I am new to this forum and I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this kind of question. Please apologize if I am wrong here and tell me where to ask. I just thought that I might find more “openSUSE” experts here than elsewhere.
I am desperately looking for an error in my openSUSE installation (11.3, 64 bit). After a lot of trouble with the online update this evening I had to rebuild the rpm database to get the update done. Then GRUB had lost all entries in the menu.lst file but the one for booting from a floppy disk. I was able to fix this but now I can only use the text mode (runlevel 3). When I switch to runlevel 5 to start the GUI as it is normally done during the startup of the system, gnome is started and the gdm greeter displays the input field where I normally type my user name. But before I can do this, Linux crashes without a message and immediately reboots.
The kernel used is 2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2010-12-13 11:13:53 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux.
I am not too much a Linux expert especially not for X and gnome. In /var/log/messages there is no useful information. The files in /var/log/gdm are empty. Xorg.0.log is empty too.
It would be great if somebody could give me a hint where and how to start to find out what happens. Yes, I do have a backup of yesterday evening but restoring this should really be the last solution.
You did not tell us anything about your computer or about your graphics. If I thought it was graphics, I would type the kernel load option **nomodeset **on the option line before I make my openSUSE selection, then press enter and see if that helps. Without knowing more, you might just have a bad install and/or bad install disk and need to try again on both.
You are right, I have forgotten to specify the details of my system. It has a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H mainboard with an AMD Athlon Dual Core 4850e processor and 4 GB of RAM. The graphics card is identified by Linux as an ATI Radeon HD 3200. The driver that I have specified in the file “/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf” is “radeon”. I have also tried “radeonhd” some minutes ago but this did not help. The drivers that are installed on my system are:
**
xorg-x11-driver-video-radeonhd-1.3.0_20100325_f6c9991-1.13.x86_64
xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau-0.0.15_20100401_bfb95cc-1.10.x86_64
xorg-x11-driver-video-intel-legacy-2.9.1-1.9.x86_64
xorg-x11-driver-video-32bit-7.5-15.2.x86_64
xorg-x11-driver-video-7.5-15.2.x86_64**
The kernel is
kernel-desktop-2.6.34.7-0.7.1.x86_64
I have already added nomodeset when I have installed the system last year because I had a problem without this option (a black screen if I remember correctly).
If there was something useful in the log files, this might help me. Is there a debug option that I can turn on?
A colleage of mine told me, that the problem was most likely be caused by the graphics driver. As I do not play games and do not need 3D features, perhaps a different driver would do the job? All that I need is a resolution of 1400x1050@60 or 75 Hz.
I am not the expert on AMD/ATI/Radion graphics cards. You have three basic graphic choices which are Intel/AMD/NVIDIA and of the three, using proprietary drivers, NVIDIA works best, followed by Intel and with AMD pulling up the rear. Now this is not about price or energy usage or speed. Depending on who you talk to, AMD may win all three. It has to do with Linux compatible drivers and AMD, the old ATI is at the bottom of that list. But there is hope and new drivers are being released all of the time for newer cards.
Read through the suggested material above and good luck.
Actually, the ATI Radeon HD 3200 is not considered old, and it should be well supported by the proprietary ATI/AMD (fglrx) driver. For many older ATI grphics chipsets, the open source radeon driver is more than sufficient. I would say Intel chipsets and drivers are far more problematic (and generally lower spec), based on accounts across many Linux forums.
Perfect. I have a GA-MA78GM-DS2H around here. I don’t have it running now (waiting for 11.4) but I can tell you that it is working well and this is a (particularly) good mainboard. You can install the fglrx driver with the atiupgrade script. It works in most cases: Upgrading ATI driver with atiupgrade.
Just boot in console mode, follow the instructions in that post and type the commands highlighted in blue (print the page with a color printer first if you have only one computer!)
I did not find the time to look after my system before, so here are the news:
As far as I can see, up to now I have always used the open source “radeon” driver and not a fglrx driver. I have never had problems before. They started only en I have installed the latest updates and when also the kernel 2.6.34.7-0.7 was installed. Do I really have to switch to the proprietary ATI driver?
I went through the xorg.conf related steps in the SDB article “SDB:Configuring graphics cards” but without success.
When I do a “startx” at the command line, everything is fine. X starts up as if I had logged in on the gdm screen (I am currently writing this email in the session that I have just started with “startx”). Only when I switch to runlevel 5 and gdm starts, the system crashes without notice. For me this is a sign that the problem is perhaps not with the graphics driver but with gdm.
