Graphics not working on Ryzen 2400g ubuntu 18.04.2

Question

System specs:

• B450 ITX motherboard. latest bios.
• 2x8gb DDR4-3200 / PC4-25600 ram
• Ryzen 2400g

Distros tried:

• 19.04
• 18.04.2

Question:

How do you properly install amd graphics drivers for ubuntu 18.04.2 on a raven ridge system? Do I install AMDGPU 19.20 first, then MESA, then x.org xf86 driver? Do I need some specific patch? Do I need to bother with a kernel upgrade?

Backstory:

I purchased this setup on Sunday from microcenter. All new, no openbox. I've been tinkering with it for a good number of hours and I have not been able to get the graphics working soundly yet.

I first tried ubuntu 19.04. The screen defaulted to 640x480 graphics and I could not change the resolution. I tried installing the "AMDGPU" graphics and it made the machine black screen on reboot and it wouldn't come back after that. I later found out that AMDGPU driver does not work at all on 19.04, so I switched to 18.04.2

18.04.2 worked right out of the box and everything seemed normal. general use was pretty fluid, and the machine booted and operated normally. However, after mildly stressing the machine with basic games from the ubuntu store, there was visual scrolling horizontal line tearing while playing extreme tux racer. I tried Open arena and it would immediately quit and error when I tried setting up a skermish.

I then used ukuu to upgrade to the latest kernel (5.1.6) and installed the AMDGPU-PRO driver, but this caused a black screen on reboot. I reinstalled 18.04.2 and tried kernel 5.0, same results.

I reinstalled 18.04.2 and stuck with the native kernel 4.18 from here on in.

After a bit of research it turns out there are a whole slew of amd graphics drivers for linux. I found a good explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/6la6n5/trying_to_understand_drm_dri_mesa_radeon_gallium/

I went ahead and installed the latest MESA and the xf86 driver from xorg. This was definitely an improvement over stock 18.04.2 drivers and there was no more horizontal scrolling line tearing in extreme tux racer. Open arena is still broken though. I went ahead and installed the 19.20 radeon drivers. I verified the driver install via terminal it checked out. However, the AMDGPU driver made the graphics situation significantly worse, and created horrific line tearing on even a simple window drag. Also, ubuntu x no longer worked, and ubuntu wayland was the only functioning gui environment.

At this point, more than a year after raven ridge was released, I really expected significant issues to be ironed out. There doesn't seem to be a consistent solution for the raven ridge platform on linux. Some folks have got this to work though. I'm still amazed how Michael at phoronix was able to setup a similar machine and stress test it under openarena. I have absolutely no idea how he pulled it off, but for the life of me I can not replicate his results.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-2400g-may&num=1

If anyone has any input, I would be all ears.

Thanks a ton!

Answer 1

seeing as you are all ears, I'll risk it.

I now have a stable 19.04 with my Ryzen 2500u with the default Ubuntu amdgpu drivers. As I understand it no additional drivers are available.

do you get any grub menu? if not, edit the /boot/grub.grub.cfg so that after the default timeout=30 the additional timeout=0, change those to a positive number, and be prepared to do that on any grub update, and possible under other scenarios. You might need to boot liveCD and mount your main drive to get to that file.

and for blank screen, I posted question and answer here AMD Ryzen 2500U blank screen on boot after update

sudo rm /lib/firmware/amdgpu_raven_dmcu.bin

that file also reinstates itself on grub updates.

and for random lockups in /etc/default/grub you might like to add idle=nomwait like here GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash idle=nomwait "

It is quite stable now for me.(suspending is the last remaining major issue)