Arch Linux

matse

Member

Registered: 2011-04-27

Posts: 299

Black screen after KDM start

Hello,
I really remember exactly since when, but not longer than about a week now I have a problem with starting KDE: As soon as my login-screen should appear, my screen goes black. My PC doesn't hang, I can switch to tty1, login as root and halt the system (don't see anything there, too) and after a reboot the system starts normally. This behaviour does occur in about 1 of 3 boots. I have an ATI graphics card with the fglrx (11.7) driver (radeon is blacklisted). Since it worked for months now I have not idea where to start to look for the cause, has anybod an idea what I could try?
Thanks,
matse

xmadc

Member

Registered: 2010-09-21

Posts: 9

Re: Black screen after KDM start

Hi,

What is your ati card model? I assume you use KDM as a login manager, you should take a look on /var/log/kdm.log and see if you can find something useful in there. Also if you have another WM available (such as openbox, wmii or something) and try starting these to check if you get any errors.

Just for your reference, I have an ATI HD 3250 with kernel 3.0 and catalyst 11.7 as well and I haven't had any problem, I do not use KDE/KDM though so probably it would be best checking KDM logs.

- x

matse

Member

Registered: 2011-04-27

Posts: 299

Re: Black screen after KDM start

Hi xmadc,
sorry for my late reply, had a lot of other things to do last days, but now to your questions: I have an 4870x2 and in my kdm.log I couldn't find a special error which occured when the black screen appeared. But I will keep that in mind and have a look at it when I have the problem next time.
But at every login I see these warnings / errors in my kdm.log:

(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@4:0:0) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@3:0:1) found
klauncher(1170) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server.
kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!
kdmgreet(1164)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected \
to D-Bus server"

kdmgreet(1164)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): No time zone information obtained from ktimezoned

For the two warnings here is an extract of the output of "lspci" is:

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R700 [Radeon HD 4870 X2]
03:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc HD48x0 audio
04:00.0 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc R700 [Radeon HD 4870 X2]

and a part of my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        BusID       "PCI:3:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]-0"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        BusID       "PCI:4:0:0"
EndSectio

Now to the errors that mention DBUS, my Daemons section of my rc.conf is:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus bluetooth iptables @network @openvpn @crond @cupsd @cpufreq)

so dbud should be started when kdm starts...
Since my first post here the "black screen" did not occur anymore (strange but I'm happy with that), but nevertheless I would like to get rid of the warnings and the errors about DBUS / ktimezoned.
Any hints?
Thanks
matse

Last edited by matse (2011-08-17 14:13:08)