 and kdm startup don’t ask me why. Would love to know myself, my more advanced linux friends think kdm has a permission issue.
If you are at this point still having to use Init 3 to launch the kdm here is a final fix that has worked for me on a limited basis.
**Step 3 Reinstall Xorg and Kdm **
Go to yast and startup the package manager and search for and reinstall the xorg and kdm. This seems to fix the startup issue until you have to run a update in yast. The task bare update doesn’t seem to brake this fix. But once you run a online update in yast the system goes back to black screening at startup. I have retried these steps on my system with no effect.
**I know that as the system tries to launch the kdm if fails. But if I use init3 and then use su to launch the kdm it works great.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this issue for good?**
Steve Barrell has reported having the same regression I am having with the xpress 200m
I would agree with oldcpu’s recommendation.
While in previous threads on this article, I had said I was getting more
reliable startups, unfortunately, that is no longer the case. I am still
using the http://download.opensuse.org/reposit.../openSUSE_11.2
repo and in fact, there were several xorg-x11* updates today, but black
screens are still happening for me and more often than not.
I hope the x11 repo will eventually provide reliable drivers - hopefully
sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, I find the best way to boot is to enter “3” (without the
double quotes) at the grub menu, login, then “init 5” .
When a norths-mans died if he was found worthy he wound enter Valhalla Home of the God and sup at Odin’s Table. What is often left out of the tail is that every day he would go out and fight a mighty battle, so mighty in fact that almost everyone would get wacked. At even Odin would restore the dead and wounded and they would feast again in the halls of Valhalla. So Viking Heaven is one unending war fallowed by feasting. While that explains allot about why the vikings were such a feared lot what does that have to do with the issue of The Xpress 200m.
Well yesterday while fighting a mighty battle against the evil that is the Xpress 200m I lost. It owned me, I really began to feel that I had tried everything I knew how to do, and alot that I was a little shaky on.
This morning I started my system and xorg totally failed, I was tempted to give up. I had upgraded to kde 4.3.4 yesterday in an a tempt to fix the black screen issue. After some digging I learned that the xorg was trying to use fglrx again! It had been using radeon until the upgrade. But stranger still now my desktop effects are working like a dream no artifacts or glitches to speek of.
This card will drive me mad yet and yes the viking story is a sample of what an xpress 200m is capable of doing to a person.
But to end on a positive note I am feasting on the beauty of working desktop effects and just plain smooth graphics. We will see if it last through a few more startups, but for now things are great.
This may be the simplest fix ever but if it works for the xpress 200m so be it.
Step 1
Start yast
Step 2
Select System>Boot Loader
Once you have opened the boot loader select the default boot option and enter this in the vga mode field.
0xf06
That is it, restart and see if you get the black screen of death or not.
If you get all the way into the kdm consistently please post your success.
I have Shutdown and Restarted my system 5 times now with no black screen at kdm start.
As far as the desktop effect go I believe that may just be the upgrade to kde 4.3.4. There was an image map bug fix in that release that might be the cause of the improvement. Kde 4.3.4 upgrade
I think magabooks may be on to something with the 0xf06 mode.
I installed openSUSE 11.2 64-bit on my Acer Aspire 5050 which has a Radeon Xpress 1100 chip, identified as a Radeon Xpress 200m in all versions of Linux I have tried. I have been plagued by random black screens on both startup and shutdown while using the “radeon” driver. I was using VGA mode 0x317, splash=verbose for startup messages and gdm as the display manager. The blank screens seem to be a failure to transition properly to/from VESA 0x317 to the radeon driver 1280x800 native resolution. 0xf06 is a text mode and the transitions from this text mode to/from 1280x800 native mode seems to work more consistently. I did get one black screen on a reboot attempt but so far 0xf06 to/from radeon seems to work significantly better than 0x317 to/from radeon.
>
> I think magabooks may be on to something with the 0xf06 mode.
>
> I installed openSUSE 11.2 64-bit on my Acer Aspire 5050 which has a
> Radeon Xpress 1100 chip, identified as a Radeon Xpress 200m in all
> versions of Linux I have tried. I have been plagued by random black
> screens on both startup and shutdown while using the “radeon” driver. I
> was using VGA mode 0x317, splash=verbose for startup messages and gdm as
> the display manager. The blank screens seem to be a failure to
> transition properly to/from VESA 0x317 to the radeon driver 1280x800
> native resolution. 0xf06 is a text mode and the transitions from this
> text mode to/from 1280x800 native mode seems to work more consistently.
