Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-video-ati package

  1. Bug #757141
  2. Comment #3

Comment 3 for bug 757141

Revision history for this message
rww (rww-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Hi Bryce,

1. I took a break from testing for a few months, so I'm not sure whether it's a regression. It didn't happen in maverick. The daily I used to report this bug is the first one I'd used since Unity was released into natty.

2&3. I re-booted the LiveUSB ten times using the April 20th daily from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . Each time, I booted up, clicked Try Ubuntu, observed the result, and then shut down the machine either via the indicator (if Unity loaded), with Alt-SysRq-B and then a poweroff when the BIOS came up (if the symptoms I mentioned above happened), or with a poweroff if Alt-SysRq-B didn't work. Results:

 * Attempts 1, 4, 7, and 8 succeeded and loaded Unity properly.
 * Attempts 2, 6, and 10 stopped as described in the original report, with a black screen and a movable mouse cursor. Alt-Sysrq-B worked.
 * On attempts 3 and 9, the monitor turned off. Alt-Sysrq-B did not have any effect.
 * On attempt 5, I received a kernel panic (?). I will attach a .zip containing photographs of the message. I apologize for the poor quality of some of the images. There was a non-functional mouse cursor in the center of the screen. Alt-Sysrq-B did not have any effect.

Thoughts: I have also installed natty to my computer and have been using it for a couple of weeks. When selecting Unity, after login about 25% to 50% of the time, I get the Ubuntu background and a mouse cursor, but Unity never loads. I suspect the same root cause as this bug, given the similar symptoms. I have since switched to GNOME 3 from the (unofficial and unsupported, I know) PPA, and it does not exhibit the same problems. My suspicion is that this issue is being triggered by Unity and/or Compiz using a codepath in the radeon driver that has a bug.