Bricked X2 Os's in one night :( Am I doing this right? - Manjaro Kde & AMDGPU drivers

[GCandy77]

This topic is kinda related -

It was suggested that I could try using Manjaro and decided to give it a go and downloaded the KDE plasma version.  I installed it on a totally separate drive to PopOs, next to a WIn10 partition.

 

Once installed, I then followed the instructions on the Arch site to get the AMD drivers installed, update mesa and try to get Vulkan running. 

 

I installed all these files from the arch site and then the Linux core via the instructions.

 

 

When It asked me to "Specify the correct module order" I remembered Nayr438's comments and ran the " sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf " commands and inserted data & saved and then the " sudo nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf ".  In here there were no modules set, so I added amdgpu & Radeon, saved and exited.   When I ran " sudo mkinitcpio -p linux54 " The process started but advised there were errors to do with the amdgpu & radeon modules.   I guess I did something wrong

 

I rebooted and and prayed Vulkan might run, loaded steam and of course it wouldnt

 

 

So, I headed into the package manager ( think its called that ) and proceeded to install everything that I thought might have something to do with vulkan and amd drivers ... Yes I cried when I saw the amdgpu experimental install

I thought it would be best just to stick with the normal amd drivers for the mo and installed all of these -

 

I rebooted and it was still the same   I looked on some other sites for pointers but just became a bit lost again to be honest and then went into random install anything mad man mode before I really cocked it up   I did manage to take these SS tho, so hopefully they are helpful -

 

I did however manage to update the manjaro grub so that I had the boot choice option pop up instead of it just loading into Win10 straight away( they share the same drive ), so not a complete waste of time

 

After all that ....  I calmed down and rebooted, Vulkan was still the same, but I finally found out how to check what driver was loading and could see that it was the Radeon one

 

So I headed back into the package manager and decided to install the amdgpu-experimental package ... when this ran all these windows came up ( im screenshotting everything by now btw ) and then I got these error messages ..

 

I Kinda determined that this ment it didn't work, but thought I better give it a reboot just in case.  Thats when I received that Horrible black screen of nothing when I rebooted back into Manjaro .... It just would not load   I still had PopOs & Win10 tho and proceeded to try and boot Pop ... This ended in a grey screen, I wouldn't let me log in or get into the Alt+F2 or F3 thing either.   Most My files were on Pop so, I tried to do a refresh install and whereas it brought up the login screen this time, it would not let me log in and ended up in a cycle of accept and reset login screen every time I entered my psw    

 

I had to do a fresh re-install for the 10th time in the end  (I got my copy of home directory 1st tho using the live usb - phew)  I also did try using the recovery drives for both Os`s, but apart from fixing the Grub and packages, im a bit lost as what to look for when editing the grub ... I see the word splash, but have no idea what to type or remove or even how to save it afterwards still learning.  Win10 btw somehow survived all this and still works ... the irony ugh.

 

If you've made it this far well done you must either really like solving issues or fixing Linux.  I have a few questions moving forwards ..

 

1 - How did Installing a graphic driver on one system bork both Os's into not being able to boot? I made sure they both had their own swap partitions and they were on separate drives too?

 

2 - Two different Os's have both given me the black screen of doom upon boot, PopOs Gnome & Manjaro KDE.  Am I doing the correct things to ensure im giving it the best chance to work?  As far as im aware the only things I need to update as the mesa drivers and setup dxvk/d9vk, install the amdgpu drivers and set a few grub/kernel commands and it should work.  Am I missing anything else I need to install?

 

3 - Can someone link a video of really basic guide on how to edit the grub thing during boot or via a live usb properly .... I really should be learning how to do this so that I dont have to keep on re-installing my Os, but the guides Ive found tend to over confuse the explanation and I get lost again  

 

Thx for reading again if u made it this far & soz for the mass of pictures, im dyslexic and pics inform a lot better imo

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, GCandy77 said:

Once installed, I then followed the instructions on the Arch site to get the AMD drivers installed, update mesa and try to get Vulkan running. 

 

I installed all these files from the arch site and then the Linux core via the instructions.

So I kind of skipped the image dump that follows because right off the bat I'm seeing a whole lot of problems.

 

1) You installed Manjaro, not Arch Linux. They are similar but they are not the same. You should follow the documentation for the distribution you're using unless you know for sure that the instructions are equivalent. In this case, they are not. The correct instructions page is the one that you seem to have found later on: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Configure_Graphics_Cards

2) You should not manually download tarballs and then try to make them work together. Package managers exist for a reason. Here is how you use the AUR on Manjaro.

3) Why did you install a random version of the Linux kernel? First of all you most definitely didn't need to since you already have Linux installed, secondly if for whatever reason you need to use a different kernel release you should do it in the correct way for Manjaro, not by installing an Arch package and hoping it will just work. https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Manjaro_Kernels

 

Start from scratch, do things properly. If something doesn't work as you expect, don't try 30 random things in a blind effort to "fix it" - ask. It's extremely difficult to make sense of a giant infodump like this, especially after you already bricked the system.

[jdfthetech]

6 minutes ago, GCandy77 said:

 

1 - How did Installing a graphic driver on one system bork both Os's into not being able to boot? I made sure they both had their own swap partitions and they were on separate drives too?

