Arch Linux

The Orange Peanut

Member

Registered: 2008-01-06

Posts: 152

Hard freeze with fglrx

Brief summary: ever since I've used Linux, my video drivers have froze my computer.  I have an AGP Ati 9500 Pro.  The open source "ati" drivers freeze at the login screen.  "fglrx" worked when I was running Ubuntu with the 8.37 drivers, and by 'worked' I mean barely.  I had direct rendering but the slightest OpenGL anything would cause the freezing... but at least it was stable.

Now for the problem at hand.  Since the only fglrx drivers available in Arch are the latest, they're the only ones I've been able to try to use.  They freeze my PC at the KDE loading screen every single time.  I've been using vesa drivers, which isn't much fun since they run in a low color.  I've scoured the internet and can't seem to find anyone that is running into the same kind of problem.  Now, I've got two questions for fellow Archers:

1)  Is there any way to diagnose this problem?  Logs or SOMETHING?  This is hard freeze of my computer; I can't alt-ctrl-bckspc to kill X, the only way to restart is to actually hit the reset button on my machine.  Is there a way I can find out where the problem might be?

2)  If not, is there a way to install older drivers?  I want to install http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linu … -40-4.html these drivers because they were the last iteration of fglrx to use the old codebase (drivers after that used a BRAND NEW codebase to support compositing) and they worked in Ubuntu.  I'm not even sure if it is possible because the website says those drivers are for Xorg 7.2 and I'm pretty sure Arch uses a newer version than that.

Any help?  I'm about to pull my hair out... I've been using Linux ONLY since October and it frustrates me so bad that I've never had proper video acceleration.

Edit:  Also, things I've tried

I load the agpgart module on boot (I read that I might need to do that because its an AGP card)
I've tried disabling AGP fastwrite in the BIOS as well as disabling AGP 8x (so it uses 4x instead)
I've lowered the AGP aperture size from 64 mb to 32mb
I've tried raising the voltage on my video card because someone else suggested that.  It defaults to 1.5v.  At 1.55v, it still freezes.  At 1.6v, it doesn't even make it to the operating system (it gets hung at "loaded udev events" or something.)

Here is the xorg.conf I use when I test out fglrx drivers, but I don't think it's a xorg.conf problem; its with the drivers itself or somewhere within my hardware system.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    #Load "glx"
    Disable "glx"
    #Load "dri"
    Disable "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "auto"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName   "Radeon 9500 Pro"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
        Modes    "1280x1024"    "1024x768"    "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

Last edited by The Orange Peanut (2008-05-02 23:23:39)

drewbug01

Member

From: chicago

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 85

Website

Re: Hard freeze with fglrx

I have a similar problem on my machine, with ati and fglrx.
Check out this link to the page i wrote in the wiki for my machine and try putting some of the things in my xorg.conf into yours. I don't know WHAT fixed it but SOMETHING in there did, at least for me.

Good luck!

twiggy

Member

Registered: 2008-04-16

Posts: 14

Re: Hard freeze with fglrx

Just thought i'd say thanks, I used that lil guide there for my PC and it worked fine.  At last I can use the better, closed-source, driver. Thanks.

EDIT: oh wait, maybe not, things load up and last a bit longer though, certainly a move in the right direction.  Basically, the GL application loads up then the whole system dies after a few minutes

Last edited by twiggy (2008-05-13 17:20:32)

Greatmetal

Member

Registered: 2008-02-20

Posts: 21

Re: Hard freeze with fglrx

I have this exact same problem running any application that uses OpenGL, It dies after a few minutes with the fglrx driver when running the app. I can't use Archlinux anymore because the applications I use rely heavily on 3d, Its killing me >.<.

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: Hard freeze with fglrx

Greatmetal - is this a problem specifically with the new fglrx?  Could you post your xorg.conf, perhaps?