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In an attempt to set up an external monitor, I have screwed up my Ubuntu 16.04 Dell laptop. Seems like I messed up the graphic drivers and now I am stuck at the “The system is running in low-graphics mode” screen with no option to proceed after booting.

I can only run commands from a terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1.

Output of lspci command says VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices. Inc [AMD/ATI] Mars [Radeon HD 8730] (rev ff)

Here is what I have tried so far:

  • I tried to fix the issue by following this step-by-step guide. However, no luck. Especially, sudo apt-get install fglrx yield no such package.
  • I also followed the official guidelines by AMD. No luck here as well. No noticeable errors as such. But, the error message "system is running in low-graphics mode” still persists after reboot.
  • As a last resort, I tried to upgrade to 18.04 LTS through a bootable flash USB. To my bad luck, there is no option to upgrade, and it shows only install alongside or erase/reinstall.

I have spent almost 8 hours trying to debug now, and all my trials are getting useless and redundant. Any help to guide me in the right direction would be much appreciated. What am I missing basically?

kingmaker
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1 Answers1

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You may need to rebuild kernel with AMD graphics support activated.

Just fetch kernel source from kernel.org, then extract it, open config interface:

curl https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/linux-5.0.1.tar.xz > ~/linux-5.0.1.tar.xz
tar -Jxvf linux-5.0.1.tar.xz
cd linux-5.0.1
make defconfig
make menuconfig

In menuconfig, locate to "Device Drivers"-->"Graphics Support", select "AMD GPU", press "Y".

"Device Drivers" menu

Save the configuration, then build:

make
sudo make modules_install
sudo make install

After reboot, your Ubuntu should recognize your AMD GPU.

Akura Ryu
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  • Perhaps compiling the newest kernel isn't the way for an average user. Probably he'd be better off with a LTS kernel version. – gmt42 Mar 12 '19 at 13:55