07 - 12 - 2024

Catalyst (fglrx) with GDM @ Archlinux

In some cases you are forced to use FGLRX drivers provided by AMD, instead of opensource radeon module - e.g. suspend is not working with radeon module (won't recover).

If also you are GDM user like me, you wil find issue. After the GDM is started only Black screen is showed with some random white pixels (like when GPU is broken or overclocked) on the screen.

To fix the issue just downgrade cogl to latest version under catalyst repo, instead using the Archlinux official package.

┌─[✗]─[09:21:31]─[root@sco]
└──> ~ $ >> wget "http://mirror.hactar.bz/Vi0L0/catalyst/x86_64/cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz"
--2016-04-21 09:23:06--  http://mirror.hactar.bz/Vi0L0/catalyst/x86_64/cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
Resolving mirror.hactar.bz (mirror.hactar.bz)... 144.76.14.145, 2a01:4f8:190:9490::cafe
Connecting to mirror.hactar.bz (mirror.hactar.bz)|144.76.14.145|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 769064 (751K) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz’

cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz 100%[===========================================================>] 751,04K  1,29MB/s    in 0,6s

2016-04-21 09:23:06 (1,29 MB/s) - ‘cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz’ saved [769064/769064]

┌─[09:23:06]─[root@sco]
└──> ~ $ >> pacman -U cogl-1.22.0-2.5-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

loading packages...
warning: downgrading package cogl (1.22.0+11+g81ab4a3-1 => 1.22.0-2.5)
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) cogl-1.22.0-2.5

Total Installed Size:  4,57 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,51 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                                                   [##############################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                                                 [##############################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                                      [##############################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                                                [##############################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                                              [##############################################] 100%

:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) downgrading cogl                                                           [##############################################] 100%

┌─[09:23:32]─[root@sco]
└──> ~ $ >> systemctl restart gdm