Low graphic mode

[Richard Vajdel]

After installation process of 14.04 and 13.10 I get "low graphic mode" prompt but actually with no low mode activated ( nothing happening). Live enviroment does the same. Ubuntu 12.04.3 is working out of the box.

I´ve got HP Pavilion g 17 with AMD Radeon HD 8670 M and Intel.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1264835/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[madbiologist (me-again)]

If there is nothing on the screen after booting, you are probably experiencing a kernel DRM issue. Support for your Solar System (HD 8xxxM) series graphics hardware has been refined in the 3.13 kernel which was not available in Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" when you reported this bug. Can you retest with the latest Trusty LiveCD and let us know the results?

Please also paste the output of uname -srm and attach the output of the follwing command:

lspci -vvnn

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

I tried the newest daily build of Trusty Tahr and still the same. Only prompt for low graphic mode, after clicking yes and " stay by for 1 minute" nothing is happening, so I can't run those commands. To be honest, I have problems with all distributions. Only one works out of the box ... boot- live enviroment-install and that distro is Manjaro Linux, probably thanks to their own Hardware detection tool MHWD. Would it help, if i run those commands from Manjaro system?

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the latest v3.13 kernel[0].

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tag 'kernel-fixed-upstream'.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the tag: 'kernel-bug-exists-upstream'.

If you are unable to test the mainline kernel, for example it will not boot, please add the tag: 'kernel-unable-to-test-upstream'.
Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug as "Confirmed".

Thanks in advance.

[0] http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/

[madbiologist (me-again)]

I would encourage you to try the latest upstream kernel as requested by Joseph. If this still does not work, the commands I mentioned can be run from Ubuntu 12.04.3 "Precise Pangolin". Given that the issue does not occur on precise, it could also be due to the subsequently introduced support for DRM PRIME rendering, but to check that we will need the boot dmesg, xorg.log and glxinfo output from trusty (to run glxinfo you will need to install the mesa-utils package). Information on how to retrieve these by logging in via SSH from another machine is available at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/ConnectingTo

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

Hello, sorry I didn't respond. After beta release of *buntu flavors I decided to try daily build of Ubuntu 14.04. And I am happy and thankfull to say, Ubuntu 14.04 works. Writing this from live enviroment session. Thank you all.

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

Ubuntu 14.04 beta 2 worked just fine throught USB, Final releas sadly falls in to low graphic mode during boot, Xubuntu does the same, works only with nomodeset

[madbiologist (me-again)]

nomodeset? The last Radeon driver to support UMS was xf86-video-ati 6.14.6, released in late June 2012. UMS support was removed from the Intel graphics driver (I'm still wondering if you have hybrid graphics - lspci -vvnn would tell us) in xf86-video-intel 2.10.0, released in early January 2010. Radeon UMS was subsequently also deprecated in the kernel in the 3.9 kernel.

Something else is going on.

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

I am sure I'v got Intel/AMD graphic cards

Here in attachment is the output of lspci -vvnn command.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Ok, it looks like you do indeed have hybrid graphics, so that could be the issue - support for support for DRM PRIME rendering was introduced after precise. It is mostly working now but is still being enhanced. If you have a second display connector try using that and see if it works.

Or maybe you just need the support for newer memory controller microcode on your AMD Radeon HD 8670M "Oland" GPU which will be in the upstream 3.15-rc2 kernel.

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

Unfortunately I do not have second display connector and trust me, I've no problem to wait for newer kernel or for point one release or 14.10. It's just really weird, that Beta 2 worked well. Beta 2 booted nicely right in to live enviroment, I was really happy about that because Ubuntu is my favourite distro and I wasn't able to install last two releases....... and final release of 14.04 doesn' t work. That's one thing I don'get. I mean, I don't think that so much work was done during beta2-final release period on the kernel side- it was still 3.13 right?

But I have this problem almost with every distro only with one change, instead of low graphic mode prompt I get black screen. Only distro which works right away is Manjaro thanks to their MHWD and for now, Opensuse 13.2 development branch. Even OpenMandriva 2014 beta worked well and RC1 gives me black screen... maybe I am just lucky guy :).

But again, thanks

[Richard Vajdel (riko442)]

Okey, I 've had exactly the same problem with OpenMandriva( Beta worked, RC didn't work), so I filled bug on their bugzilla and this is conclusion.

OpenMandriva developer said I should try to run some commands resp. add some commands in to boot.
Here is what happened.

alt+ctrl+f1= nothing
i915.invert_brightness=1 = Nothing
xorg.blacklist= intel = nothing
xorg.blacklist= ati = works
xorg.blacklist= intel +nomodeset = works
xorg.blacklist= ati+nomodeset = works
nomodeset itself without additional commands=works

Here is his reaction:

"It's not to much of a mystery now. It is to do with the plymouth bootsplash and kernel graphics mode setting. Basically what is happening is that plymouth is initialising graphics on the intel chip and then xorg is auto-detecting the ati adapter and switching to that. Because the the drm kernel modules are already loaded for the Intel hardware the ati driver cannot unload them and thus the ati hardware does not get it's kernel module drivers loaded which basically comes down to the fact that you get a black screen.
It worked in the beta because we were loading the uvesa frame buffer driver but that caused problems with other cards. Currently automated graphics detection is a bit of a minefield to say the least!!

For the moment it probably best that you add one of the working configs that you have tested to the default boot line as I described."

I've thought it would be helpful

[Chris Quach (quach-c)]

I have a Lenovo S540 with a Radeon HD8670M and installed Ubuntu 14.04, after reading this bug I was convinced I had the same problem.
Booting with "nomodeset" in the boot options enabled unity to load with all kernels.
I installed kernel 3.14.1-031401-generic _and_ fglrx and now I'm able to boot into unity.
Without fglrx still a blank screen, I can't attach the logs but it appeared that X tried to load fglrx when it wasn't installed..

Hope it helps.. :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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