When using fglrx module, the virtual consoles are blank and useless

The bug looks like an old Debian bug (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=712527).

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I'm affected by this bug too in Ubuntu Mate 15.04 amd64, after installing fglrx-core 2:15.200-0ubuntu4 ,
 fglrx 2:15.200-0ubuntu4 and fglrx-amdcccle 2:15.200-0ubuntu4 the six virtual consoles are blank, only Ctrl+Alt+F7 works to get back to the graphical environment.

Removing the fglrx packages brings back the consoles.

In past Ubuntu releases (Lucid and Precise) I did not have this bug, although the fglrx driver in that case had been manually installed starting from the installer downloaded from the AMD site rather than directly installing the fglrx packages from the official Ubuntu repo.

I recommend you to get rid of fglrx. Open source drivers for AMD work today like a charm.

With my ATI HD 7790, I tried the Open Source driver but it doesn't support HDMI audio over DisplayPort. Now I'm not using DisplayPort but I also had no luck because I'm using now two monitors and it also doesn't support that (at least for me).

In reply to comment https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer-updates/+bug/1470862/comments/5

>I recommend you to get rid of fglrx. Open source drivers for AMD work today like a charm.

I beg to differ: much as I would really like to get rid of any non-free components, without the fglrx driver *I can't even set the display brightness* let alone do more refined tweaks, furthermore it is needed for a composite window manager (such as Compiz) to work.

I'm not saying that open source video drivers don't work, I just can't do all the things I want with them -besides, I know for a fact that virtual consoles didn't disappear in previous Ubuntu releases when using the fglrx driver, so it's clearly a regression that should be fixed ASAP.

I can't tell if the problem is the latest fglrx driver itself or some grub setting or whatever, anyways I've tried some suggested workaround such as turning off the graphical terminal or changing the screen resolution in /etc/default/grub and unfortunately it didn't work.

I have the same problem after upgraded from Ubuntu 14.10 to 15.04. My graphic card is AMD R7 260X using fglrx-amdcccle-updates 2:15.200-0ubuntu4 driver. This driver seems working fine except I got blank screen when I tried to switch to virtual consoles with ctl+alt+fx keys.

The open source driver radeon is even worse, it randomly crashs X and get to the login screen and you can't log back it from the login screen. Instead, you need to "sudo killall Xorg".

Tried many suggestions so far from the web, it didn't help.

This is still happening for me after the recent 2:15.200-0ubuntu4.2 update.

I am now also getting a 'screen stays blank, keyboard isn't responded to' crash every day or two when restarting the display after it times out and powers off.

This is also happening in Ubuntu Trusty 14.04.3 LTS : right after installing fglrx-updates and fglrx-amdcccle-updates the virtual consoles become unusable, i.e. totally blank.

Again, as bad as the AMD support for Linux may be, as a matter of fact the proprietary driver is (unfortunately) still better then its open source counterpart: display quality is noticeably better, screen adjustments are way easier and more fine tunable than messing around with xrandr, composite window managers don't work properly or don't work at all with the open source driver.

Much as I would like to do without the proprietary AMD driver, I need to use it to have my hardware working as I want, so please fix this issue.

The "who" command verified to me all my tty consoles are fully functional, only their displays are blacked out.

I could get rid of the problem through upgrading to 15.10 and getting rid of fglrx - BUT! - I was greeted with a black screen at first My displays could not be detected. Via ssh I remotely logged in from another computer and completely removed my ati drivers, removed my Xorg.conf, and reinstalled Xorg (https://askubuntu.com/questions/68306/how-do-i-remove-the-proprietary-ati-drivers).

Trying that please be sure you have remote access to your computer or could find yourself stuck in front of a black screen!

So now I can agree Alberto Salvia Novella. My virtual consoles, my graphical session, and libreoffice (whose crashes had been the reason why I had to switch to fglrx) all work fine.

This problem makes it so that neither driver works in all cases for me. I have a display-port and performance issues with the open source driver, and I have graphics tearing in chrome along with this framebuffer/virtual console issue with the fglrx drivers. Has anyone found a work-around using the grub config?

>The "who" command verified to me all my tty consoles are fully functional, only their displays are blacked out.

We know that already, the issue is that they are not really usable if blacked out: we have a monitor/display for a reason.

We also know that getting rid of the fglrx driver solves the issue right away, unfortunately the fglrx driver also exists for a reason, which would be that the open source driver can't do the same things: at least in my experience, I'm stuck with very basic graphics, I can't set the monitor brightness, I can't use hardware acceleration or use Compiz effects.
These are real drawbacks, if I have to do without this stuff, I may as well do without the ATI video card and use the integrated graphics on the motherboard.