Firts it would be /var/log/Xorg.0.log. But I guess looking at init and the X server output on the screen would provide more useful informations if it is not a driver issue.
thank you for the answers and sorry for the delay but I did not find the time to look after my system earlier.
When I start gdm at the command line, everything is fine for some minutes but after some logins and logout it also crashes. I have also noticed that when I do simply “startx” it is ok but when I log out, sometimes the screen freezes, no possibility to switch to the cli, nothing.
I do not want to post the whole Xorg.0.log file because it is quite long and I think that only the last few lines are important. So here they are. Just for information, the monitor is connected to the VGA port because it does not have a DVI input. The resolution used is 1400x1050@60Hz.
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Manufacturer’s mask: 0
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Supported standard timings:
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): #0: hsize: 1280 vsize 1024 refresh: 60 vid: 32897
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): #1: hsize: 1280 vsize 960 refresh: 60 vid: 16513
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): #2: hsize: 1152 vsize 864 refresh: 75 vid: 20337
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): #3: hsize: 1400 vsize 1050 refresh: 60 vid: 16528
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Supported detailed timing:
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): clock: 121.8 MHz Image Size: 408 x 306 mm
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): h_active: 1400 h_sync: 1488 h_sync_end 1632 h_blank_end 1864 h_border: 0
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): v_active: 1050 v_sync: 1053 v_sync_end 1057 v_blanking: 1089 v_border: 0
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Ranges: V min: 56 V max: 76 Hz, H min: 30 H max: 82 kHz, PixClock max 140 MHz
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Serial No: 0
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): Monitor name: A201P1
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): EDID (in hex):
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 00ffffffffffff000daf080201010101
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 2311010368291f782e0ac4a3594a9724
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 135059bfef0081808140714f90400101
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 0101010101018f2f78d0511a27405890
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 340098321100001c000000fd00384c1e
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 520e000a202020202020000000ff0030
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 0a2020202020202020202020000000fc
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): 004132303150310a20202020202000b3
1883.952] (II) RADEON(0): EDID vendor “CMO”, prod id 520
1883.957] (II) RADEON(0): Output: DVI-0, Detected Monitor Type: 0
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): EDID vendor “CMO”, prod id 520
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Using hsync ranges from config file
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Using vrefresh ranges from config file
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1400x1050"x0.0 121.75 1400 1488 1632 1864 1050 1053 1057 1089 -hsync +vsync (65.3 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 36.00 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync (35.2 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 31.50 640 656 720 840 480 481 484 500 -hsync -vsync (37.5 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 31.50 640 664 704 832 480 489 492 520 -hsync -vsync (37.9 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 30.24 640 704 768 864 480 483 486 525 -hsync -vsync (35.0 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 25.18 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync (31.5 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "720x400"x0.0 28.32 720 738 846 900 400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync (31.5 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0 135.00 1280 1296 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (80.0 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 78.75 1024 1040 1136 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync (60.0 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 75.00 1024 1048 1184 1328 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (56.5 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "832x624"x0.0 57.28 832 864 928 1152 624 625 628 667 -hsync -vsync (49.7 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 49.50 800 816 896 1056 600 601 604 625 +hsync +vsync (46.9 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 50.00 800 856 976 1040 600 637 643 666 +hsync +vsync (48.1 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (64.0 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x960"x0.0 108.00 1280 1376 1488 1800 960 961 964 1000 +hsync +vsync (60.0 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1152x864"x0.0 108.00 1152 1216 1344 1600 864 865 868 900 +hsync +vsync (67.5 kHz)
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Output: VGA-0, Detected Monitor Type: 1
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): EDID data from the display on output: VGA-0 ----------------------
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Manufacturer: CMO Model: 208 Serial#: 16843009
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Year: 2007 Week: 35
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): EDID Version: 1.3
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Analog Display Input, Input Voltage Level: 0.700/0.700 V
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Sync: Separate
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Max Image Size [cm]: horiz.: 41 vert.: 31
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Gamma: 2.20
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): DPMS capabilities: Off; RGB/Color Display
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Default color space is primary color space
