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My computer boots to a black screen after I upgraded from Ubuntu 15.04 to 16.04 LTS. Every time, I need to open and close the lid to get to the screen.

My machine is a HP Pavilion g6 with AMD Quad-Core A6-3420M with Radeon 6520G graphics card.

I tried different options, but none seem to work.

  1. Used different GRUB parameters to boot. I currently have splash radeon.dpm=1. In addition, I tried quiet splash radeon.dpm=1, just radeon.dpm=1 and no splash radeon.dpm=1. Then I tried acpi_osi=Linux with some of these combinations, but to no avail. I picked up suggestions for parameters from here and here.

  2. If I use nomodeset or radeon.modeset=0, then the computer boots correctly - or seems to. However, the radeon driver does not load up: running glxinfo gives, among other things

    OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.8, 128 bits)

Also:

thomas@localhost:~$ dmesg | egrep 'drm|radeon'
[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-38-generic   root=UUID=c6ef3987-05d3-4213-92ed-49442645ebaa ro quiet splash nomodeset radeon.dpm=1 acpi_sleep=nonvs vt.handoff=7
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-38-generic root=UUID=c6ef3987-05d3-4213-92ed-49442645ebaa ro quiet splash nomodeset radeon.dpm=1 acpi_sleep=nonvs vt.handoff=7
[    3.217595] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[    3.269065] [drm] VGACON disable radeon kernel modesetting.
[    3.269092] [drm:radeon_init [radeon]] *ERROR* No UMS support in radeon module!
[    3.309976] [drm] VGACON disable radeon kernel modesetting.
[    3.310007] [drm:radeon_init [radeon]] *ERROR* No UMS support in radeon module!
[   16.994342] [drm] VGACON disable radeon kernel modesetting.
[   16.994387] [drm:radeon_init [radeon]] *ERROR* No UMS support in radeon module!

Further, heating is intense, Suspend does not work on closing the lid, can't project from the laptop...the list goes on.

Without nomodeset, after the lid opening and closing sequenceglxinfo gives

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD SUMO (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 11.2.0

And other things also look fine.

  1. When booting without nomodeset on battery, a certain combination of enter and spacebar immediately after selecting Ubuntu from the Grub menu and before the black screen appears, results in a normal boot after a black screen for a brief period. I have not yet figured out the right combination of key presses or timing that could consistently boot me up, so my problem remains.

Graphics card details:

thomas@localhost:~$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] BeaverCreek [Radeon HD 6520G] [1002:9647]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M/7400M Series] [1002:6760] (rev ff)

Any help would be appreciated!

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Thomas Abraham
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  • About 1: Where did you get those parameters from? About 2: Not loading the driver is precisely the point of those parameters. Everything described after is related. I suggest backing up and then install 16.04 from scratch. 15.04>16.04 is a weird upgrade path. –  Oct 06 '16 at 16:11
  • The HP Pavilion G6 used to work quite well with fglrx but no proprietary drivers are available for 16.04 and part of the upgrade process should have been removing fglrx and replacing it with either radeon or amdgpu, both open-source, and it may have disrupted something. –  Oct 06 '16 at 16:18
  • @CelticWarrior: I upgraded 15.04->15.10->16.04, which is what Ubuntu recommends. I had the same problem in 15.04, but fglrx did not solve it. In fact, the screen would not come up at all. So I had to go back to the open source driver and remove fglrx. From that perspective, the radeon driver is a huge improvement. While upgrading to 16.04, I ran the steps to remove fglrx to ensure that it is removed. Thanks anyway for trying to help! – Thomas Abraham Oct 06 '16 at 17:24
  • @CelticWarrior: Parameters were taken from here and here – Thomas Abraham Oct 06 '16 at 17:35
  • @Please edit and update the question with that information because it is very relevant and shouldn't be lost in comments. The suggestion stands: Fresh16.04. Test in a live session. If the problem persists I would suspect hardware. I remember yours and many other AMD APU based working quite well last year with fglrx and one remarkable A10. –  Oct 06 '16 at 17:36
  • @Thanks, I added the links into point 1. fglrx never worked for me - though I tried it out multiple times last year. Finally reverted to nomodeset and open source driver, with the same heating, projecting and lid-closing problems . Will try out the fresh install - but can't do so now without jeopardising the project I'm working on. – Thomas Abraham Oct 06 '16 at 17:43
  • @CelticWarrior: I finally was able to do a fresh install. Since 16.10 is available, I used 16.10. However, no change in status quo: I still need to close and open lid. Or press the on button to send it into hibernate and then press it again. – Thomas Abraham Feb 06 '17 at 17:11
  • Still no progress.... any suggestions anyone? – Thomas Abraham Jun 22 '17 at 14:49

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