Flashing screen.

[wolfyking2]

Ok, I got into planeshift all right, made my character and stuff  , but when the actual game loads, the screen is flashing black so much, I can hardly see.  I have compiz off, and I'm not sure what to do.  When I was creating my character, the part were the actual graphics came into play, the screen stared flashing black also, but not as much, because I could still make my character.  I need help           

[enderandrew]

What video card do you have, and which drivers are you using?  Also, what distro are you running?

If you are not sure how to get that information, let me know and I can help you with that.

[derula]

I can confirm the problem, however I use KDE and KWin and it only occurs when not running in full screen and having desktop effects enabled. Running in full screen or disabling desktop effects both fix the problem. I'm not using compiz though, so I can't help with that...

[enderandrew]

I'm going on a limb that both of you are using ATI.  It isn't until the brand new release of Catalyst 9.3 that ATI supported composite effects and OpenGL rendering properly at the same time.

Upgrading to the latest Catalyst driver may help you if you're running with ATI video cards.

[derula]

I'm going on a limb that both of you are using ATI.  It isn't until the brand new release of Catalyst 9.3 that ATI supported composite effects and OpenGL rendering properly at the same time.

Yeah, I am on ATI, I forgot to say that, sorry. Good to know 9.3 does it (I'll wait until it is in ATI's suse repo though).

[Strelok]

According to some forum posts, Suse's 1 click install for ATI drivers includes the 9.3 driver. This would work if you are on 10.3, 11.0 or 11.1. http://en.opensuse.org/ATI

[derula]

According to some forum posts, Suse's 1 click install for ATI drivers includes the 9.3 driver. This would work if you are on 10.3, 11.0 or 11.1. http://en.opensuse.org/ATI

Wow, I... am unsure what happened.

Although the 1 click install used the same repo as I had already used to install the driver, I installed it again (as its changelog mentioned 9.2 as last update). Well... now, compositing doesn't work any more at all. If I activate it it just flashes the screen for the 10 seconds that KDE waits until it assumes it isn't working and then turns it back off. In these 10 seconds I can't do much other than moving my mouse cursor. That's somewhat.... wow.

fgl_glxgears - and planeshift - work fine though (without compositing).

[Strelok]

Wow that is quite unusual. I am not familiar with ATI cards or their drivers, never owned one. However, it is possible that if you had 9.2 installed, and that 1 click installed 9.3, you could now have two drivers installed, which would cause problems. In your terminal, type

Code: [Select]

rpm -q -a. This will give you a very long list of all your installed rpms. I do not know which rpm would be an ATI driver because I don't have any, but if you are familiar with the file, you could see if you had two installed. For instance if you had, ati-9.2 , ati-9.3, uninstalling ati-9.2 could fix your problem. Although the easiest method is just a complete reinstall of opensuse, and then using that 1 click to install your drivers.

[enderandrew]

rpm -q -a | grep ati

You can modify your search results with grep.

[derula]

Code: [Select]

> rpm -q -a | grep fglrx
ati-fglrxG01-kmp-default-8.582_2.6.27.19_3.2-2.1
x11-video-fglrxG01-8.582-2.1
I must add, I also tried to first configure the driver with sax, and as it didn't work, I tried aticonfig --initial. I am not sure it is SaX's fault though, since I'm not sure I have restarted X before trying to configure with SaX. However, I think the xorg.conf now looks exactly as before (where it was also configured by aticonfig, and worked).

Also, I have tried re-installing the driver through Yast (forcing update), which did not help either.

However, I don't think this is the place to discuss this kind of stuff, right?

[Strelok]

However, I don't think this is the place to discuss this kind of stuff, right?

Well I doubt it, but then again, your problem is a "Linux Specific issue," just not too related to PS 
Sorry I can't help much when it comes to configuring ATI drivers. Traditionally, Nvidia was always better because of the semi-open drivers and pretty regular updates, however that is slowly reversing. As for a place more suited to the issue, Opensuse has a new forum site (well, new for me, was used to the old site for years) at http://forums.opensuse.org/ you could try.

[derula]

As for a place more suited to the issue, Opensuse has a new forum site (well, new for me, was used to the old site for years) at http://forums.opensuse.org/ you could try.

My... nickname is already taken there. This is the second time this happens to me. Damn.

Anyway I just wanted to add I don't think it is either the ATI driver's or xorg.conf's fault. The problem occurs with the open source driver, too, and there aren't any important changes in the config.

Edit: And it isn't related to composition either. It also occurs on x start, login and when starting amdcccle, even with composite disabled in config.

[Strelok]

Is an Opensuse re-installation a possibility for you? That's always been my cure-all. 

[enderandrew]

Have you tried booting to a console (init level 3 so that X windows isn't running at all) and then trying a:

sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

That tells sax2 to ignore your existing xorg.conf, and try configuring it from scratch using the fglrx driver.

[derula]

Is an Opensuse re-installation a possibility for you? That's always been my cure-all. 

Well, I did an "upgrade" install (more like downgrade for that matter), after which everything worked quite fine. Then I installed updates and all the stuff that got deleted through "upgrade" (most notably, KDE 4.2 and the ATI driver; good that my download speed seems to have tripled since last time I checked (holy sh*t, it's over 9000 now! kbitps, that is)), when it stopped working again. As I said, same problem radeonhd (at least I think I tested it). I cannot imagine how the problem is related to KDE 4.2 though, as it appears on X Server startup, in the middle of KDM login, when starting amdcccle and when turning on desktop effects in KDE. I don't even have a clue how these actions might be related.

Have you tried booting to a console (init level 3 so that X windows isn't running at all) and then trying a:

sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

That tells sax2 to ignore your existing xorg.conf, and try configuring it from scratch using the fglrx driver.

Tried that. It tells me that my previous settings will be ignored and then gives me a blinking cursor until I ^C it. The Sax2 log is empty (if you don't count the header saying that this will be the SaX2 log). X is not even started, xorg.conf is not overwritten. Starting SaX from within X will result in a black screen of death. No crash though; I think it's just a frozen X server not responding to keyboard input. But that has little to do with the problem I think, as I had that problem earlier.

Again about logs: none of them contained any useful information. I have checked X log and kdm log (and stderr shortly after experiencing the bug). No warnings/errors that weren't there before the problem started.

I suppose it's just some broken factory package, though I repeat I would not know which one that could be. All packages starting with xorg- are from official 11.1 stable or update repositories. Well I'll wait if it gets fixed, seeing that I wouldn't be much help as a bug reporter either as I have no clue what is causing it and why. Or In which piece of software the bug is. Also, it isn't that big a deal, only being unable to enable desktop effects and really rare crashes while playing ps (it happened twice).

Thanks for your help anyway