> I did get one black screen on a reboot attempt but so far 0xf06 to/from
> radeon seems to work significantly better than 0x317 to/from radeon.
>
>
Unfortunately, vga mode = 0xf06 (I also tried = normal) don’t do it for me
with my 200M.
This has all the marks of being a timing issue they way systems sometimes
boot up ok, only to fail again several times and then boot up ok again. I
even tried inserting a “sleep 15s” into /etc/init.d/kdm but it has not
helped.
Someone commented (maybe magabooks) that they thought KDE 4.3.4 was a
problem or fixed a problem. I have already ruled out KDE as I have used the
Xfce display and window manager taking kde out of the loop. KDE certainly
may have helped to get desktop effects working - mine still are - when I get
a system booted ok
This is concerning to me read it and see what you think.
Article Source LWN
December 2, 2009, 7:13 am
Novell has announced that its much-loved “SaX2” tool for the configuration of the X Window System will be retired as of the openSUSE 11.2 release. “Novell has decided to no longer invest in development maintenance of SaX2 but instead rely on the new automatic and dynamic configuration features and invest in desktop applets to perform dynamic changes.” Some members of the openSUSE community are rather vocally unhappy with this decision. Novell seems determined to follow this course (similar to what other distributors are doing), but points out: SaX2 is free software and others are welcome to keep it going…
Also try vga=ask this is what lead me to find a boot option that worked. Also are you still running without an xorg.conf file.
Play with the none vesa options as all the vesa options fail for me.
If you would post the hardware info output from yast for your system or just message it to me since it is rather large.
O I also tried xfce just two days ago and when I looked into the xdm log file I found that it was still trying to use fglrx. Check and see if that is also what is happening on your system
Old CPU i do believe you are correct that the card is equal to the 9200 but my findings were that this card needs the fglrx driver to run properly and to give 3d support ( i installed the go1 based driver from the ati repository and it is working fine. this was on a customers machine. also 11.2 is lacking a lot of the ati support for some reason.
i have a gateway with the x1270 and i installed the 11.2 and it loaded the fglrx on its own and it worked fine.(i do not know why it works on some and does not on others.
I have not tried the proprietary ATI driver on my wife’s PC (a 32-bit Sempron 2600 on an Epox EP-8K7A motherboard with 1GB RAM, and the graphic card is an ATI RV280). When ever I went to the ATI web site, I could only see a 64-bit driver for the Radeon 9200 Pro, and her PC is a 32-bit.
>
> To Steve Barrell
>
> Also try vga=ask this is what lead me to find a boot option that
> worked.
I tried vga=ask and selected the first option: f00. No good. Couldn’t even
get to the console after booting grub to level 3. also tried vga=normal but
not getting in that way now either.
> Also are you still running without an xorg.conf file.
I went back to using xorg.conf yesterday so I could use option bustype pcie.
Not sure if it’s a hindrance right now.
>
> Play with the none vesa options as all the vesa options fail for me.
>
> If you would post the hardware info output from yast for your system or
> just message it to me since it is rather large.
when I get that far ! I’m using KNode (KDE 4.3.4) nntp client on my trusty
11.1 desktop pc. I don’t know if emailing it to you will work.
>
> O I also tried xfce just two days ago and when I looked into the xdm
> log file I found that it was still trying to use fglrx. Check and see if
> that is also what is happening on your system
I’m not using fglrx.
I would love to take a soldering iron to my laptop’s motherboard and remove
the ATI Xpress 200M and shove in an nvidia based chip. Don’t know if chips
are interchangeable.
I would love to take a soldering iron to my laptop’s motherboard and remove
the ATI Xpress 200M and shove in an nvidia based chip. Don’t know if chips
are interchangeable.
Hello, I tried magabook’s “0xf06” suggestion but it only worked for the next two start-ups. This morning my Aspire 3050 Xpress200m laptop is having black-screen of death issues. (Steve, can I borrow your soldering iron?)
This was on a relatively fresh install of 11.2-64 bit which had completed without errors and was working fine for several weeks. I thought things had been patched through updates. I have not done any other tweaks to my video system.
