Enabling proprietory ATI driver prevents X from starting

[James Pursey]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Hi

The bug report that I am sending doesn't concern Ubuntu 9.04 but Ubuntu 9.10 beta. I have never submitted a bug report to Ubuntu before and I wasn't aware of the Apport tool beforehand.
I installed 9.10 out of curiosity to see if the stability and performance problems I experience with the fglrx driver 9.04 would be resolved in 9.10. However, after I enabled the driver by pressing the Restricted Hardware Drivers icon and rebooted the computer, I was presented with a black display – no splash screen, no log on screen, just black (and the caps lock light was blinking). I have since re-installed 9.04 on this system – which explains why some of the auto-generated information in this report isn't correct.
Also, and I don't know if this is a related problem or not and whether I should file a separate bug report, after installing 9.10 and being prompted to reboot, the screen would flicker between being black and showing the wallpaper, and the only way to stop the machine was by pressing the off button on the computer. This was before the ATI driver was enabled.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: firefox 3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic x86_64

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for reporting this to Ubuntu. I am reassigning this to the fglrx-installer package so that you can be helped by the proper team.

[James Pursey (jamespursey)]

I would like to give you additional information about this bug. I have found that I can install the ATI driver using Jockey by following these steps:
1) Click on the restricted hardware icon
2) Restart and boot up in recovery mode
3) do the following commands:
aticonfig --initial -f
aticonfig --acpi-services=off

However, I have found that after the routine disk check, it is necessary to repeat this procedure.

Hope this helps

[James Pursey (jamespursey)]

One more update. What I reported in my last comment was repeated today. After a routine bug check, Ubuntu failed to start. I once again had to drop down to a command prompt and switch off acpi to get it going again.

Cheers

[James Pursey (jamespursey)]

Sorry, I made a typo. I meant "after a routine disk check".