New ATI drivers - black screen, system freeze and crash. Anyone in the same boat?

[zolookas]

Xorg with fglrx crashes with X1650. Screen goes
black. Keyboard becomes unresponsive. System
is thoroughly hung and requires hard reset to recover. Card works older fglrx included in ubuntu 7.10 and with vesa/"ati" driver in ubuntu 8.04 (although "ati" driver colour depth seems to be less than 24bit). I am using DVI connection. Is anyone else in the same boat and has some solutions? Because i didn't find any people who had found a workaround.

I've discussed this problem in mandriva:
http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?p=430804

Other bug reports in unofficial ati bugtracker:
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1015
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=910

[legume]

[QUOTE=zolookas;28021]Xorg with fglrx crashes with X1650. Screen goes
black. Keyboard becomes unresponsive. System
is thoroughly hung and requires hard reset to recover. Card works older fglrx included in ubuntu 7.10 and with vesa/"ati" driver in ubuntu 8.04 (although "ati" driver colour depth seems to be less than 24bit). I am using DVI connection. Is anyone else in the same boat and has some solutions? Because i didn't find any people who had found a workaround.

Try setting the GART/aperture size in your BIOS to 512.

Rather than a hard reset you can often use magic SysReq by pressing and keep holding down alt and SysRq then pressing and releasing s then u then b.

This will (s)ync your drives (u)n/remount them readonly and then re(b)oot.

[Kano]

I had similar issues when switching from ati->fglrx or when ModeLines have been in the xorg.conf (tested only X700SE PCI-E). fglrx drivers are not even able to init the hardware correctly.

[erdnussflipp]

Hey Guys,


Great that somebody experienced the same issues as i do.

In my case its absolutely the same, with all drivers i tried.


I'll hereby give you some detailed information what i did, and what my system specs are.

System specs:

MB: Asus Blitz Formula Special Edition
CPU: Intel C2D E6850
VC: Asus HD 2900 XT
MEM: 4 GB OCZ Special Ops DDR2-Ram - 800Mhz

VGA monitor (CRT)

tried os:
Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy) x86_64
Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) x86_64

drivers installed:
xorg-driver-fglrx - native gutsy / native hardy repository's
latest linux ati driver from ati.com

HowTo followed:
Gutsy:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide
- both methods

Hardy:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide
- both methods

BOTH: different howto's from the Ubuntu forums.

every single HowTo had been proceed with a fresh installed Ubuntu system, neither 7.10 nor 8.04 worked.

here is a paste bin of one of my xorg.0.log's during the tries : http://pastebin.com/f1e13bff8

no errors/clues what so ever.

after installing various variants of HowTo's on any single boot the system just stays still on loading xorg/gnome. Sometimes with a gnome background, sometimes with a totally black screen.

i didn't try <Ctrl> + <Alt> SysRq
i didn't try setting bios features to other values

i will do so and post any outcome whatsoever

Hopefully someone gets a clue reading this.

Regards,

erdnussflipp

[oblivious_maximus]

I just bought a Sapphire 3650 last week. This week I'm still using my Asus 8600gt (which I've wanted rid of since the day I bought it, but it functions properly for the most part). I get similar lockups to the OP with the 3650 whenever I log out of KDE(3) or try to start a second, additional Xserver (with X :1 -layout layoutname). As the keyboard locks up along with the rest of X, the Magic SysReq key is no help at all .

I plugged the 3650 back in the other day to try this possible fix but it made no difference for me. Stopping atieventsd entirely is not an option I'm willing to consider because then the fan is constantly speeding up and slowing down in a loop and the higher speed is irritatingly loud.

I've only used the fglrx 8.3 driver so far, I tried the Debian packages in unstable(which are completely missing the /etc/ati/authatieventsd.sh file), and I've built Debian packages from the .run fglrx package on ATI's site (and the phorogit scripts because the .run package by itself wouldn't build the packages).

The rest of my system is comprised of:
Asus M3A AMD770 motherboard
X2 4400+ (Brisbane with a defective CPU temp sensor)
4GB ddr2-800
Promise SATA 300-TX2 controller w/1 PATA drive attached.
2 other PATA drives attached to the motherboard's PATA port. No SATA drives

I'm using Debian Lenny 64bit, KDE 3.5.8, and a Debian 2.6.24-4 kernel compiled from the linux-source package in sid. I installed a few X11 packages from experimental (libx11-xcb-dev and whatever else it pulled in as dependencies) a while back to compile Compiz and they're still installed. Otherwise my X11 should be whatever version is in testing now.

If I'm leaving out some info that someone might find useful please let me know.
edit:

X -version

X Window System Version 1.3.0
Release Date: 19 April 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 1.3
Build Operating System: Linux Debian (xorg-server 2:1.3.0.0.dfsg-12lenny2)
Current Operating System: Linux basestar 2.6.24-4-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Mar 5 17:01:51 EST 2008 x86_64
Build Date: 19 January 2008
--snipped bug reporting info--
Module Loader present

edit2: the OP might want to try checking for any BIOS updates their motherboard might need. I just checked for mine and it seems there is a newer version posted, with the changelog reading: "fixed the issue that the system freezing when using some certain VGA card." I haven't tried it yet but I will shortly. I know there's another person who posted about lockups like this (I think in the 8.3 driver thread) who updated their BIOS and fixed it, so my fingers are massively crossed here. will post results.

