KDE3.2 and ATI Problem.....
 

Hi people. Newbie here. Sorry if I don't give you all the info you need right away (first post). Thanks ahead of time.

I recently updated to KDE3.2. When I go to switch users (using kdm), X crashes (no error messages, just hangs) and I have to reboot. After a bit of playing around I found out it was my ATI driver (v3.7.0 off of ATI's site) that was causing the problem. I uninstalled it and was able to switch between users with no problems. When I re-install it, the original problem comes back. I do need to use this driver for the 3D support but I also like what they did with KDE3.2 and would like to stay with it (instead of reverting back to the previous version). My question is this, has anyone come across this same problem? and if so, what did you do to fix it?

A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP +2000
ATI Radeon 8500LE

_______________
evolution......
Man discovers fire, makes wheel, cracks Windows, creates Linux

Could you post the contents of /var/log/XF86.0.log? That would hopefully give us the specific error. You could also post /var/log/kdm.log, in case that is where the error is being documented.

As an alternative to removing the ATI drivers, you could instead set your default runlevel to runlevel 3 in /etc/inittab:

You would then have to log into a text console and then type 'startx' (which would start KDE if that's your default session), but it does avoid the entire session manager/driver conflict (assuming that KDE then starts properly. Of course if it doesn't, then we know even more about the problem then we did, which is always good). Setting the default runlevel to 3 also makes it possible to try to start any other WMs that you may have installed (like blackbox or fluxbox, or xfce), which would further help to identify if this is a KDE problem, a KDM problem, an X problem or a global problem with the ATI drivers.

Have you tried another dm (rather than kdm)? I'm sorry that I'm not such a Slackware expert (only been using it for a couple of weeks) that I don't know how you change that, or even if you have another dm installed (given that xdm does not seem to be in the standard package list, and you may not have installed GNOME or Dropline GNOME to give you gdm), but if you do have one, and can change it, it would help to indicate whether this was a KDM-specific problem, or (again) was global to session managers in general.

When you say that you uninstalled and reinstalled the fglrx modules, do you mean that you simply changed the driver (to "vesa", for example) and then changed it back, or did you actually rebuild the fglrx module and re-run fglrxconfig? I think the latter procedure is more likely to solve the problem than the former (see below).

I have a AIW 9800SE using the 3.7.0 drivers, also have KDE 3.2, and do not have this problem.

Perhaps the differences between our systems may help identify what is wrong.

• You don't say what kernel you're using-- I use 2.6.3.
• I installed KDE 3.2 before installing the ATI binary drivers (I used the VESA drivers until I had all upgrades that might affect X installed, then installed the ATI drivers to avoid similar issues).
• I do not use KDM (I use GDM).

Now, I noticed that when I installed Dropline GNOME that it upgraded XFree86-- is it possible that the KDE upgrade does as well? (Meaning, have you upgraded XFree86 since installing the ATI drivers?) That issue did give me a problem (I uninstalled Dropline then reinstalled it) for a while, where I could not start X because the module "fglrx" could not be found, even if I had just loaded it via the 'modprobe fglrx' command and checked that it was loaded with 'lsmod|grep fglrx'. To solve that, I had to rebuild the modules and rerun fglrxconfig, iirc.

How did you install KDE 3.2? Did you compile it from source or install it from slackware-current? How did you install KDM (is it the same one that came with the distro, or did you get a new one with KDE 3.2-- as you can tell, I'm not much of a KDE user, so I don't know if it works like GNOME, where GDM is always installed as part of the base GNOME system). If you installed from packages, you might want to check to see if there is an upgraded KDM package that you should install.

That's alll I can think of to check atm. Sorry that it's so all over the place, but I hope it helps anyway.

Thank you for your reply, but I found out what the problem was. As it turns out, it didnt have anything to do with KDE3.2 or the ATI driver.

The problem came from a Mozilla Firefox extention.

I tried to recreate my problem, so I did everything the same way I had done before. Turned out that it happened only when I tried to open up Mozilla Firefox as a user (it wasnt working, that should have given me my first clue, doh) and then logged out. I tracked down the extention that was causing the problem, Mouse Gestures. Mouse Gestures does not give you a option of installing it to your profile directory, it only installs into the program directory (not good if your using more then one user and Firefox). So I got rid of it and installed All-In-One Gestures (it gives you the choice to install into your profile directory). Problem solved, works like a charm.

A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP +2000
ATI Radeon 8500LE

_______________
evolution......
Man discovers fire, makes wheel, cracks Windows, creates Linux

Now, that's an interesting new conflict. I wonder if, had you installed Mouse Gestures as root (by opening a terminal, su-ing to root, and then running the firefox command from the root terminal), it would have avoided the conflict (because Mouse Gestures would then be properly installed).

Maybe somebody (maybe even me, though I don't use those kind of extensions normally) will test this, because if it's really a problem, the developer of the extension should know about it.

Glad you solved it though-- pretty neat!