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I was in Ubuntu 20.04 when the screen just froze, and while the mouse still worked, nothing else did.

Nothing works except starting in safe mode. System always freezes within a few minutes.

I've tried updating to the Ubuntu 20.10 (first release beyond the latest LTR), have tried updating various drivers, am seriously eyeballing going back to Mint at this point.

output of lspci | grep "VGA":

07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]

Output of sudo lshw -C display:

  *-display:0 UNCLAIMED     
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fcde0000-fcdeffff ioport:dc00(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff
  *-display:1 UNCLAIMED
       description: Display controller
       product: RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series] (Secondary)
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0.1
       bus info: pci@0000:07:00.1
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:fcdf0000-fcdfffff

The last thing I tried was:

sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates

and I got the following error (which happens a lot with solutions I'm seeing proposed):

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package fglrx-updates

Many of the articles appear to be 4-6 years old, so I highly suspect their root cause is different from mine.

I'm a noob, so listing commands and what output(s) to look for to triage further would be appreciated. Happy to get rerouted to an "already answered" link that actually works.

Raffa
  • 32,237
Matthew Owen
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  • Does this answer your question? Ubuntu Bionic Beaver freezes randomly – Raffa Mar 17 '21 at 18:50
  • trying the sudo apt purge nvidia-* command at the bottom, worked well until I got the following final line: Purging configuration files for nvidia-opencl-icd-304 (304.135-0ubunt u0.16.04.2) ... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.137ubuntu12) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.8.0-45-generic libdvd-pkg: Checking orig.tar integrity... /usr/src/libdvd-pkg/libdvdcss_1.4.2.orig.tar.bz2: OK libdvd-pkg: apt-get check failed, you may have broken packages. Aborting...

    About to try the second one, reboot, and get back here.

     – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 19:35
  • sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall No drivers found for installation. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 19:37
  • Try this answer to fix broken packages first, then try the solution above again. If you encounter booting problems to GUI desktop, try this answer to fix that. – Raffa Mar 17 '21 at 19:46
  • Well... so far that purge nvidia command alone seems to have done the trick!!! Watching cautiously... we shall see what comes next. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 19:54
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    Raffa, THANK YOU by the way. I should have come here 4,5 days ago!!! – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 19:55
  • Spoke too soon. System worked much longer, I locked screen, came back, got the white and black screens of death (I'm spanning two monitors). Following up with your other instructions now. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 20:10
  • Regarding your link and the sudo dpkg --configure -a && sudo apt update --fix-missing && sudo apt install -f && sudo apt full-upgrade command: ran it, seems OK, but I DO get the following messages at the end: – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 20:14
  • W: GPG error: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jkist/xUbuntu_18.04 Release: The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG FE76CD923B7B38C4 home:jkist OBS Project home:jkist@build.opensuse.org E: The repository 'http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jkist/xUbuntu_18.04 Release' is not signed. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 20:16
  • Are you running Open Suse or Ubuntu? If running Ubuntu 20.10, follow this answer to fix your repositories list first changing every occurrence of focal in that answer with groovy then redo everything from the beginning :). – Raffa Mar 17 '21 at 20:23
  • running Ubuntu, 20.10. Tried the instructions, about to restart. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 20:47
  • same freeze up issue; system ran for under two minutes before freezing. – Matthew Owen Mar 17 '21 at 20:58
  • Please update your question to show the steps you tried in the comments above so far and include the results/errors. Please also add the output of lspci | grep "VGA" and sudo lshw -C display and cat /var/log/X* – Raffa Mar 18 '21 at 09:04
  • Tried posting the output of $ tail -n 99 /var/log/Xorg*.log but hit a character limit in this chat. – Matthew Owen Mar 18 '21 at 20:30
  • Everything related the fglrx driver family is deprecated and incompatible with newer Ubuntu releases since several years ago. It's irrelevant for your system, it cannot deliver any solutions any more. – Levente Mar 18 '21 at 21:01
  • looking through the DOS options, would activating SpeedStep (under Performance) improve performance, prevent freezing? Its currently off. – Matthew Owen Mar 18 '21 at 22:39
  • by "the DOS options" I guess you mean "the BIOS options". You need to turn off/disable Secure Boot as this might stop some modules from being loaded. We will try our best to help you, but we need more information. Paste long output here and link to it in your question. In addition to requests above, we need the output of sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade and lsmod | grep amd and sudo dmesg | grep -i amd and apt policy xserver-xorg-video-radeon *amdgpu* – Raffa Mar 19 '21 at 10:47
  • @Raffa, thank you, here's the link: https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/VVZ5xgYVds/ – Matthew Owen Mar 19 '21 at 13:24
  • I posted an answer below. Please follow the instructions in their order precisely and report back the result. This might be a lengthy troubleshooting process, but we'll reach a clearer understanding eventually. display:0 UNCLAIMED and display:1 UNCLAIMED might be caused by several reasons e.g. missing drivers, BIOS setting or even hardware problems. Unless we troubleshoot step by step, we can only guess. – Raffa Mar 19 '21 at 17:19

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