[hehe2]

Hi,

I got some freeze and crash too with the latest ati drivers ...

I've post about my issue there ...

I've not seen any new bios for my motherboard last time I've checked but I'll do it again, who knows ...

Still using my old computer (xp1800+ nvidia 7600GS agp ...) cause I've no pci express card except for my two new atis which aren't working :X

Best regards.

[c247]

690G ati x1200 IGP WAS using ati proprietary but had problems after upgrading from fedora 7 to 8 ( this is x86_64 btw ) I try to use yum for everything.

X was loop, lock, freeze, kernel panic, crash, bsod whatever you want to call it. I had to hard reboot when X started "looping" is how I would describe it. It was not only when playing games, but frequently or always when playing games (quake3 engine). The lock appeared randomly, but as I fiddled with X settings, it just got worse.

Uninstalled ati proprietary, and removed all previous "video drivers". Then rebooted into generic X just to be certain it isn't bad hardware. This is a new machine and has been great until the fedora upgrade.

So I tried radeonhd, looks really nice, but no 3D yet.

However, new kernel today

2.6.24.3-50.fc8

and new fglrx package from livna

kmod-fglrx-8.471-3.8.03.lvn8
kmod-fglrx-2.6.24.3-50.fc8-8.471-3.8.03.lvn8

Yes! so far so good with games. I have not tried AIGLX enable yet. Let me know if you have a similar experience. I wouldn't call this fixed yet, but I ran urbanterror(q3 engine) with its default settings and it looked and performed well with no sign of lock.

fglrxinfo

OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon X1200 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7412 Release

Good luck

-- Update --

Its been hours now and no lock ups, no sign of any problems.

After all this experimenting while it was crashing I learned more about all the different drivers available for this card. I never tried the actual xorg radeon driver. Does anyone recommend it over the proprietary ( fglrx provided by livna ) ? To install it would I need to disable livna, so I get xorg-drv-radeon from fedora update channel?

-- Update --

Bad news. I just had a hard lock while playing urbanterror. It could be the framerate setting I have been setting low to try to improve smoothness. It is 80 by default, and I put it on 40 when I got the lock. ( will set back to 80 and try again ) Will also try setting the acceleration settings always on provided in amdcccl. In fc7 when I had no problems with games I think those were set always on? Could it be that urbanterror needs to do a release for 2.6.24 kernels?

brigman (in post #10) was right about my distro's authatieventsd.sh set incorrectly. :0.Xauth was in /var/gdm in fedora 8 not /var/lib/gdm Maybe having this set properly will help?

-- Update --

Tried all the xorg radeon stuff, no 3D yet. Went back to AMD proprietary download. No livna. Freshrpms instead. No locks while playing urbanterror, and very smooth. One important difference, no amarok running in the background this time. Not 100% sure yet, but I bet my hard locks are a combination of pulseaudio and the fglrx driver. I am using all the integrated devices on my mobo. The reason I think this is because I just tried a fresh vlc from freshrpms, and when I closed it, it caused the same sort of audio loop I hear when the machine hard locks. Had to kill -9 <pulseaudio pid> to get the loop to stop. No hard lock up yet. Very interesting.

[zappbrannigan]

MB: Asus Blitz Formula Special Edition
CPU: Intel C2D E6850
VC: Asus HD 2900 XT
MEM: 4 GB OCZ Special Ops DDR2-Ram - 800Mhz

...

after installing various variants of HowTo's on any single boot the system just stays still on loading xorg/gnome. Sometimes with a gnome background, sometimes with a totally black screen.

Have you read my thread ? My 4GB 64bit system hangs also with a black screen. I fixed my mtrr table. Please dump yours with

cat /proc/mtrr

Or try to turn off memory remap in your bios.

[oblivious_maximus]

some good advice I should have followed (because I knew full well!): never use any Windows-based BIOS update utilities.

Anyway! having since realized I could just use a USB flash drive to install the BIOS from through "EZFlash", I flashed the new 0701 BIOS onto my brand new board. After checking that it would still boot my old setup, I threw in the HD3650, installed the fglrx 8.3 packages I built last week, edited /etc/ati/authatieventsd.sh to point to /var/run/xauth, and finally found absolutely no difference to the lockups on logout and when starting an additional Xserver.

zappbrannigan: I read the thread you linked but I don't see any info on what you did to your mtrr... Here's the output of cat /proc/mtrr on my system (but with my 8600gt installed, I don't know if that matters):

cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=2048MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0x80000000 (2048MB), size=1024MB: write-back, count=1
reg02: base=0xc0000000 (3072MB), size= 256MB: write-back, count=1

I'm pretty sure I don't have any memory remap options in my BIOS, if there's something I can do with the mtrr please let me know.

[bridgman]

o_m, there's a fix/workaround/whatever which seems to handle the "locking up on exit" issue. The root problem seems to be that atieventsd looks for a certain file, which seems to be in different places on different distros, and fails "ungracefully" if it doesn't find the file. The fix involves editing a script to point to the correct location of the file in your distro. Not sure it works for everyone but so far it's running about 5 for 5.

have you tried this ? If not I should be able to dig it up again and maybe we can make it a sticky.

EDIT - here the last place I posted about it : http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showt...7696#post27696