Arch Linux

fladi

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 19

[solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is my first posting, I will try to give as much as detailed information refering to my problem as possible. Please be patient if I ask for solutions which for you all seem easy and logical, I am a Newbie.

The details: I am running a HP Pavilion 17 " AMD Quadcore laptop, 8gb Ram, Arch Linux 32bit Kernel 3.17.1 XFCE desktop with an AMD Radeon graphic card for about a few weeks now. Everything went fine so far, but last Saturday I did an update via pacman-Syu, the update included a mesa package. All went smooth as ever. Then after a reboot the XFCE desktop had stripes across the laptop screen, the mouse cursor had disappeared, also letters of the icon descriptions and the menus were missing, some strange "hieroglyphics" appeared instead of them. I wasn't able to downgrade the mesa-package as I nearly wasn't able to open the terminal because of the missing mouse cursor, then I managed somehow to get into the terminal and gave in the commands but the writing was incomplete and/or did not work because of these strange and missing letters.

No problem, I thought to myself, a fresh install will do the work, so I wipped my hard drive using Parted Magic, then I did a fresh Arch install (Netinstall), this time using LXDE instead of XFCE as my desktop environment. When I booted into the login screen first, it looked fine but after logging into the desktop all the stripes, the missing mouse cursor and the strange letters appeared again. So is there any solution to that strange behaviour ? Before the Saturday-update everything worked without any problems for weeks. BTW other OS work without these problems, I tried Macpup just for fun, no messing-up with my Radeon graphics card happened.

Sorry for my piss poor English I am Austrian. Sorry for eventually causing any inconvenience asking this question. Regards, Fladi.

Last edited by fladi (2014-11-04 05:01:28)

olive

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-06-22

Posts: 1,490

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

Looks like a bug in the graphic driver. It's difficult to diagnose, what's the content of /var/log/Xorg.0.log? I am running with the ati driver (64 bits) with a HD6570 graphic card and all works fine. If all works well before, try to downgrade the offending package. By the way, you can have a the linux console by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 if the X server don't work, if your problem is having a terminal to downgrade your package.

fladi

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 19

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

Thanx for your fast and friendly reply. I will try at the weekend after work and post the output or try downgrading via console. Regards, Fladi.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,086

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

HP Pavilion 17 " AMD Quadcore laptop, 8gb Ram, Arch Linux 32bit Kernel

fladi,
that laptop should have no problem at all with 64-bit kernel (and would require PAE to use all memory with a 32-bit kernel) , do you have specific reasons to use a 32-bit kernel ?

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

fladi

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 19

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

HP Pavilion 17 " AMD Quadcore laptop, 8gb Ram, Arch Linux 32bit Kernel

fladi,
that laptop should have no problem at all with 64-bit kernel (and would require PAE to use all memory with a 32-bit kernel) , do you have specific reasons to use a 32-bit kernel ?

I discovered myself that a 32bit system runs much faster on it than a 64bit system and that there are some applications better (or only) running on 32 bit than on 64bit. That was the reason why I much prefer using 32bit systems. But the main reason is that UEFI crap from microsoft isn't available under a 32bit system !

Last edited by fladi (2014-11-04 05:02:48)

fafik1234

Member

Registered: 2014-11-01

Posts: 2

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

I have the same problem, free drivers, xfce4, procesor AMD5350(Kabini), vga radeon R3 (8400)
downgrade linux kernel to linux-3.16.4
download: http://seblu.net/a/arm/packages/l/linux … pkg.tar.xz
pacma -U linux-3.16.4-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
edit /etc/pacman.conf
IgnorePkg   =  linux linux-headers

screenshot
linux 3.17 xfce http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/ek3z3ip81ky2.png
linux 3.17 compiz http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/bddprwn4tey8.png
linux 3.16 compiz http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/ja5ma8c7rdgl.png

On a laptop, free drivers, linux 3.17.1-pae, openbox, procesor core i5, vga integrated card - everything OK

Last edited by fafik1234 (2014-11-01 20:25:22)

fladi

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 19

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

I have the same problem, free drivers, xfce4, procesor AMD5350(Kabini), vga radeon R3 (8400)
downgrade linux kernel to linux-3.16.4
download: http://seblu.net/a/arm/packages/l/linux … pkg.tar.xz
pacma -U linux-3.16.4-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
edit /etc/pacman.conf
IgnorePkg   =  linux linux-headers

screenshot
linux 3.17 xfce http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/ek3z3ip81ky2.png
linux 3.17 compiz http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/bddprwn4tey8.png
linux 3.16 compiz http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00592/ja5ma8c7rdgl.png

On a laptop, free drivers, linux 3.17.1-pae, openbox, procesor core i5, vga integrated card - everything OK

The screenshots you posted match exactly to my problem ! Are you really sure the bug is coming from Kernel 3.17 ? I had this kernel running for about a week without any problems, the problems came when updating mesa.

fafik1234

Member

Registered: 2014-11-01

Posts: 2

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

I'm not sure that's the problem linux 3.17 
Downgrade linux kernel to linux 3.16 or instal linux-lts, solved the problem.

Installed Manjaro Linux, no problems display.
Install new Arch linux, display problems.
Versions of packages:

Linux 3.17.0-1-MANJARO        Linux 3.17.2-1-ARCH
mesa 10.3.1-1            mesa 10.3.2-1
mesa-dri 10.3.1-1        mesa-dri 10.3.2-1
linux317 3.17.0-1            linux 3.17.2-1
xorg-server 1.16.1-1        xorg-server 1.16.1-1
xf86-video-ati 1:7.5.0-1        xf86-video-ati 1:7.5.0-1

edit:
install AMD Catalyst, solved display  problems
llinux 3.17.2-1
xorg-server 1.16.1-1

Last edited by fafik1234 (2014-11-03 10:23:17)

fladi

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 19

Re: [solved] AMD Radeon - strange behaviour after mesa-update

Solved ! I reinstalled Arch with using Kernel 3.14 LTS, had some problems refering to pam (a pain in the arse in my opinion, absolutely useless) and lxdm login but solved it. Now everything works flawlessly. Seems that kernel 3.17 and mesa don't get on well. Thank you for offering perfect solutions. Now I can go on and solve another problem (NAS Synology DS213j isn't recognized, but thats a different story gg). Thanx !!!