Arch Linux

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,371

Plasma 5 on old laptop with radeon graphics hangs during login

After successfully running sddm/plasma5 on four different machines since plasma5 was released I have just updated an older laptop (Dell Latitude D610) to plasma 5 but if I start sddm then although I do get the sddm greeter screen, there is no mouse cursor on the screen and plugging in a usb mouse also makes no difference.  I had previously been using evdev but I have now installed xf86-input-libinput but that makes no difference. So the touchpad and mouse seem not to be detected or used. Also once I get sddm on the screen I cannot switch VT so that I can try to login as root on a console.

Can anyone offer any pointers to where I might look for a fix or workaround?  I have googled to try to seek a solution but have not come across any hints - and the journal log does not seem to give any clues either.

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-03-03 15:37:21)

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Mike C

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,371

Re: Plasma 5 on old laptop with radeon graphics hangs during login

I managed to get to the stage that I have a greeter screen and a cursor by going back and having a detailed check on the xorg settings - and removed an old /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf file - so now I do get a greeter screen in which I can choose the plasma desktop and enter the user password and try to log in - but the login gets about 80% through and then the login hangs and never reaches the desktop - there is a wallpaper background, and the login progress strip - but the progress just stops and I can't then do anything else except reboot - at this point I can log in via ssh and look at logs but it is not clear what the problem is. The GPU is a Mobility Radeon X300 and the radeon driver is loaded - the Xorg log seems to look fine, and the sddm lines in the systemd journal don't show anything untoward.

Any hints of suggestions on how to get the login to the plasma desktop to complete would be appreciated.

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Mike C

Loose_Control

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-01-11

Posts: 136

Re: Plasma 5 on old laptop with radeon graphics hangs during login

anythin useful in .xsession-errors?

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,371

Re: Plasma 5 on old laptop with radeon graphics hangs during login

I came to the conclusion that the GPU was just so old that plasma simply won't work on it.  I tried all manner of different graphics options for xorg but nothing worked. After spending around 6 hours on this I decided to abandon this project and move the machine to a simpler desktop environment that will still keep this old machine ticking over and still provide some functionality.  It is also a 32 bit machine and chrome no longer is available for 32 bit - so it is the twilight time for this little well-used old workhorse!

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Mike C