Fix Ubuntu ATI driver problem caused by kernel upgrade

(Nov 13, 2009)

Updating kernel can cause some headache to Ubuntu users who use a proprietary video driver.  In my case, I used ATI's driver and upgraded kernel from 2.6.26 to 2.6.28.  Once kernel upgrade was complete, a display screen became garbage.  The best way to solve this issue is probably purging the old driver and reinstall it from scratch.

The procedure is well described here.  I followed the procedure in Section 'Need to fully remove -fglrx and reinstall -ati from scratch'.  Note that when we have the driver problem, we cannot access X server and need to boot the Ubuntu into a recover mode to maintain the system.

If the process is successful, we will be able to boot to the X server again.  However, the proprietary ATI driver may not be fully reinstalled as we expect.  There is no critical problem here.  Just download and reinstall it again from its script.

sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh # (if it exists)
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Pinyo Taeprasartsit