Compositing disabled upon login, but works, with ATI graphics

[[e-mail]]

I have a Toshiba Laptop, Model A305-S6916, with ATI 3600 graphics, running Helena 64-bit. I've installed the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from the ATI download site. For the most part everything works perfectly - but the Visual Effects are not enabled when I login. I have to run the "Appearance" application and turn them back on. Once enabled they work perfectly throughout the remainder of the session (hibernate and suspend have no problem as one might expect).

Also, FYI, the proprietary fireGL drivers from "Hardware Drivers" doesn't work at all with this particular configuration.

I'll be happy to provide more information. I searched for a quite a while before posting this, but couldn't find anything that described this situation. Thanks for reading.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Marking as upstream.

- Hardware drivers should point to the correct driver.. so that's probably a bug on jockey itself.
- It looks like Ubuntu is trying to detect whether or not your drivers are good enough for you to use 3D effects, and the result of that test is simply that they aren't. It should do that test in order to activate them.. but once activated it shouldn't test again and again... it should be up to you to disable them if needed. I'm not sure where to put the bug for that.. so I opted for compiz.

[[e-mail] (gecobb)]

Hardware Details:
Toshiba A305-S6916 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 card. I run 2 monitors, the laptop monitor (1200x800) and an Acer AL2216W via the VGA connection (1680x1050).

Multi-Display Desktop mode:
I applied the latest Helena patches on 3/31 (although according to the history log it doesn't seem like there would be anything in the patches that dealt with display properties). Testing with the 10.2 ATI software (which was installed long ago using all the standard install options followed by "aticonfig --initial") cleared up the issue that I reported above. Not sure how that happened, but things are now working properly in "Multi-Display desktop" mode for multiple monitors. I installed the newest 10.3 ATI code and all is still fine. Everything in this display mode works properly now in both Helena and Isadora.

Single Display Desktop mode:
Visual Effects work in "Single display desktop" mode with the 10.3 ATI code (does not work at all with the 10.2 version), but only to the geometry of the smallest monitor. The laptop monitor is perfect, but only the upper left-hand (1200x800) portion of the Acer monitor (1680x1050) is managed properly by Compiz - the rest of the display on the right and bottom is just garbage characters. There is a desktop there, items can be dragged into the area, but it is not usable because of the garbage characters. It does not matter if Xinerama is enabled or not. As soon as I turn off Visual Effects both of the desktops return immediately to normal with no garbage characters. If I set the geometry of the monitors to be identical (1200x800) then Visual Effects work as expected with or without Xinerama. This happens in exactly the same manner with the latest Isadora updates too. I have not had the time to play with all of the Visual Effects settings to see if there is anything ion particular that triggers this behaviour - that's on my to-do list.

[Jonas T. (jo-t)]

i've got the very same problem with kubuntu, ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO...

[Jonas T. (jo-t)]

"edit": i'm running the 32bit edition of kubuntu.

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

Kubuntu Lucid amd64
ATI Radeon HD 4770
fglrx 2:8.723.1-0ubuntu3

Every time I log in to KDE 4, compositing is suspended. When I reactivate it, it says it's been suspended by another app. When I activate it again, it works. See this forum thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9296478

This isn't specific to compiz. Perhaps it's a bug in X or in fglrx.

[Nikola Snele (n-schnelle)]

Kubuntu Lucid. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400, fglrx driver.

Every time I log in compositing is suspended.

"Disable functionality checks" in System Settings->Desktop Effects->Advanced solves the problem for me.