Dual ATI cards cause X failure on fglrx installation
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
fglrx-installer (Ubuntu) |
Incomplete
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on a new machine that has dual ATI cards. It prompted me to install the proprietary fglrx driver, which I did. On reboot, X failed.
Examinging xorg.0.log I saw a comment that X could not decide which card was primary. I found the Device section of xorg.conf, where the Driver "fglrx" had been put, and added a line like:
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
X now correctly starts up.
I think it was a lucky guess, I haven't tested what would have happened if I'd used the BusID of the OTHER ATI card, but I'm guessing that X would have brought up the server on that other card, with undetermined results for the monitor I was looking at. I don't know if it is possible to detect from a script (a) if there are multiple ATI cards and (b) which one of them currently has a monitor attached, but if it is, then we should detect that and ensure that xorg.conf includes the right BusID.
In future, I'm sure X will handle this situation better!
This is likely a situation similar to bug 267241, but since the circumstances are a little bit different it might not actually be a duplicate. It's possible that you just got "lucky" that X started up the first time (or few times) by picking the correct card.
Could you add your Xorg log and lspci -vvnn to this bug for some further evaluation to determine if it's a duplicate of that X bug or something wrong with fglrx?
Ideally if you can add an X log both with that BusID line and without, that would be best.