catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

Infracephas · 2008-02-17 03:31:04

Sometimes, usually the second or third time I use startx after a reboot, video is not displaying. I get a black screen (blank) with no cursor and no windows of any sort. Ctrl+Alt+F[1-12] does not work at all. The system is unresponsive. I'm not sure whether the system is locking up or if video is just not displaying.

My graphics card is a "Mobility Radeon 9600 M10"

The Xorg doesn't appear to have any errors either. Here's the log from when Xorg failed:
http://www.lastholdout.com/foo/xorg/Xorg.fail

Also, here's my xorg.conf file. I generated it using 'sudo aticonfig --initial':
http://www.lastholdout.com/foo/xorg/xorg.conf

Notice that I added:
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "KernelModuleParm" "agplock=0"
around line 135 for good measure since Arch's Wiki says that those options may help prevent lockups.

I've had this problem at least since 2.6.22. Back in December, I switched back to the open source ATI driver. As of late, system performance has been a real drag, and other than this strange behavior, catalyst seems to do a better job. Is anyone else having this problem?

Last edited by Infracephas (2008-02-17 19:52:53)

Infracephas · 2008-02-19 06:44:34

It also seems to do the exact same kind of blank/black screen on when I attempt to switch from terminal back to an X session. Say, for example, I'm in an X session on F7. I then hit, Ctrl+Alt+F1 and I'm in terminal. Everything is still okay at this point. Then I hit, Ctrl+Alt+F7 to go back to the X session. At this point, sometimes I get a blank/black screen, and I can no longer do VT switching.

jammib · 2008-12-19 21:18:46

Sorry to resurrect an old post, but I am having very similar problems on a Thinkpad R60.

These seem to have started since the last upgrade to the latest xorg server and Catalyst driver, and happens every time I boot using my home wireless profile. When I boot up with my wired work profile it boots perfectly every time.

The only record I can find of anything going wrong are the following lines in /var/log/everything:

Dec 18 21:57:54 mblaptop Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b1.
Dec 18 22:32:45 mblaptop Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason a0.
Dec 19 20:30:16 mblaptop Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b1.
Dec 19 20:31:37 mblaptop Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b1.
Dec 19 20:32:47 mblaptop Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b1.

This got so bad I rebuilt my laptop and moved from x68 to x86_64, but the lockups keep happening.

It's getting to the point where I am tempted to find another distro as a laptop which only works in one location is pretty useless

Cheers

Jammib

Infracephas · 2008-12-21 22:23:56

I never came to a good answer for this problem myself. I ended up switching back to the open source driver. It works well enough for most things. It also has great virtual desktop support for more than one monitor. I'm very leery about buying an ATI card again though.

That's an interesting thought with the wireless card. What card do you have? Also, what video card model are you using?

darthaxul · 2009-02-03 06:52:18

I have the same problem now with my super new computer, but my old ctr monitor. I think its a problem with the proprietary fglrx driver because in the log the last thing it reports is 1600x1424 and I think the max the monitor supports is 1600x1200. Im stuck with the vesa driver for now as that seems to work.

jammib · 2009-02-03 16:16:55

Sorry,

I'd pretty much given up on this - I know it sounds strange, but this only affects me at home, when I turn on the laptop at work, it works perfectly every time. If I try using the work network profile at home it sometimes randomly works.

I did a bit more digging into this, and running a strace produced lots of ioctl messages:

15692 open("/dev/dri/card0", O_RDWR) = 10
15692 write(0, "drmOpenDevice: open result is 10,"..., 39) = 39
15692 write(0, "drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor retu"..., 40) = 40
...
...
...
15692 ioctl(10, 0xc03064a6, 0x7fffc8705010) = 0
15692 ioctl(10, 0xc03064a6, 0x7fffc8705010) = 0
15692 ioctl(10, 0xc03064a6, 0x7fffc8705010) = 0
15692 ioctl(10, 0xc03064a6, 0x7fffc8705010) = 0
15692 ioctl(10, 0xc03064a6, 0x7fffc8705010) = 0

(about 2,000,000 or so before I managed to kill X)

i don't think this is a wireless issue any more, it is more than likely a fglrx problem, but I doubt we will get any luck trying to get support out of ATI, in the meantime I will just end up constantly rebooting my laptop until it decides to work.

BTW I have also seen this happen under Mandriva when network profiles were used, but never got a chance to dig into it very much.

As I type this I am looking at it a bit more closely and I can see that in the same strace I also get:

15692 open("/dev/dri/card0", O_RDWR) = 11
15692 write(0, "drmOpenDevice: open result is 11,"..., 39) = 39
15692 write(0, "drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor retu"..., 40) = 40

which makes me think that X has opened the DRI device twice and there may be some kind of race condition going on here, at which point I am in way too deep and if there is anyone here with clue, please help.

Cheers

Jammib

b4283 · 2009-02-07 18:24:00

Have a similar problem here ... It's kind of a releaf that knowing not only me have this problem.

My situation is that when I kill X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE or leave Xorg in anyway,
I simply couldn't start it again, I'm somehow very convinced that fglrx is the one to blame because before time I was testing some softs and had to switch to VESA mode and I can start Xorg normally repeatedly.

The 1st start of Xorg is always perfect.

After killing/leaving 1st start, the 2nd start ALWAYS crashes, leaving only a cursor that doesn't blink on the top-left of the screen.

Interestingly is that mpd is still playing music, I wonder if i connect from ssh and kill the xorg process could save it back to console(tty).

b4283 · 2009-02-27 15:57:12

There's a solution to this:
after exiting from Xorg, remove the fglrx module by

sudo modprobe -r fglrx

than you can start Xorg again.

But you have to do this every time, otherwise it just hangs.

jammib · 2009-02-27 16:55:56

I worked out what was causing my problem, but not why.

The reason my setup always worked at work but not at home was because, at work I am generally running off a power supply and home I don't. If I start my laptop with the power connected it always works.

I don't know if this helps anybody.

Jammib

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-17 03:31:04

catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#2 2008-02-19 06:44:34

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#3 2008-12-19 21:18:46

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#4 2008-12-21 22:23:56

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#5 2009-02-03 06:52:18

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#6 2009-02-03 16:16:55

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#7 2009-02-07 18:24:00

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#8 2009-02-27 15:57:12

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

#9 2009-02-27 16:55:56

Re: catalyst/fglrx startx freeze - blank/black screen

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