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): First detailed timing is preferred mode
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): redX: 0.637 redY: 0.348 greenX: 0.291 greenY: 0.592
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): blueX: 0.144 blueY: 0.074 whiteX: 0.313 whiteY: 0.348
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): Supported established timings:
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): 720x400@70Hz
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): 640x480@60Hz
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): 640x480@67Hz
1885.134] (II) RADEON(0): 640x480@72Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 640x480@75Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 800x600@56Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 800x600@60Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 800x600@72Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 800x600@75Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 832x624@75Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 1024x768@60Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 1024x768@70Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 1024x768@75Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): 1280x1024@75Hz
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): Manufacturer’s mask: 0
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): Supported standard timings:
1885.149] (II) RADEON(0): #0: hsize: 1280 vsize 1024 refresh: 60 vid: 32897
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): #1: hsize: 1280 vsize 960 refresh: 60 vid: 16513
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): #2: hsize: 1152 vsize 864 refresh: 75 vid: 20337
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): #3: hsize: 1400 vsize 1050 refresh: 60 vid: 16528
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): Supported detailed timing:
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): clock: 121.8 MHz Image Size: 408 x 306 mm
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): h_active: 1400 h_sync: 1488 h_sync_end 1632 h_blank_end 1864 h_border: 0
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): v_active: 1050 v_sync: 1053 v_sync_end 1057 v_blanking: 1089 v_border: 0
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): Ranges: V min: 56 V max: 76 Hz, H min: 30 H max: 82 kHz, PixClock max 140 MHz
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): Serial No: 0
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): Monitor name: A201P1
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): EDID (in hex):
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 00ffffffffffff000daf080201010101
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 2311010368291f782e0ac4a3594a9724
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 135059bfef0081808140714f90400101
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 0101010101018f2f78d0511a27405890
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 340098321100001c000000fd00384c1e
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 520e000a202020202020000000ff0030
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 0a2020202020202020202020000000fc
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): 004132303150310a20202020202000b3
1885.150] (II) RADEON(0): EDID vendor “CMO”, prod id 520
1885.160] (II) RADEON(0): Output: DVI-0, Detected Monitor Type: 0
1905.028]
Backtrace:
1905.029] 0: /usr/bin/Xorg (xorg_backtrace+0x28) [0x48daf8]
1905.029] 1: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x6ae89) [0x46ae89]
1905.029] 2: /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x7f7520f01000+0x32a60) [0x7f7520f33a60]
1905.029] 3: /usr/bin/Xorg (dixLookupPrivate+0xa) [0x4263da]
1905.029] 4: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so (0x7f751fd9d000+0x41983) [0x7f751fdde983]
1905.029] 5: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so (0x7f751fd9d000+0x38a6f) [0x7f751fdd5a6f]
1905.029] 6: /usr/bin/Xorg (FreeClientResources+0xeb) [0x43a05b]
1905.029] 7: /usr/bin/Xorg (CloseDownClient+0x60) [0x4400c0]
1905.029] 8: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x40a00) [0x440a00]
1905.029] 9: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x25f3a) [0x425f3a]
1905.029] 10: /lib64/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xfd) [0x7f7520f1fb7d]
1905.029] 11: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x25af9) [0x425af9]
1905.029] Segmentation fault at address 0x290
1905.029]
Fatal server error:
1905.029] Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
1905.029]
1905.029]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at X.Org Wiki - Home
for help.
1905.029] Please also check the log file at “/var/log/Xorg.0.log” for additional information.
1905.029]
1905.032] (II) Power Button: Close
1905.032] (II) UnloadModule: “evdev”
1905.034] (II) Power Button: Close
1905.034] (II) UnloadModule: “evdev”
1905.037] (II) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Close
1905.037] (II) UnloadModule: “evdev”
1905.041] (II) ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse: Close
1905.041] (II) UnloadModule: “evdev”
1905.041] (II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
So, as far as I can see, Xorg crashes with a segmentation fault but the other lines of the backtrace do not mean that much to me.
Try to install the proprietary driver and see if the problem persists. If you follow the link in post #7 and use the atiupgrade script, all you have to do is login in console (runlevel 3) as root, make sure that you have an Internet connection and type all the text highlighted in blue.
Installing the proprietary driver seems to have solved the problem. I have set the initial runlevel to 5 again and until now I did not have new crashes.
I will watch this during the next days and see what happens.
Installing the proprietary driver seems to have solved the problem. I have set the initial runlevel to 5 again and until now I did not have new crashes.
I will watch this during the next days and see what happens.
Kind regards,
Ralf
Yea! Congratulations for working your way through the issue and thanks for letting us know of your success.
