Arch Linux

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Screens seemingly randomly freezes

I apologise for the vagueness, but I don't know what's causing my problem. So please ask for any data that's needed.

I'm running Arch 64-bit with KDE, and I have a AMD HD 7700 graphics card, and I'm using the proprietary drivers (downloaded from Vi0L0's catalyst repo) along with xorg-server 1.16. Sometimes, what is seemingly random, the screens completely freeze up. The keyboard becomes unresponsive, and I can't switch to any tty. The only way to get out is to reboot over SSH. I've tried killing x (over ssh) in hopes that it might drop me to a tty, but no success. The installation is fairly new, and I can't think of anything I've installed/done that could be related to the cause of this.

*edit* I also sometimes get glitches/flickering in the screen, it just flashes by. Sometimes I'll get what I'd describe as artifacts. When browsing I'd get a grey square in the middle of a webpage. I'll try to get a photo of this sometime.

Last edited by lurvik (2015-04-11 16:04:47)

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

After I realised that Chromium was always running when these glitches, artifacts and freezes happened I have been running firefox instead. I can't say for sure if chromium was the problem, but I've not had the artifacts or freezes happen when using Firefox. I got artifacts when using google chrome. Opera also froze the screens. I'll report back if the screens freeze up again.

Silkworm205

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2012-05-21

Posts: 267

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

I'm pretty sure Chrome uses hardware acceleration by default. (I could be wrong, I use firefox myself) Have you made sure the drivers are properly configured?
Check this bit of the wiki to find out.
Also, your symptoms seem to describe this perfectly. Did you enable nomodeset? And if you're using GRUB, remake the grub.cfg file?

---

I think I know enough to know I don't know enough.

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

I get output from running the commands in your first link, as expected. I have enabled nomodeset. I tried disabling hardware acceleration in chrome/-ium, but it started flickering once again.

Could you go more into detail with what you mean with configuring the drivers?

Silkworm205

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2012-05-21

Posts: 267

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

First you should post the output of the commands. Do they show they you have hardware acceleration?
Next, by configuring the drivers, I mean you should double check the wiki page to see if you missed any steps. Did you enable the building of the driver module? Did you blacklist the radeon driver? Did you run aticonfig --initial?
You should also make sure you have Vi0L0's xorg packages installed, and not any from the core repositories.

---

I think I know enough to know I don't know enough.

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

$ lsmod | grep fglrx && fglrxinfo && glxinfo | grep "direct rendering"
fglrx               10873511  256 
button                 12953  1 fglrx
amd_iommu_v2           17446  1 fglrx
display: :0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series  
OpenGL version string: 4.4.13283 Compatibility Profile Context 14.501.1003

direct rendering: Yes

I must've missed the blacklist step. I'm not sure if "blacklist radeon" is sufficient in the file "/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf".

I have followed the tutorial step regarding installing xorg116, so I'm using vil0l0's packages.

Also, I noticed that Firefox doesn't play HTML5 videos properly. Scrolling is also kind of lagged. Just like when you install Windows and you're using the default graphics drivers.

--

Just did a system update and some catlyst packages have been updated.

Silkworm205

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2012-05-21

Posts: 267

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

Run "pacman -Sl catalyst" and let's make sure you installed all the packages you need to.
Also, did you run 

 systemctl enable catalyst-hook
 systemctl start catalyst-hook

to build the drivers for your kernel?

---

I think I know enough to know I don't know enough.

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

Catalyst-hook is enabled and running.

$ pacman -Sl catalyst
catalyst amd-adl-sdk 7.0-1
catalyst amdapp-aparapi 20130123-1
catalyst amdapp-codexl 1.6-7247
catalyst amdapp-sdk 3.0-1
catalyst amdapp-sdk-aparapi 3.0-1
catalyst amdapp-sdk-docs 3.0-1
catalyst amdapp-sdk-nocatalyst 3.0-1
catalyst amdapp-sdk-opencv 3.0-1
catalyst amdoverdrivectrl 1.2.7-3
catalyst amdtfset-git v1.0-1
catalyst catalyst-fix-gdm 15.3-3
catalyst catalyst-generator 15.3-1
catalyst catalyst-hook 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst catalyst-libgl 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst catalyst-utils 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst gdebugger 6.2.438-4
catalyst lib32-catalyst-libgl 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst lib32-catalyst-utils 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst lib32-opencl-catalyst 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst opencl-catalyst 15.3-1 [installed]
catalyst opencl-headers 4:2.0.r29187-1 [installed]
catalyst xvba-video 0.8.0-2

lurvik

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 23

Re: Screens seemingly randomly freezes

After being so incredibly frustrated with firefox not working properly, and all other browsers causing the freezes I decided to try out the open source drivers. I'll report back if it didn't solve it.