Category Archives: Nerdy Mind

Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial, AMD, Black or Blank Screen, Steam Will Not Launch

If your getting black screens on boot with your Ubuntu upgrade to 16.04 (Xenial) then probably ‘upgrade’ is the problem.

From Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 onwards, there is no FGLRX or proprietry driver support for AMD RADEON HD cards.

AMD are now focusing on the open source drivers. If your getting blank or black screen on boot, or other video problems, do a clean install. Do not try to install the proprietry drivers. Everything should be working fine without any messing about.

Steam wont launch? Damn this is still hanging around from 15.01!!

This is a Steam problem. Steam really needs to try keep up with the open source drivers. We simply remove the old libs from Steam so it is forced to use the newer libs.

cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

Steam will work now 🙂

NTFS disk corruption, dual boot, linux (ubuntu,mint etc) windows 8, windows 10. Shared disk NTFS.

After prolonged use by Linux  of a shared NTFS drive in dual boot, Windows will report a corrupt disk, file system.

There is actually nothing wrong. Linux leaves the shared NTFS drive dirty on purpose to avoid file system corruption by windows fastboot.  Over time of dual booting and not fixing then you might get some corruption.

If you have been using linux for a while then dual boot into windows 8 or 10, then do a disk check of your shared NTFS drive.  Disk check will find errors, fix them, usually without any data loss.

You could turn off fastboot in windows to stop this happening. You could also disk check in windows regularly to fix the dirty flags, without disabling fastboot. That is up to you.

Comment if you need more information.

 

BaDbod

Windows 10, Install error, cannot open device or file, internal error 2755. 110, Shared dual boot, linux windows drive

MSI installers, failing signed key. No encrypted or compressed temp folders. Windows 10 and a shared drive with Linux?

internal error 2755, 110  ?

If your sharing a NTFS drive with both windows and linux, then you may well lose some permissions on folders in the shared NTFS drive.

Even i f you are not sharing a NTFS drive in a dual boot system with windows 10 and linux yet you have these symptoms..

internal error 2755. 110  or ‘cannot open device or file specified’.

If you have already done the google and noticed you have no encrypted folders or files, then probably your linux  is stripping some permissions from your dual boot shared drive.

Easy fix.

Where you download your files,

  1. Right click your downloads folder and -> properties
  2. Security tab
  3. Advanced
  4. Enable inheritance
  5. Apply

If your more with the security angle,  then  make sure SYSTEM has some access.

 

Easier fix?

Another option is to copy the installer files to your windows boot drive. They will install fine from there without you having to mess with your shared drive permissions.

Nod,

BaDboD

Visual tearing, stutter jerky video, Intel video card, linux, ubuntu 15.10, i915

Hmm, so your getting bad video playback fullscreen using an onboard Intel GPU. Maybe yor using something like Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller?

hwinfo --gfx

you might need to install hwinfo, it is in the repo

sudo apt-get install hwinfo

Fix:
Get the Intel Linux drivers from the official Intel open source drivers center here

Follow the instructions on that page, especially the part about the signatures.

once installed, and rebooted, try adding the line

Option "TearFree" "true"

to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and reboot.

If your still having playback issues, then that will be due to the default video player ‘Video’ (totem).

do

sudo apt-get install mplayer smplayer

Right click your video and ‘Open with’ smplayer.

now enjoy smooth full screen video playback.

Some people prefer VLC.

Also of note is the GPU’s I mention above do not have any hardware video decoding so might still struggle with full on HD video. There’s nothing you can really do about that.

Please do leave a comment if you find a better solution, or this works for you on different hardware.

Stuttery, jerky video, Totem, Ubuntu, Mint 17.x, AMD, 64 bit.

This guide is for people getting stuttery or jerky playback of videos, full screen or not, using Ubunutu 14.x or derivatives ( Linux Mint 17.x etc ) and using an AMD video card

Firstly make sure you are using the propriety drivers:

sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle-updates

and reboot

Install vainfo:

sudo apt-get install vainfo

Now look at the vainfo output, it will probably look like:


# sudo vainfo
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.
libva info: VA-API version 0.35.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

So your missing the link to the acceleration driver. Do:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libXvBAW.so.1.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so

Now your vainfo should look like:


# sudo vainfo
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.
libva info: VA-API version 0.35.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_33
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.35 (libva 1.3.0)
vainfo: Driver version: AMD MMD 1.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG4Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG4AdvancedSimple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG4Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Baseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD

Your all set. Video should now play smoothly. IF your still experiencing poor video and you are using Totem player – read on.

I don’t find Totem enough for my needs as a video player so I suggest installing mplayer/smplayer:

sudo apt-get install mplayer smplayer

You can make this your default player for video files from the right click menu of any of your videos.

Some also prefer VLC player.