Installing Fglrx crashes Cinnamon

[Oldbwl]

I have an HP Laptop running Mint Cinnamon 17. By and large I am extremely happy with it. There are a couple of glitches I am having the devil of a job solving. High temperatures and some programs, including firefox, teamviewer and even Chrome/chromium exhibit minor graphical problems. Sometime the cursor shows disruption or trails. With Teamviewer this is a permanant issue.

I have been running with the open source graphics driver and have also installed TLP to try to reduce the temps I experience.

I thought I would give the Radeon proprietry drives a go tp see if they assist and installed those from the Driver Manager. On doing so Cinnamon promptly crashes on reboot. Reverting to the open source driver restores the system. I ran inxi -Fxz and the following is the output

Code: Select all

System:    Host: laptop Kernel: 3.13.0-24-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 17 Qiana
Machine:   System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC version: 048E100000242B10000020000
           Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 147B version: 67.22 Bios: Hewlett-Packard version: F.14 date: 09/10/2010
CPU:       Quad core AMD Phenom II P920 (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4a svm) bmips: 12768.4 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz 3: 800.00 MHz 4: 800.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250] bus-ID: 01:05.0 
           Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Madison [Mobility Radeon HD 5650/5750 / 6530M/6550M] bus-ID: 02:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1600x900@60.0hz, 1600x900@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Redwood HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5000 Series] driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 02:00.1
           Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-24-generic
Network:   Card-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller 
           driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 2000 bus-ID: 04:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl bus-ID: 03:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (17.2% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: Hitachi_HTS72505 size: 500.1GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 9.1G used: 5.0G (58%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 446G used: 76G (18%) fs: ext4 
           ID: swap-1 size: 4.02GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 59.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 60.0 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
Info:      Processes: 159 Uptime: 6:05 Memory: 1297.9/3778.1MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4 

Can someone guide me through the process to get the drivers working - if that is possible?

many thanks

Dan

[niowluka]

Are you using both cards ? fglrx will only support the HD 5650, so you won't be able to run dual head with that.

How do you install fglrx ? From repos or from AMD installer ? Does it generate xorg.conf ? If yes, post it here.

[Oldbwl]

Are you using both cards ? fglrx will only support the HD 5650, so you won't be able to run dual head with that.

How do you install fglrx ? From repos or from AMD installer ? Does it generate xorg.conf ? If yes, post it here.

The laptop does not provide a method of switching between cards. - until now I had no idea there are two. (I have seen something called switcheroo online - is this going to be required?)

I installed the driver from the Driver Manager, I have not downloaded from AMD. I can try to post the xorg.conf file later when not using the laptop for work - I presume it is in "/etc/X11/" if it exists.

When you refer to dual head, do you mean run the laptop screen and also a display on an external monitor at the same time? If so, that wont be a problem as not required

[niowluka]

Oh, I get it now. it's hybrid graphics... If you want to use fglrx you will need to disable the HD 4250 card, but I am not sure if it's possible.

Sounds like switcheroo might be your friend here, but I have no knowledge on that. Someone else should be able to help here.

[Oldbwl]

Oh, I get it now. it's hybrid graphics... If you want to use fglrx you will need to disable the HD 4250 card, but I am not sure if it's possible.

Sounds like switcheroo might be your friend here, but I have no knowledge on that. Someone else should be able to help here.

Switcheroo apparently will enable me to switch off the discrete card, but that would leave me with an integrated card which is noticibly slower. ideally I would switch off the integrated card and use Fglrx on the better one.

I cannot access anything in the BIOS on this machine which remotely looks like switching between the 2 cards either.

Can anyone tell me how I can acheive this if possible?

[Mark Phelps]

Can anyone tell me how I can acheive this if possible?

Switcheroo was your only hope.

Linux does not support dual/hybrid graphics well, and workarounds like switcheroo are all that are available.

The problem is that the machines come preloaded with MS Windows -- and the special video drivers needed to support their graphics. But, such drivers are not available in Linux.