I don’t know if it will help more knowledgeable people solve the problem, but I did get this error after making the “0xf06” change (while is Safe Mode):
Scanning scripts …
Resolve dependencies …
Install symlinks in /lib/mkinitrd/setup …
Install symlinks in /lib/mkinitrd/boot …
Kernel image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
Initrd image: /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
Root device: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST980815A_5LY0DFDD-part6 (/dev/sda6) (mounted on / as ext4)
Kernel Modules: thermal_sys thermal sata_sil pata_atiixp ata_generic ide-core atiixp ide-pci-generic processor fan crc16 jbd2 ext4
Features: block usb resume.userspace resume.kernel
29566 blocks
Kernel image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
Initrd image: /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
Root device: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST980815A_5LY0DFDD-part6 (/dev/sda6) (mounted on / as ext4)
Kernel Modules: thermal_sys thermal sata_sil pata_atiixp ata_generic ide-core atiixp ide-pci-generic processor max_cstate=1 fan crc16 jbd2 ext4
Module max_cstate=1 not found.
I’ll keep watching this post and see if I can help as a guinea pig.
I’ll keep watching this post and see if I can help as a guinea pig.
Frank
I need some info from a few other users to make sense of what is going on with this card.
I have tried many fixes so far and at best they have held for a week or so. My hope is
to gain enough information to start seeing a pattern of some sort at least then there might
be a way to ask the right question. I know some one out there at least has the answer to
what in the world is causing this constant black screen issue. It may not be completely
fixable but at least we can put in a proper bug report and hope that it gets addressed soon.
I tried magabook’s “0xf06” suggestion but it** only worked for the next two start-ups**.
I am so glad to hear that some one else is having this memory like reaction to that fix.
As my system start doing that after an update to yast about a week ago, thought it was
just my PC. How is it possible that the system just stops working with a perfectly
good boot option after lets say 2-3 boots. It seems as if it is learning, no almost
playing against the fix move for move.
Well enough said on the madding subject of why the xpress 200 isn’t working and on to
data collection. I am looking for comparison data on what is and isn’t working and when
it isn’t working. Does anyone else get black screens after doing the following.
I get a black screen every time I update my system like clock work.(after a complete shutdown)
I get one when I use the Restart to windows options (now that could just be a punishment)
This option skips the grub selection menu and starts windows without asking. (in KDE not sure about gnome)
I can fix the black screen for several boots by opening yast and changing the boot vga mode in Boot loader settings.
I go from f06 to f02 and thats it. Can’t change the kernel boot line any more, I have used all the non-vesa option up.
I have to start in init 3 mode and run yast or kdm to get in since none of the F0* options
still work with the grub at start.
If an old school hack the kernel type reads this post I would like to ask for idea’s on what
logs should be reviewed and what to look for. I have read the boot log and it is clean.
Or at least it looks that way to me (no errors), the kdm has had a few error but they aren’t
enlightening to this user. I will post them for all so see however.
After my previous post (#55), I went back and implemented magabook’s suggestions in post #40. I retained the vga=0xf06 from post #45.
This worked fine for quite some time. I had 3 or 4 black screens at boot-up but these were fixed by turning my laptop off. The next boot-up would work fine.
But, in the last two days my laptop has persistently booted with a black screen and I’ve had to boot in safe mode. (It did start in normal mode once, after it had run in safe mode. But, I didn’t try to repeat that). I’m guessing this was caused by a recent automatic update.
So, I re-visited the advice in post #40 and, from a terminal while in safe mode, I issued the command:
SaX2 -r -m 0=ati
That’s the only thing I did.
I’ve booted 3 times since and the computer is working fine. (touch wood). Did an automatic update reset my sax2 to something else? II didn’t know how to check.
To answer your questions, magabook:
I usually don’t have a problem with updates wrecking things. Just this one time since Dec. 18
Suse is the only OS on my laptop so I haven’t encountered this problem.
I’ve only once changed the vga=0xf06. (and I don’t know anything about kernel boot line).
When the planets are aligned and I’m thinking happy thoughts, my system boots as it should without resorting to the init 3 route you mention.
I don’t know if this information helps with diagnosis. I’m certainly willing to post any log files or try some commands that might help some of you smart penguins figure things out.
