Freeze on "compiz --replace" w/ Fglrx 8.42+AIGLX+Debian Testing

[Vultaire]

I've been trying to hammer though this myself, but I've given up. Maybe someone can help me here.

I got the 8.42 fglrx driver for my Radeon Xpress 1100, which works fine for everything else so far. I've also installed the compiz package (and its dependencies of course) from the Debian Testing repos, the version of which is tagged as 0.5.2-2.

My problem is, when I execute "compiz --replace" from a command line, the screen looks like it disables the metacity window frames, then a bunch of other stuff disappears as if it might be trying to start compiz, and then, it just hangs. I can move the mouse cursor around and it'll change to a text cursor if I place it over where a text window used to be, but alt-dragging windows doesn't seem to work at all, and I'm forced to do a ctrl-alt-f1 and kill/kill -9 both my compiz processes and my X server in order to start up again.

Any ideas on how to proceed here? Does compiz itself have any sort of logging mechanism to trace what's going on here?

Data of interest:
My xorg.conf is here: http://pastebin.com/m32f43ab2
My Xorg.0.log (from my current working session): http://pastebin.com/m7f591b93
And a diff between my Xorg.0.log and my Xorg.0.log.old (the killed session): http://pastebin.com/md808dcf
(There's nothing valuable on this last one, I think; just here for completeness.)

[Z1Kenobi]

i had the same problems until i applied those tricks :

http://bgoglin.livejournal.com/11253.html

[alroger]

Have you checked that fglrx.ko was actually loaded?
In 64bits it's not going to load automatically. I had to find it and insmod it.
Can you run fglrxinfo and show the outputs? If it says Mesa, fglrx is not loaded!

[adamk]

If the kernel module is setup properly, it will automatically load, whether it's 64 bits or 32. On Ubuntu, you need to blacklist the fglrx module from the linux-restricted-modules package in order to prevent an older kernel module from loading.

Adam

[alroger]

not for me, on 64.
Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 x86_64.
ati...xxx.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy does not work on 64. So I did a regular express install.
fglrx.ko does not load automatically.
Thats with and without the restricted driver installed, both times in and out of the restricted driver black list.

[adamk]

Then there is something a little screwy with your system. The xserver should automatically load the kernel module if it's located under /lib/modules/`uname -r` and you have run 'sudo depmod -a' after installing the module.

Adam

[Z1Kenobi]

for me on debian testing 32 , i had to compile the module after installlation of the .deb created by the standard installation.

You should also take a look on www.phoronix.com . there are a lot of thread that could resolve your problem

[Vultaire]

My apologies for not answering sooner.

First off, running 32-bit Debian Testing. So it's not a 64-bit issue.
Second, Z1Kenobi, thx for the link. By default my gconf setting only had the gconf plugin enabled. I changed it to what you specified, and I seem to have got a little further. Now the compiz effects seem to work... however, the downside is everything is functionally almost as useless as before. I seem to be able to move windows, but the actual surfaces of the windows aren't drawing themselves properly.

I was able to get a capture via recordmydesktop of switching from Metacity to Compiz, and you can clearly see the glitches I'm talking about. Note that if I switch to a Linux console (ctrl+alt+F1) and then back to X, often I end up with a frozen box and have to power off by hand.

Here's the links. The ogg's a little big (10 megs) and I can't do proper FTP from my current location, so I had to split the file. Cat them together.
http://www.vultaire.net/debian/debian_fglrx8.42.3_xpress1100_compiz_problems.ogg. 1
http://www.vultaire.net/debian/debian_fglrx8.42.3_xpress1100_compiz_problems.ogg. 2

[Vultaire]

Also, installation details... downloaded the ATI installer, ran --buildpkg Debian/testing, installed all the debs, then did m-a prepare, m-a update, m-a a-i fglrx. After that, it worked. And Fglrx is definitely active because I need hardware acceleration to play Stepmania, and Stepmania works beautifully.

[Vultaire]

Hope no one will mind me bumping this too much. I know Compiz is hardly critical, but I would like to get this working if I can. (This is a one-time bump; I'll abandon this post if no one responds.)