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#1 2011-12-26 10:35:25

autonomousclyde
Member
Registered: 2011-12-26
Posts: 1

Loads of Issues on Alienware M18x

Hey guys,

I've been having some issues getting Arch going on my new Alienware M18x. The hardware is a little awkward, because I'm using dual AMD 6990m's in it. This system uses a couple of features, notably being the ability to switch between onboard and discrete graphics as well as the ability to force the battery to not charge when it is plugged in, in order to lengthen battery life. These two things are what likely are causing me all of my issues.

While under Arch, if my system becomes unplugged, and I plug the charger back in, the system refuses to charge. The only way to make it charge again is to completely shut the system off (no rebooting), unplug the charger and plug it back in. Any ideas on how I could fix this?

Also, pertaining to the graphics isuues.

The open source drivers worked, but barely for me. I could get everything going, except I couldn't adjust the screen brightness, and the drivers made my GPUs run at a high load all of the time, decreasing battery life and using electricity. This was undesired and I could not fix it, so I started using the official catalyst drivers. This brought me a whole slew of new issues.

The console is at a really low resolution when my computer boots, almost like udev isn't loading it. I've tried to probe the module at boot to make it work, but it doesn't. The console also refuses to use colors and my users .bashrc, which is extremely strange. I've tried fixing the resolution via GRUB, but without the module loading properly, I can only get really crappy resolutions.

If I ignore these issues and boot straight into X, I am then faced with a few more issues. The interface (KDE) seems to lag at times (tolerable), and I am unable to play most videos, like incoming Skype video (not outgoing), playing media (not tolerable). YouTube works, so I'm guessing it's a wierd decoding issue. Upon trying to play these videos, Xorg crashes and throws me back into a console.

Can anybody help? If I can get this going, I'm going to submit an wiki article about getting Arch running on the M18x, which has had a plethora of obstacles so far.
Thanks!

Last edited by autonomousclyde (2011-12-26 10:37:26)

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#2 2011-12-26 21:29:52

MadCat_X
Member
Registered: 2009-10-08
Posts: 189

Re: Loads of Issues on Alienware M18x

autonomousclyde wrote:

While under Arch, if my system becomes unplugged, and I plug the charger back in, the system refuses to charge. The only way to make it charge again is to completely shut the system off (no rebooting), unplug the charger and plug it back in. Any ideas on how I could fix this?

Do you dualboot Windows on that computer? If yes, does it work there? I guess that maybe a BIOS update (if there's one) or booting with acpi_osi="Linux" kernel parameter could help.

autonomousclyde wrote:

The console is at a really low resolution when my computer boots, almost like udev isn't loading it. I've tried to probe the module at boot to make it work, but it doesn't. The console also refuses to use colors and my users .bashrc, which is extremely strange. I've tried fixing the resolution via GRUB, but without the module loading properly, I can only get really crappy resolutions.

Catalysts don't support KMS, so your terminal will always be in text mode unless you use some other framebuffer driver like uvesafb (that one worked with my nVidia card). The .bashrc issue has probably nothing to do with the drivers.

autonomousclyde wrote:

If I ignore these issues and boot straight into X, I am then faced with a few more issues. The interface (KDE) seems to lag at times (tolerable), and I am unable to play most videos, like incoming Skype video (not outgoing), playing media (not tolerable). YouTube works, so I'm guessing it's a wierd decoding issue. Upon trying to play these videos, Xorg crashes and throws me back into a console.

KDE is not exactly known for its speed, mine lags a lot while performing specific tasks when there's CD in the drive (my lousy DVD drive is probably to blame though), do you use compositing? If yes, do you have OpenGL2 enabled and compositing type set to OpenGL? A lot of KDE sluggishness comes down to KWin effects, I suggest you disable those you don't need. An Xorg crash log would be really helpful here. Maybe you could run "aticonfig --initial" to recreate the xorg.conf file and see if it help.

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