Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop All Black at 1280x1024

[Rubicon421]

Well the technique worked for me as well.

I changed from EXA to XAA, and I can now enable the 3D effects using my Radeon 9200SE with 128MB and keep my desktop.

I think rotating the cube might be slightly less smooth than with 9.04?
But wobbly windows etc now work fine.

Do we know why this happened, and why for this specific card?
Did the developers drop support for it from the default driver, or is it some other issue?
I suppose it is an old card, but it had always been my most trouble free with Linux, up to now.

Worked for me too but then I also noticed the effects were less smooth. Let me know if you find a fix for that. I thought about using the Envy program to install a different driver or just using synaptic to install anything ATI related that I don't already have.

[tormod]

EXA should work fine with 128MB of video memory, and is generally faster than XAA. The developers are also focusing on EXA and will not have time to improve the XAA stuff. It is therefore useful to try diagnose this EXA issue further, so that you can use EXA in a later release or update.

"man exa" lists four options that you can try. For MigrationHeuristic the "greedy" value has solved some issues, but I don't know if will help here. Once you have tried this out, it is time to file a bug report.

[dee02]

I agree with you. "Stop using it" is not a fix.

I'm having the same issue on an old Dell laptop with an ATI Radeon RV250 (Mobility FireGL 9000) running a 1400x1050 panel. When I moved this machine to Karmic, my desktop was black, with no desktop items appearing on it; but you could see the desktop wallpaper beneath the semi-transparent top panel.

In my case, the fix was exactly the opposite of what tormod described. Here's how to do it, step by step.

In terminal, run these two commands:

grep XAA /var/log/Xorg.0.log
grep EXA /var/log/Xorg.0.log

One of them will return nothing; the other will return something like this:

(**) RADEON(0): Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
(**) RADEON(0): Using XAA acceleration architecture
(II) RADEON(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA)

This tells you which method is currently in use on your system. Whichever one it is, try the other. For me it was EXA, and switching to XAA solved the problem. Here is what to do.

In terminal, do this:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This will give you a text editor window. If the first step reported that you were using XAA, paste this into the text editor:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "my-radeon"
 Driver "ati"
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
EndSection

If the first step reported that you were using EXA, paste this into the text editor instead:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "my-radeon"
 Driver "ati"
 Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection

Then save the file and exit the editor, and reboot.

This solved it for me. Post back and let us know if it fixes it for you.

OMG IT WORKED THANK YOU ...........WOOOOOOOOW U the MAN!!!

[KingStill]

Switching to XAA correctly enables all effects on my radeon 9200, but it's too slow. EXA effects are higher performance but past certain screen resolution/window size, it blacks out. It's either bugs and/or my hardware is just ancient. Thanks for helping.

[Luis-for-um33]

My Gnome desktop background image has disappeared

Yesterday, under Jaunty Jackalope, the background image was just fine. Today (11-2-09) I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and I noticed that the image I had as background had been replaced by a black screen. Now I cannot display any of my background images. The "Appearance Preferences" app doesn't seem to be working. Does anybody have a clue as to how to make it work?

PS: I followed the instructions somebody in the Forum gave, but they didn't work for me:
[Press <ALT>F2 and type gconf-editor. In the left hand pane click desktop, then gnome, then background. Click draw_background and the wallpaper should return.]

PS: I realized this morning (11-3-09) that the background image is indeed on the desktop; but it just cannot be seen.

If I move the mouse over the desktop and click the right button in the area where the image should be, the drop down menu tells me that there is an image there because I can open it in the image viewer.

Also, if I move the mouse over to the top left of the screen and press the right button, I get evidence that the two pdf files I had on the desktop before I made the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 are still there; just invisible.

PS: I just discovered something else: after the background images disappeared (as explained above), but the top menu panel and the bottom panel are still visible; but if I press F11 (Full Screen) while in Firefox, the browser itself becomes invisible and the entire screen goes blank (well, actually, it goes black). (11-3-09 @ 2251)

Just what could be causing all this?

If I cannot fix this problem, how can I reverse the upgrade? Can I go back to Ubuntu 9.04?

I use an ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 8X video card, inside an MSI KT3 Ultra mobo, with an AMD Athlon XP 1700 CPU, with 2GB RAM.

Thanks for any help anybody can provide.

Luis

[Luis-for-um33]

Well, people, I got my desktop back!

I'm not sure what I did to repair it. I simply re-started the computer, went into the BIOS' Advanced Chipset Features, re-apportioned the RAM for the "AGP Aperture Size" from 128 MB to 4MB and enabled the AGP's Write, Read & Synchronization from Disabled to Enabled.

I cannot believe this did the trick. I probably just got lucky and Ubuntu was in a good mood this time. I hope it holds.

By the way, I said earlier that the RAM was 2GB; but the POST reports only 1GB. So, maybe Ubuntu was thirsty for more.

Thanks for listening!

Luis

[thedogisdead]

I'm having the same problem, too! I've got a very similar set-up to Luis... same graphics card and such.

Thanks for the (initial) fix, though! I tried it and it worked a treat, apart from the poor performance as described above.

I've gone back to 'no effects' for now, though!

I know none of you are mind readers, but in your experience, is this something that is likely to be fixed? Are bug fixes rolled out with the rest of the updates?

I can't pretend to be as down on Karmic as lots of others, but this bug has kinda spoiled my transition to an Ubuntu only machine. D'oh! Never mind, I'm sure it'll be worked out!

[andey]

The solution is easy - don't need to use terminal.

Turn visual effects off, it works immediately.
right-Click on any area on your desktop, get pop-up window, select &quot;change desktop background&quot;,
select &quot;Visual Effects&quot;, select &quot;None&quot;,
fixes it!

thanks but, it was working in 9.04, but not in 9.10 for some reason. Whatever I can live with it.

[tormod]

Everybody, please read my comment 22. This issue can not be fixed without your input.

[thedogisdead]

Tormod - thanks for your responses. Any chance you could give a bit more detailed instruction on how to try those four different options you mentioned?

Thanks very much!