Summarizing:

(1) This is affecting at least 15.04 and 15.10

(2) tty consoles are 'functional' but blacked out (if you log in blindly, go back to destkop, and try `who`, there is a tty session running)

(3) removing fglrx drivers is some sort of workaround, but presumably people that did install fglrx in the first place want fglrx for some reason ;-)

(4) common workarounds for these sort of issues usually involve changing grub configs. I've tried a few things, and it seems that others did, too. At this point I'm not aware of an easy grub tweak that unblanks tty consoles. Please post if you have something, I'd like to try.

Tried today swapping my ATI card for an Nvidia card, back and forth (fglrx vs nvidia drivers), I'm confirmed this problem goes away as you switch away from fglrx / away from ATI.

That was (probably) more or less a given, this is clearly an ATI/fglrx issue.

What I don't understand is why is considered somehow acceptable to suffer such an issue, or why the recommended "fix" (?) would be to get rid of the fglrx driver altogether.

ATI support for Linux may be considerably worse than Nvidia (as recognized by many people in the know), but if the package exists in the Ubuntu repository it should work without rendering the virtual consoles useless, and this issue shouldn't slip all the way from 14.04 to 15.10.

That

>removing fglrx drivers is some sort of workaround, but presumably people that did install fglrx in the first place >want fglrx for some reason

is the appropriate line of reasoning: the official package exists and should be installable without breaking anything major such as the virtual consoles.

Hi, This problem is still present in Xenial Xerus daily-build (I'm using the MATE flavor).

I found that by changing, via update-alternatives, the x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf and i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf link-groups back to the Mesa choices, with the fglrx (or fglrx-updates) package still installed, and then rebooting, the virtual consoles now work and lsmod shows that the fglrx module is still being used (and the radeon module is not).

So I guess this shows that the OpenGL configuration that uses fglrx is somehow related to the problem, and that the fglrx module is capable of having working virtual consoles.

Just to note, after changing those alternatives:
- My x86_64-linux-gnu_gfxcore_conf alternative is still the choice for fglrx-core.
- My OpenGL is Mesa of course and is much slower (unusably slow, as usual) than using fglrx for OpenGL.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

With Xenial, when I boot with kernel command-line parameter systemd.unit=multi-user.target (i.e. non-graphical "runlevel", don't start X11), then the virtual consoles do work. But then when I do "sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target" to start X11, then the virtual consoles don't work.

However, after default graphical.target boot, when I do "sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target" (to stop X11), then the virtual consoles don't work, unlike when multi-user.target is booted into initially.

Using the latest drivers from the AMD web site (2:15.302-0ubuntu1) fixes the issue.

I also am affected by this.

@Jean
How did you install that driver on Ubuntu 15.10?

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD?action=show#Installing_upstream_drivers_directly_from_AMD.27s_website

Don't know if it makes sense to post, but I have the same bug **without** fglrx, with NVIDIA hardware on a freshly installed Xenial Xerus beta 2. It was there from the start. Maybe this helps finding the root cause. It's not just fglrx.

I confirm this bug exists in Xenial Xerus and is not limited to fglrx (I have Intel graphics).

More information on my hardware:

$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i "VGA"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
 Subsystem: Lenovo 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
 Kernel driver in use: i915

Any help is appreciated.

I'm having the same problem with fglrx/fglrx-updates on Ubuntu 14.04.4

Uname: Linux 4.2.0-27-generic x86_64 GNU/Linux
VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Park [Mobility Radeon HD 5430]
 Subsystem: Dell Device 0466
 Kernel driver in use: radeon

it didn't happen when i upgraded from ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04. Just happen when I try to re-install (fresh install).
Any help is appreciate.

The open source AMD drivers are not a solution; I was obliged to switch to proprietary drivers because X/lightdm kept crashing on startup leaving me only with VTs to trouble shoot. Now with the proprietary drivers I can't see the VTs.

The open source drivers every once in a while stopped loading the lightdm greeter. Reinstalling/reconfiguring lightdm and other steps didn't fix the problem. The /var/log/lightdm logs showed errors "Segmentation fault" in the x-0.log and "Process xxxx terminated with signal 6" in the lightdm.log.

My system:

$ uname -a
Linux trustycrucial 3.13.0-85-generic #129-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 17 20:50:15 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Juniper XT [Radeon HD 5770] [1002:68b8]
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Juniper XT [Radeon HD 5770] [1002:68b8]

I can confirm that this bug is fixed if you install the latest 15.302 drivers from http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/linux and also carefully follow the Installer Notes here http://www2.ati.com/relnotes/amd-catalyst-graphics-driver-installer-notes-for-linux-operating-systems.pdf.

After uninstalling the fglrx which I downloaded from the repository and then installing the new ones from AMD I am able to switch to any Virtual Terminals via CTRL + ALT + F1, etc.