Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-video-ati package

Natty gdm hangs on boot

Asked by Peter Woo

I have a clean Ubuntu 11.04 installation on my PC with the ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO graphics card, connected to 2 monitors (one VGA and one DVI). I had installed the ATI proprietary driver but since it didn't work nicely, I uninstalled it shortly after.

I then appear to run into the syndrome described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/FglrxInteferesWithRadeonDriver. For my case, gdm hangs on almost every boot, stuck at both screens seeing the Unity background image only, and nothing else. I can hear the login sound playing though.

Currently, I circumvent the problem by switching to tty1 and run 'sudo service gdm restart'.

Have tested with switching to Unity2D and Ubuntu Classics. Both boot stably (5 boot tests each). The issue appears to be unique to Unity. Have un/re-install Unity but it doesn't solve the problem.

The irony is - with the ATI proprietary driver, boots are stable for Unity, but it doesn't work nicely with Firefox and Thunderbird (images become 8-bit low quality graphics). Also, the Unity launch bar is placed awkwardly at the middle of the screens (positioned at left edge of the right monitor).

I do want to keep using the ATI open driver and Unity. Is there a solution for solving the boot issue?

Many thanks.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

How is it ironic?

Can you give the output of:

sudo lshw -C diaplay; lsb_release -a; dpkg -i | grep fg

Thanks

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Peter Woo (yatc-oo-ngee) said : 		#2

The irony is that while the ATI proprietary driver appears fragile in every corner (screen flicking, buggy hardware acceleration with firefox, doesn't work nice with Unity on the launch bar, very unfriendly fglrx-amdcccle that requires monitor settings to be saved repeatedly before effectiveness), it provides stable boot... :-)

The output:
-------------------------------------
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: RV610 video device [Radeon HD 2400 PRO]
       vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:43 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fdee0000-fdeeffff ioport:de00(size=256) memory:fde00000-fde1ffff
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04
Codename: natty
dpkg-deb: error: --info needs a .deb filename argument

Type dpkg-deb --help for help about manipulating *.deb files;
Type dpkg --help for help about installing and deinstalling packages.
----------------------------------------------
(I am not sure about the dpkg -I though. Is it something missing in the command line?)

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Proprietary driver causing unstable / slow display is not really ironic. It's all down to settings and config. You may need an xorg.conf to define better settings for the display. You r monitor may not be reporting EDID

Revision history for this message
Peter Woo (yatc-oo-ngee) said : 		#4

Have just found out that I can work around the boot problem by reducing the number of autostart applications in Unity. It doesn't seem to be a particular application that caused the problem. By enabling any one of them individually, Unity can boot ok. It's only when enabling all of them, it becomes a blocker.

Have made up a small script for delayed startup (sleep 5) of some of my personal apps, and run that script via autostart.

I am ok for now. Will check on the monitor thing later.

Thanks for the info.

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