Dell vostro 3350 Radeon 6470M HD black screen on boot - Ubuntu 11.04 64bit

**vostro3350** · July 18th, 2011

Good news: Instead of using a USB boot media, I created a DVD (Ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso) which allowed me to select the "nomodeset" option. Installation is currently in progress but it looks like everything works out fine.

Thank you!

**engrin** · July 18th, 2011

Was offline for a while. Sorry for the slow response. Happy to hear it is working out for you

**vostro3350** · July 18th, 2011

Thanks! I should add that "ubiquity" crashed at about 80% of the installation process, after I was prompted to determine which keyboard I am using. Some other people had the same problem.

I stopped the installation and booted directly from the DVD without installing it first. After it booted successfully from the disk I installed it using the shortcut on the desktop.

Finally the os was installed! Following http://ubuntu4beginners.blogspot.com...n-problem.html, I did these steps:

1.) check for updates; there was one driver and I installed it. Unfortunately, after rebooting there was some flickering which wouldn't vanish. After I removed the driver again and rebooted, the unity surface appeared for the first time.

2.) open the terminal window and type
gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

3.) edit the line
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=0"

Save and close the file.

4.) sudo update-grub

Now restart and everything should work fine!
In some threads I saw, that people complaint about the fan running all the time. After step 1.) I had the same problem. But steps 2.-4.) seem to solve this problem!

Good luck and thank you for your help,
Peter

**engrin** · July 19th, 2011

Did you install the recommended driver for the ATI card? Did Ubuntu switch to Classic View automatically? I can't get Unity to work the driver is installed. Should I un-install the driver?

**vostro3350** · July 21st, 2011

Hello Engrin!

When I first started, the Classic View appeared. Then I checked for driver updates and I found an ATI driver, which I downloaded and installed. Unfortunately, the thing didn't work properly. Parts of the screen were blinking... That is why I uninstalled the driver and rebooted again. This time it switched automatically to the Unity View. Now I changed the grub settings to radeon.modeset=0 and it worked fine. Before I made the changes in the grup-properties file, I noted that the cooler went all the time.
At the moment I am not using the Radeon but the Intel graphics card which means less performance. However, Unity works as well.

There is one thing I am not completely sure about: Sometimes (after maybe 20 s) the mouse arrow blinks once as if the screen has been updated. I am not sure, if this has something to do with the driver, but it could be. Anyway, now everything is fine. Maybe someone noticed this as well!?

**vostro3350** · July 21st, 2011

Please let me know, in case you get everything to work properly with the ATI card.

**engrin** · July 22nd, 2011

Originally Posted by vostro3350

Please let me know, in case you get everything to work properly with the ATI card.

I have the ATI driver installed using classic view. I'm happy with classic and will continue with it. The things I can't get to work are my office's printer and VGA to projector

How do I know if the ATI card is actually working?

**raintracks** · July 29th, 2011

I've had the same issues with my Vostro/Radeon as described here. The tips in post #2 are working to quiet down the fan after I boot without the Radeon driver. Also the driver update that was released by AMD two days ago didn't solve this issue, too bad really, I had hoped the Radeon chip would speed up the shell a little. Hopefully it will be addressed soon.

Now I would like to put these commands in a startup script somewhere so that I don't have to execute them manually every time I start my system.

It's been years since I used linux, I remember the startup scripts are somewhere around the /etc/rc.d folders, and that the numbers had something to do with the runlevel during startup, but I'm afraid the specifics are a bit hazy. Could someone point me in the right direction of where to put the modprobe command and the vgaswitcheroo command so that it's executed automatically at startup?

Incidentally, no one here actually got the AMD chip to work with Ubuntu since the last post, did they?

Edit: an entry in /etc/rc.local did the trick

**-iy-** · September 14th, 2011

Hi All

I have a Dell Vostro 3350 laptop with i7 processor and AMD 6470M graphics card (dynamic switchable). I had problems with graphics. It caused crashes of system. Now laptop works, I hope. Only AMD card can not be used. Dynamic switchable cards don't work under linux at all now (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120622)

After installation of xubuntu 11.04, random crashes occured on boot (on load of radeon driver). I use radeon open source driver. This was solved by instalation of new 3.0.0 kernel from oneiric. I followed this instructions:

http://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/201...u-natty-11-04/

Additionaly I upgraded xserver-xorg-video-radeon package, but it probably is not necessary.

The 3.0.0 kernel have increased power consumption. But in can be improved by ading kernel atributtes.

In /etc/default/grub change

Code:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

Code:

 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1"

(Based on https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=727579 )

AMD card is powered in default. But can be turned off by switcharoo. I added this lines into /etc/rc.local

Code:

while ! [ -e /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch ];
do
    echo "hack: Trying to load radeon driver"
    modprobe radeon
    sleep 1
done

eecho ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo IGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

It is based on:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1768631

But then another problem occured. After suspend/resume, AMD card was powered and any attempt to turn it off caused crash. What more the

Code:

cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

showed that AMD card is off, fan was not running, but power consumption was 10W above normal. I have found a workaround. With this workaround power constupmtion stays normal after suspend/resume.

Workaround is simple: Turn ON AMD card during suspend.

create script:
/etc/pm/sleep.d/10-radeon
Containing

Code:

case "$1" in
    suspend)
	echo "radeon: powering on"
        echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
	;;
    resume)
	echo "radeon: powering off"
        echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
	;;
esac

Now AMD card do not cause any problems. Only, it can't not be used :{.

**vostro3350** · September 21st, 2011

Hi!

Now it works for me as well and I want to give a brief summary of what I have tried before. I faced to problems. When I changed the GRUB-file to "radeon.modeset=0" like previously described, my screen started flickering after a while. In another approach, I messed around with the latest ATI-Drivers, the graphics card seemed to work, but the fan ran all the time and the laptop was getting hot. Neither of the results where desirable and I tried something else. When I started Ubuntu 11.04 in the failsafeX mode everything worked fine! So I just set failsafeX configuration to my default one. It is so easy, and now it works:

1.) modify the file /etc/default/grub

> gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

instead of
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
write
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=0"
and save it.

2.) sudo update-grub
3.) cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.backup
4.) mv xorg.conf.failsafe xorg.conf
5.) restart and it should work

Good luck, Peer