Arch Linux

alcafar

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 47

Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

I did a fresh install on my new laptop Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1 following the beginners' guide.
I am able to boot only with nomodeset in the kernel options.
Then I can't startx. It hangs after "loading extension GLX".
Instead of nomodeset, I tried as suggested in other posts vga=733 or vga=ask oracpi_backlight=vendor or video=SVIDEO-1:d
The most I can get is a blind login. This time startx displays something (not understandable) and the system does not hang (I can switch to another console).

As suggested in the guide I post some information:
$ wgetpaste ~/.xinitrc
File does not exist
$ wgetpaste /etc/X11/xorg.conf
File does not exist
$ wgetpaste /var/log/Xorg.0.log
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5433364

lspci | egrep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Device [AMD] nee ATI Thames XT/GL [Radeon HD 7600M Series]

uname -a
Linux satellite 3.8.7-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Apr 13 09:01:47 CEST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I installed the ATI open source driver.

Please let me know if you need more information.

Last edited by alcafar (2013-04-22 09:16:36)

Modeler

Member

From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 70

Re: Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

Have you had any luck with the proprietary driver (Catalyst)?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMD_Catalyst

Last edited by Modeler (2013-04-22 11:24:25)

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Wirth's law: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster"

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,410

Website

Re: Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

This doesn't look like a video driver issue.  radeon (xf86-video-ati) was loaded and started just fine.

The xf86CloseConsole errors are the issue - and they are (currently) new to me.

EDIT: sorry this post may just be noise.  Upon googling those messages, they show up in many forums and mailing list issues that are also discussing video driver issues - so they may be connected afterall.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-04-22 11:32:40)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

alcafar

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 47

Re: Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

Have you had any luck with the proprietary driver (Catalyst)?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMD_Catalyst

I tried, but the guide is out of date:

This article or section is out of date.
Reason: catalyst-utils is not anymore in the official repositories. Possibly one has to install catalyst-total from aur to get the same, but I'm not sure

And installing from AUR and having to rebuild at every kernel update is a nightmare.
Maybe the only chance is trying to install directly from AMD.

I'm using Arch since 5 years on a laptop with Nvidia graphic card, that died last week. I didn't know that ATI was so problematic with Linux.
Hope to find a fix, otherwise I have to switch to another Linux distribution, and I really don't want to

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,410

Website

Re: Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

ATI should not be problematic.  Catalyst may be, but the open source generally "just work".  In this case there is an issue, but I'm not sure it'd be ati-specific.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

alcafar

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 47

Re: Can't start X with Toshiba Satellite L850-1L1, Ati Radeon 7600M Series

I gave up, and installed Kubuntu. I am very sorry because I like Arch a lot, and after some distro hopping I was using it since 2008, but I need the computer for work. Hope to come back soon.