Unity graphics corrupted on Ubuntu 11.10 and AMD/Radeon based netbook

[Theodore Omtzigt]

I have a Gateway LT3103u netbook. This has an AMD Athlon 64 and an ATI Radeon X1270 graphics controller. When USB-booting Oneiric 32-bit, the Unity interface comes up completely garbled, no mouse pointer feedback, but there is a mouse as witnessed by the context menus that popup when moving about the screen. The fonts in the popup menus are western but do not spell correct menu items.

When I CTRL-ALT-DEL, the login user screen comes up correctly. But when I log in and the Unity desktop reappears it has the same problems: graphics are corrupted, no readable menus, and no mouse feedback.

USB-booting Ubuntu 10.04, the old user interface comes up without problems on this netbook.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Seems like a driver/X issue. Could you explain which driver is being used? Did you install fglrx? Or are you using the default open source ATI drivers?

[Theodore Omtzigt (theo-stillwater-sc)]

I end up in this state after a USB-boot, so I have not altered to system
as it comes out of an install. Due to the graphics corruption the system
is not usable. Is there another way to gather the information you need?

On 12/27/2011 7:50 PM, Bilal Akhtar wrote:
> Seems like a driver/X issue. Could you explain which driver is being
> used? Did you install fglrx? Or are you using the default open source
> ATI drivers?
>
> ** Also affects: xorg (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> ** Changed in: unity
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> ** Also affects: xserver-xorg-video-ati (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>

[Theodore Omtzigt (theo-stillwater-sc)]

Would it help to get Gateway involved or is this a pure Ubuntu issue?

I would love to have this netbook be my portable robot controller. As indicated it worked with 10.04 without Unity but the robotics operating system needs 11.

If I need to generate any log files let me know where I can find them without the help of the GUI.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Martin Karg (mkarg94)]

has anyone found a solution for the problem yet? im in exactly the same situation

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please test logging into:
  Unity 2D
  Gnome Shell
  Gnome Classic
and let us know if the same or similar problems still occur.

If you're missing some of those options on the login screen then you need to install package 'gnome-shell'.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Theodore Omtzigt, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-video-ati REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-video-ati (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]