X will not start and crashes after upgrade from Karmic

[Chris Miles]

Binary package hint: update-manager

I was using Karmic with the fglrx screen driver for my ATI X700. I mounted on loop the Lucid alternative cd for i386 and proceeded to upgrade.

On reboot the screen had something of the purple background in a section of the screen however the system was completely unresponsive and had to be reset-rebooted.

Later I found an Xorg.0.log that showed the RADEON driver being used but KMS not being available and a failure to find PLL

I booted from the Lucid live CD and had no problems. I took a copy of the Xorg.0.log from the live CD boot and compared it to a failing Xorg.0.log. I was suspicious of the dri driver and saw that that was being redirected using update-alternatives to an fglrx version.

I completely removed the fglrx packages and noted that the initrd was rebuilt. The system now boots and my screen has come back (using the radeon driver) even, somehow, remembering my dual screen desktop.

I saw that the fglrx driver was removed during the update and replaced at a later stage; perhaps the initrd was not updated when the driver was removed.

I'm very pleased to be back after a worrying few hours. I hope this report will help someone else recover their system after an upgrade that went bad.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.134.7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon May 3 18:28:39 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

thanks for your report.

This is not a bug with update-manager, I'm reaffecting to fglrx.

[Felix Kuehling (felix-kuehling)]

Current versions of fglrx don't support Radeon X700 hardware. Only Radeond HD 2xxx and newer is supported. BTW, the same applied to Ubuntu 9.10 and 9.04.

You should continue using the Radeon driver. Do not install fglrx on your system.

[Chris Miles (chrismil-cix)]

Xorg.0.log reports hardware as :
(--) PCI:*(0:1:0:0) 1002:5e4d:174b:0670 ATI Technologies Inc RV410 [Radeon X700 (PCIE)] rev 0, Mem @ 0xd0000000/268435456, 0xfdff0000/65536, I/O @ 0x0000ac00/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072

Perhaps the package was installed but not active; there was no device statement in xorg.conf, just the display virtual size:

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Configured Screen Device"
 Device "Configured Video Device"
 SubSection "Display"
  Virtual 2560 1024
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Are you using KMS now? The "Fatal server error: Couldn't find valid PLL dividers" (which I think might be a UMS only problem) problem has been fixed upstream in xf86-video-ati - see http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati/commit/?id=6aedd57f6c2f08d0151a8bd1c5893d40d3db709a

It sounds like there may be a problem with update-alternatives redirecting to fglrx for hardware that it shouldn't when upgrading from Karmic to Lucid.