9.10 desktop black

[Tholley]

I did an upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 and had all kinds of problems, so I did a fresh install last night, bootup and grub looked all good, but my desktop is black (plus I have no sound, but I think I can fix that using the same things from after the upgrade).

I ran accross this thread which is closed, but never solved, and looks just like what I am expierencing. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1302069

I have an old pc with Radeon 9250 card, Gygabite MB, 1g ram, and all worked just fine (compiz, wobbly, etc...) in 9.04. Maybe the new 9.10 drivers don't like old ATI cards?

Has anybody came up with a solution?

[wrgb2]

Have you tried running xfix from recovery mode?

[Tholley]

Have not tried xfix, but I guess it couldn't hurt.

just as much as I've been reading with other people wit the same problem, if that fixed it, you would THINK someone would have said "Hey... xfix fixed my black screen problem!"

So I do have doubts it will work, but I will try it tonight.

Thanks...

[wrgb2]

Yeah, you're probably right, but one can always hope :D

[ukripper]

Can you try ubuntu 9.10 live cd on your machine and see if it gives you same problem within livecd environment?

[Tholley]

Can you try ubuntu 9.10 live cd on your machine and see if it gives you same problem within livecd environment?

I forgot about that... I did run live CD the day before trying to fix the sound problem, (before I finally did a fresh install) and it did the same black screen.

At the time I just figured it was a cd issue.

I did run the ck cd for errors last night before I did the install, and it came back w/no errors.

[coffeecat]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1302069

<snip>

Has anybody came up with a solution?

Actually a sort-of solution is in the OP of that thread. Disable compiz and you'll get your desktop back. Sorry I can't offer any better fix.

[Tholley]

Yeah... turn off desktop effects and desktop background returns, but that was just a work around, not a fix.

thanks for trying tho! ;)

[Tholley]

This is what worked for me.


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:

Code:
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:

Code:
(**) 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.

If it reported XAA:

In terminal, do this:

Code:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
This will give you a text editor window. Paste this into the text editor:

Code:
Section "Device"
Identifier "my-radeon"
Driver "ati"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
EndSection
Save, and reboot, and see if the problem is solved.


If it reported EXA:

In terminal, do this:

Code:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
This will give you a text editor window. Paste this into the text editor:

Code:
Section "Device"
Identifier "my-radeon"
Driver "ati"
Option "AGPSize" "128"
EndSection
Then save the file and exit the editor, and reboot.

If the problem still isn't solved when you have rebooted, open the file in text editor again, and change it to look like this:

Code:
Section "Device"
Identifier "my-radeon"
Driver "ati"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection
Then save the file and exit the editor, and reboot.

Both of these solved the problem for me. The first one (with the AGPSize option) is the preferred choice and will result in better performance.

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


Mine was also EXA and switched to XAA and my cherries are back!