video highly corrupted in wheezy on x120e
 

I installed Debian Wheezy by using debootstrap from Ubuntu, more or less following this documentation:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...ml.en#id602104

The system boots successfully. System logs scroll on the screen. One of the last lines of logs mentions radeon, my video driver. When gdm kicks in, the video is highly corrupted. It's just colorful static. When I move my mouse, a corrupted square moves around where the pointer should be.

If I drop into a virtual console with crtl-alt-F2, the video remains corrupted, so I'll have to debug from ubuntu with chroot, which is not a problem.

Where can I find the logs that would help me figure out what's going on? How can I fix this?

I had a similar problem with my 3850 which died some weeks ago.
One solution is to install fglrx, if it supports your card.
Another solution is to make a "good" xorg.conf and put some options for radeon.

This is what I had for it.

Thanks jim_p, but adding your xorg.conf didn't help, and I couldn't install the fglrx drivers due to dependency issues. I've tried adding squeeze, sid and experimental repositories, (all main, non-free, and contrib) with no luck.


I've installed fglrx-modules-dkms, to no avail. I imagine they don't do much without the fglrx-driver package.

Ultimately I'd prefer the fglrx drivers since I have them working in Ubuntu with video acceleration for VLC, but I'd expect the free radeon drivers to work more smoothly, since in Ubuntu they're flawless except for the lack of 3D acceleration.

I'll try using my xorg.conf from my Ubuntu install.

I am sorry I can't help you more with fglrx vs xorg dependencies, but I think it has to do with the recent upgrade to xorg 1.11 (fglrx is not ready for it yet). All you can do is wait, ubuntu 11.10 is on its way out, and they (the fglrx devs of ati) usually fix such issues.

If you want to give radeon another try, try starting your kernel with kms disabled. That means appending "nomodeset" to the kernel's boot options in grub.
This is a bad idea in general, because with no kms you will have no frequency scaling, so a big card like my 3850 will get to a high temperature really fast. But, if you are willing to check it...
I use that for live cds when radeon gives me the corrupted graphics.

Moreover, installing fglrx blacklists radeon, so make sure it (radeon) will load. To do so, simply look at the contents of /etc/modprobe.d/fglrx-something.conf.

fglrx 11.9 is uninstallable in testing/unstable. It has explicit depends on xserver-xorg-core 1.10.99 and under. You could grab that version from snapshot.debian.org or you could even try installing xorg from stable and pin to that version (no idea if that would work but personally I would give it a go).

The radeon driver should be working though, but without log outputs and details of your hardware it's hard to help you.

Post outputs (use [code][/code] tags)

Down grade your xorg to 1:7.6+8.

Down grade your xserver-xorg-<everything> one step too.

This is an on going problem in testing and Sid. Has been for a couple weeks. There is movement going on.

You will have to remove the xserver and xorg stuff before installing the older version.

No luck with the Ubuntu xorg.conf. I added the line 'Xorg -configure' to /etc/rc.local, but that didn't help. I feel like X is not so much the problem, but the graphics driver. One time I noticed that the corruption included artifacts from my last Ubuntu session. Not only is this a bug, but I imagine it's a security vulnerability: video data remaining in cache after a reboot.

Any more ideas?

Gee, could this possibly be because the current Xorg et all is incompatible with ati cards? Nah, Ubuntu users don't need to think about these things.

What ever you decide to do. there is only one thing that is important, have FUN.

The easiest thing to do is set up squeeze back ports and install xserver-* (2:1.10.4-1~bpo60+1) and xserver-xorg (1:7.6+8~bpo60+1).

If you you need help with that just ask.


http://backports-master.debian.org/Instructions/

Installing it from backports is a good idea.

You should only need to downgrade xserver-xorg-* and xserver-common - that should do it.

Personally I would create a preferences file and pin the relevant xserver packages to squeeze-backports and priority 1001 and then cross fingers and run a dist-upgrade, all being well it should downgrade. That will also stop any unwanted upgrades.

Thanks for the X help guys, but even without X installed I get this corruption.

Here's my output from lspci -vv

You say you're getting corruption without xorg installed, where is the corruption and when does it start?

For example is it on grub boot splash screen? Or does it start mid-way through the boot messages?

The OP should go here http://wiki.debian.org/GraphicsCard#ATI for info and a good Howto.

The corruption starts well into the boot process, right before I get a chance to login. Before it goes all wonky, the boot logs scroll down the screen. It's well after GRUB.

First try disabling KMS:

Reboot (terminal font will probably be much larger, this is normal).

If that resolves the corruption problem, downgrade xserver-xorg-* to the version in squeeze-backports and install the proprietary fglrx driver either from Sid or download the installer from AMD/ATI.

http://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary