ATI Radeon -help!

[archiegoodwin]

Very happy with 17.1 Rebecca, but the graphics seemed a little sluggish using the open source driver. I am using an old Toshiba laptop with an ATI Radeon 4100 card. Like an idiot I went to their website, downloaded and installed their driver. It installed successfully, BUT when I rebooted my computer and arrived at the log in screen, every time I entered my password, the screen went black, flashed some lines of text (much too quick to read) and then took me back to the same log-on screen. No matter how many times I entered my password, it took me back to the same screen. An infinite loop. There are no error messages saying I entered the wrong password, or anything like that.

My question: Is there any way to fix this or uninstall the ATI driver, without having to reinstall Mint? Remember, I can NOT get into the desktop at this point, so the fix -- if any is possible -- would likely have to be performed during the boot-up process.

Thanks for any help.

[niowluka]

Like an idiot

We've all been there...

There are a couple of ways to install, and therefore uninstall the catalyst driver, so please explain in as much detail as you can what you did.

It should be easy enough a fix in any case.

[vl1969]

You can also search here for catalist driver. There is a thread I have seen about month ago thay hase all commands on how to un install the catalist from command lime and more.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

[archiegoodwin]

Thanks for answering.

I went to this site: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Went to the section near the bottom titled "Manually Select Your Driver"
In the boxes, I chose: Notebook Graphics; Radeon HD Series; Mobility Radeon 4100 Series (I know this is what is on the Toshiba); Linux x86_64
Clicked "Display Results," and then downloaded the driver (there was only one result, named "AMD Catalyst™ 13.1 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver")
Unzipped the download file.

Then I followed the instructions on this page: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... Notes.aspx
I followed the instructions under "Automatic Driver Installation Option:"

1) Launch the Terminal Application/Window and navigate to the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver download.
2) Enter the command sudo sh ./amd-driver-installer-x86.x86_64.run to launch the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver installer and display the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver setup dialog box.
3) Select Install Driver and click Continue to display the AMD License Agreement.
4) Read the License Agreement and click I Agree to continue the installation, or Cancel to terminate the installation. The Mode of Installation Dialog Box is displayed after clicking on "I Agree."
5) Select Automatic and click Continue. The AMD Catalyst proprietary driver should now be installed, and the Installation Completed Dialog box also displayed.
6) Click Exit to close the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver installer.
7) Launch the Terminal Application/Window and run:
For versions of X.Org newer than 7, /usr/bin/aticonfig --initial to configure the driver for your AMD product.
For versions of X.Org older than 7, /usr/X11R6/bin/aticonfig --initial to configure the driver for your AMD product.
Reboot your system. You should have successfully installed the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux.

The installation seemed to go off without a hitch, no error messages, but when I rebooted the computer I got stuck at the log-on screen (see previous post).

The same page with the instructions on how to install the driver also has instructions on how to uninstall it, but they require getting into a terminal window, and I cannot get to the desktop to bring up a terminal.

Thanks for any help

[niowluka]

OK. This should be easy as one, two, three...

When you are in logon screen, press Ctrl+Shift+F1. This will take you to a terminal. Log in just as you would normally.

Once logged in, first disable X interface:

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sudo stop mdm

Next uninstall the driver:

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sudo aticonfig --uninstall

If it doesn't work (i don't know why it shouldn't, but... you never know), add =force to above command:

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sudo aticonfig --uninstall=force

When it completes, remove xorg.conf file:

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sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now reboot:

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sudo reboot

No catalyst driver supports your card anymore, you are stuck with radeon which comes with Mint. Once you are back in your desktop, post results of below command, to see if there are any issues with that driver:

Code: Select all

inxi -Gxx

[archiegoodwin]

by niowluka on Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:31 am
OK. This should be easy as one, two, three...

When you are in logon screen, press Ctrl+Shift+F1. This will take you to a terminal. Log in just as you would normally.

Went to logon screen. Pressed Ctrl+Shift+F1. Nothing happened. No terminal. Plugged in a USB keyboard to my laptop; confirmed it was working. Went to logon screen. Pressed Ctrl+Shift+F1 on USB keyboard. Nothing happened. No terminal.

Any other suggestions?

Archie

[archiegoodwin]

Attention: niowluka

I got it to work. Instead of pressing Ctrl+Shift+F1, I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1. The terminal logon came up.
I followed your instructions, and everything worked.

There was one error message during un-installation. It said: "Error! There are no instances of module: fglrx 8.97.100.7 located in DKMS tree." I don't know if that means anything.

From the terminal, I ran inxi -Gxx. This is what I got:

bob@bob-Satellite-L505D ~ $ inxi -Gxx

Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4100] bus-ID: 01:05.0

X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.0hz

GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes

Could you please tell me if that output is OK, or if there is anything else I need to do?

Anyway, it is working. Avoided a total re-install. Thanks very much for your help.

Archie

[niowluka]

got it to work. Instead of pressing Ctrl+Shift+F1, I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Ooops, my bad, apologies for that.

inxi output looks ok. Which desktop are you running ? If it feels slow, it may be worth trying Xfce, or doing away with desktop altogether and run Openbox or Fluxbox, or the like.

[Hoser Rob]

I'd actually recommend using the open source radeon driver. See:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... st13014770

though this ain't what owners of old AMD hardware want to hear. I have an old laptop with a similarly unsupported AMD gma. I've never been able to find ONE case of an actually knowledgeable Linux geek who would bother with catalyst and fglrx for them.

Accoring to this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

you should have decent 3D accel with the radeon driver and your card.

If you want a good guide to catalyst etc see:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

but I think you're flogging a dead horse there.

BTW booting to a black screen in a case like this can generally be solved by enabling nomodeset.

[niowluka]

BTW booting to a black screen in a case like this can generally be solved by enabling nomodeset.

I doubt this would make a difference. That driver version 13.1 works only on kernel versions up to 3.4, and Rebecca uses 3.13.

Maya I believe uses kernel 3.2, so should work with that driver.

[niowluka]

... or you can try and install kernel 3.4, which is an LTS kernel supported till September 2016.

It's not all doom and gloom for AMD users

[archiegoodwin]

I will definitely stick with the open source Radeon driver.

Which desktop are you running ?

I am running latest version of Cinnamon. I tried Xfce a couple of years ago because the earliest versions of Cinnamon and Mate really gave me a lot of problems. As I recall, Xfce was "zippier," but I missed some of the bells & whistles from Cinnamon. Maybe the newer versions of Xoffice are a tad more polished?

When I said that Rebecca with Cinnamon seemed "a little sluggish," I meant just that -- a little sluggish; otherwise it works flawlessly (e.g. flash videos, HTML 5, desktop rendering, etc.), and really I can live with it.

There was nothing terribly wrong with my system. I was just "tinkering" when I installed the ATI driver, and, as experience has shown, tinkering can sometimes be foolish.

Archie

[niowluka]

Cinnamon is a bit on the heavy side, MATE and Xfce would definitely feel faster. MATE is not that different to Cinnamon, I think. I swapped Mint 16 Cinnamon to 17 MATE on my mum's PC and she never noticed (she is over 60, but still).

tinkering can sometimes be foolish

I think it's the opposite. Back up your system and break the socks off it. That's the best way to learn