Ubuntu
fglrx-installer package

ATI driver disabled by update Ubuntu 10.10

Asked by Dan Seto

Something, perhaps an Update Manger changes from last week, has disabled my ATI video driver in Ubuntu 10.10. I have a Dell Optiplex 760 with an Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz, 4GB or RAM, and an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 3450 dual display video card feeding a pair of Dell 19" LCD displays.

Without the ATI driver, which up until today was working just fine, video scrolling is painfully slow. Web pages slowly update, line by line. Dragging a window is like enabling cursor tails in Windows XP. And using a word processor is unusable as the screen updates line by line after every character is typed.

I tried re-enabling the Canonical tested ATI video driver by:

System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers -> Activate ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver

However got the following error:

Sorry, installation of this driver failed.
Please have a look at the log file for details:/var/log/jockey.log

I have tried to include the text of the log file in this report but the launchpad system simply falls over and times out.

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Ubuntu fglrx-installer Edit question
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Dan Seto
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Revision history for this message
delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#1

Use paste.ubuntu.com to paste file.

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#2

Contents of jockey.log

http://paste.ubuntu.com/536820/

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#3

Tried to purge flgrx.

sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*

Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Package fglrx-amdcccle is not installed, so not removed
Package fglrx-dev is not installed, so not removed
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  fglrx fglrx-modaliases* xorg-driver-fglrx*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 65.7MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
(Reading database ...

(Reading database ... 100%

(Reading database ... 219725 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing fglrx ...

dpkg-divert: mismatch on package

  when removing `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by fglrx'

  found `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by xorg-driver-fglrx'

dpkg: error processing fglrx (--remove):

 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 2

Processing triggers for ureadahead ...

Errors were encountered while processing:

 fglrx
E; subprocess /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#4

Tried running

/usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

[Warning] Uninstall : inst_path_default or inst_path_override
 does not exist in /etc/ati. This suggests that the ATI driver
 is not installed, the ATI driver is only partially installed,
 or the current ATI driver installed is an older version than the
 one this script was designed for. Both files listed above are
 required for determining where installed files are located.
 To force uninstallation of the driver by guessing where the
 uninstallation files are located, set the FORCE_ATI_UNINSTALL
 environment variable and re-run ./fglrx-uninstall.sh (this is not recommended).

Revision history for this message
Federico Tello Gentile (federicotg) said : 		#5

The ATI catalist driver is faster for 3D. but it is a pain to make it work. Have you tried using the open ati driver? It is the ubuntu default (the one you get when running the ubuntu live CD). It is quite good for 2D and works for 3D.

Here's what's supported as of now.
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

To use it you have to remove all traces of the catalyst driver because it overwrites files all over the place.

See here for details

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver#Removing%20the%20proprietary%20fglrx%20driver

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#6

Federico,

Tried what you suggested earlier (see above thread) which does not work.

Tried it again anyway. The output is below.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  fglrx xorg-driver-fglrx*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 65.6MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
(Reading database ... 219730 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing fglrx ...
dpkg-divert: mismatch on package
  when removing `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by fglrx'
  found `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by xorg-driver-fglrx'
dpkg: error processing fglrx (--remove):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Errors were encountered while processing:
 fglrx

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#7

Also tried this:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  fglrx
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 reinstalled, 1 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 3,239kB of archives.
After this operation, 65.6MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main libgl1-mesa-dri i386 7.9~git20100924-0ubuntu2 [3,121kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main libgl1-mesa-glx i386 7.9~git20100924-0ubuntu2 [118kB]
Fetched 3,239kB in 15s (209kB/s)
(Reading database ... 219730 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing fglrx ...
dpkg-divert: mismatch on package
  when removing `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by fglrx'
  found `diversion of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa by xorg-driver-fglrx'
dpkg: error processing fglrx (--remove):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 fglrx
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#8

To all reading this thread, please remember that I have an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 3450/RV620 (see my first post above). According to the RadeonDriver documentation linked to by Federico, this video card is NOT supported by the open source ATI (or Radeon for that matter) driver. Per the documentation, "you must use the "fglrx" driver."

But something (an update probably) recently disabled the ATI/AMD fglrx driver and no matter what instructions I follow, I cannot get the fglrx driver re-enabled. I even installed the driver directly from ATI but that didn't work and left all kinds of other problems.

Without the fglrx driver, I have, as the RadeonDocumentation states, "severe performance reduction" as well as the inability to use two monitors.

Hence, I need to be able to run the fglrx driver or I will have to either switch to another distribution of Linux (probably Fedora 14) or just stick with Windows.

Thank you for the assistance!

Dan

Revision history for this message
Dan Seto (dkseto) said : 		#9

ATI has an article (see link below) that relates to my problem. It seems a recent Linux kernel security update breaks the ATI Catalyst driver. The update breaks the driver in the following distros: RHEL, openSUSE, SLED, and Ubuntu.

You should be seeing wide-spread reports of this problem.

The article is here:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU83ATICatalystLinuxHotfix.aspx

To summarize, if using an ATI/AMD HD 3XXX or 4XXX card, you MUST use the proprietary fglrx driver. Telling people to remove the fglrx driver and to use the Radeon or ATI driver will NOT solve the problem.

Regards to all you took the time to offer assistance.

Dan