Driver Manager thinks is a manually installed driver[SOLVED]

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stratis

Driver Manager thinks is a manually installed driver[SOLVED]

Post by stratis »

I am currently using LM17.2 Cinnamon, though I suspect this issue developed just before I upgraded from LM17.1. I am using a laptop with an AMD A4-5000 processor and AMD Radeon HD 8330 graphics. I was using the fglrx drivers, but I thought perhaps it might be best to change back to the Xorg drivers before upgrading from LM17.1 to LM17.2. I used Driver Manager, selected the Xorg driver and clicked on 'apply'. When rebooted, the computer was using software rendering. I continued with the upgrade as I thought that the upgrade (I also upgraded to the new recommended kernel) would fix this. That was not the case. The computer is still using software rendering. Driver Manager now shows that I am using a manually installed driver and the options to pick either the Xorg driver or the proprietary fglrx driver are greyed out. Also 'apply' and 'revert' buttons are greyed out.

Is it possible that clicking 'apply' in the Driver Manager messed up the Driver Manager? Should I have clicked on 'revert' instead?

What can I do to get Driver Manager working properly again?

I found 2 related posts, but am unsure if the solutions are appropriate for my case, as both had installed drivers manually.

This one
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... ut#p994693
suggests using sudo apt-get remove fglrx* (they had nvidia*) and then reinstalling. But what about the Xorg driver and what would I install to get the default LM17.2 options available in Driver Manager?

The other
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... ut#p944363
suggests using sudo update-rc.d -f mdm remove followed by sudo update-rc.d mdm defaults. I do not know what this does, and am reluctant to use without knowing.

I prefer a solution that fixes and uses the Driver Manager.

Finally, here is output from inxi -Gx
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8330] bus-ID: 00:01.0
X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: fbdev,ati,radeon (unloaded: vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@76.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.4, 128 bits) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.1.0 Direct Rendering: Yes
Last edited by stratis on Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
stratis

Re: Driver Manager thinks there is a manually installed driv

Post by stratis »

I found this other post
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=198859
which shows a Driver Manager screenshot just like what I get.

That post suggests that a purge of fglrx, followed by a reinstall and then a reconfigure of xserver-xorg will fix the software rendering and use the recommended open source drivers. Unless I receive a better suggestion, I will try this tomorrow.

It seems that if I follow these instructions the Driver Manager will not show the option of using the fglrx drivers, as those packages were purged. When I look at Software Manager it shows that fglrx-core is installed. If in future I have a need to try the fglrx drivers, will installing fglrx-core with Software Manager make those drivers available in Driver Manager?
stratis

Re: Driver Manager thinks there is a manually installed driv

Post by stratis »

I followed the steps below and now the computer does not give a warning about software rendering, is using the open source xorg driver and Driver Manager offers the proprietary fglrx driver. I will continue to use the open source driver unless I encounter limitations (the latest version seems to be working better with this hardware).

1. Stopped Xserver from terminal

Code: Select all

sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop
and logged in to the text mode console.

2. Removed the proprietary fglrx packages

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
so now when I check with

Code: Select all

dpkg-query -l 'fglrx*'
it only lists fglrx-glx with a status of not installed.

3. Reinstalled some Xserver packages

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64
4. Reconfigured Xserver

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
5. Rebooted the computer

Code: Select all

sudo reboot
There are two lingering items.

A. In step 2 I got a warning that some directories were not deleted because they were not empty. When I checked after rebooting, I found the file usr/lib/fglrx/etc/ati/amdpcsdb . This appears to be a configuration file created and used by the fglrx package. Should I delete this file and the directories fglrx/etc/ati ?

B. The problem with the drivers occurred after I used the Mint Driver Manager. Perhaps I selected an inappropriate option in the GUI. Is there a way to pass this experience to the developers so that they may consider ways that this would not happen to others? Only aiming to help improve Linux Mint.
frozelio

Re: Driver Manager thinks is a manually installed driver[SOL

Post by frozelio »

Perfect!!! Thanks!!!
neilrahc

Re: Driver Manager thinks is a manually installed driver[SOLVED]

Post by neilrahc »

Thanks! This worked for me Linux Mint 17 Mate with ATI Radeon. Used the fglrx-updates driver. Got my dual monitor display working again.
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