When you do mkinitcpio you can easily break the boot loader of a linux kernel if you configure something wrong.
No idea why it would break windows, but it could potentially break Pop.
Here is the wiki on it, which may help you understand what it does:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio

AMDGPUs should just work.  The drivers are built into the latest kernels.
You should not have to screw with any of this stuff just to install.

To be clear, and for the benefit of others out there, the AMDGPU pro driver should never be used unless you are doing ROCM stuff or CAD stuff, it's not built for general user loads.

 

Vulkan should be relatively straight forward to install as well.

the arch wiki has the latest info on it here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vulkan

On my system, I installed the vulkan-radeon package as well as the 32 bit libraries referenced in the wiki.

 

Manjaro is a modification of Arch, it uses the same package manager and has most of the same options so the arch wiki is your best bet there. 

WARNING: don't go to arch forums etc for help with Manjaro, the arch community will be openly hostile to you.

[Nayr438]

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

-- Edit -- //Dont add radeon
MODULES="amdgpu"

/etc/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf
-- create and save --
options amdgpu si_support=0
options amdgpu cik_support=1

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
-- Create and save --
blacklist radeon

 

sudo mkinitcpio -p linux54

 

You shouldn't need to change anything else. We are just enabling support for your card in amdgpu and telling the system not to use radeon. You don't need experimental packages or anything like that. If you start experiencing issues in games, then we can move onto experimental builds and custom kernels.

[GCandy77]

Hi all and thx for the responses

 

Sauron -

 

1 - I installed Manjaro, not Arch Linux - Yep, whoops thats embarrassing, I presumed Manjaro ran off the same programs like Pop does with ubuntu n just went for it without checking

2 - Thx for the links about the AUR, Kernels and how to configure the Gcard, they will come in useful when I re-install manjaro.

3 - Is it not possible to install 2 different versions of Linux on separate drives and have them use their own kernel?  I just assumed you could and all the files would be kept separate as they were on complete separate SSD`s? 

 

Sorry about the info dump, but as your probably already aware I have been trying to fix this 1 single issue for approx 4-5 months now. I cant let it go as I keep getting told " Vulkan will run on my card " so I keep trying.   Ive started from scratch 10 times now, followed a lot of guides that seem to get me 85% towards my goal, but it always ends up in it bricking the Os or that bl**dy black screen .  I have however in the last 24hrs figure how to set "nomodeset" in the grub b4 boot .. So hopefully i wont need to re-install the Os again.  Ive also figured out what "nano" is and how to use it a little too.

 

Since all the mess above Im now planning to have both PopOs & Manjaro on the same SSD. Is this a wise move & can it be done? I followed a guide in preparation that advised to create 2 swap partitions each for its own Os and have basicly spilt the rest of the drive in half, With PopOs currently installed & Manjaro to come in the next few days.

 

Jdfthetech -

 

1 - Thx for the info about mkinitcpio, interesting but Im still a little confused as mentioned above how the kernels can interact when they are installed to separate drives?  I the past I duel booted WinborgXP and Win7 for a while and they both ran as separate Os as I thought they would, I understand Linux is written differently, but there were on completely separate drives?    Win10 worked fine btw, it was left untouched thank god.

 

2 - AMDGPU does not work for me Im stuck using Radeon, which is great until I use a game that uses Vulkan or DXVK or try to use Lutris. I have tried following so many guides and they get me nowhere.  Ive read that my card R9 290 (Sea Islands/Hawaii) and that it falls into the experimental GCN 2.0 ) and that the standard AMDGPU drivers will not work with my card and that I need to use AMDGPU-pro.  On the AMD website it advises that It only has drivers for 18.04 and that they will not work with 19.10, hence the reason I tried Manjaro, just to see if a different kernel would all me to use AMDGPU .. The journey was interesting at least

 

Dont know if ure interested but just in case here are some outputs that other people asked for in other troubleshooting topics -

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.3.0-7629-generic root=UUID=9e0d84f8-270a-4988-b97a-25f024d79e07 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ dpkg -L libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64
dpkg-query: package 'libgl1-mesa-glx' is not installed
Use dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list archive files contents.

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ ls -l /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     14 Feb 24 09:14 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.7.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 547152 Feb 24 09:14 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1.7.0

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ dpkg-divert --list | grep -i gl      ((( This did nothing )))

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: AMD HAWAII (DRM 2.50.0, 5.3.0-7629-generic, LLVM 9.0.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 19.2.8
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 19.2.8
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 19.2.8
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

 

 

r@pop-os:~$ vulkaninfo
==========
VULKANINFO
==========

Vulkan Instance Version: 1.1.114

/build/vulkan-tools-IZAxVX/vulkan-tools-1.1.114.0+dfsg1/vulkaninfo/vulkaninfo.c:5884: failed with VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

 

 

In the past most of the guides I have followed all ask me to edit the grub to this -

 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash modprobe.blacklist=radeon si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.cik_support=0”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“modprobe.blacklist=radeon”

 

or

 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1"

 

I then sudo update-grub, re-boot and then slam my face through my table when it black screens   Which leads me back around to the thinking that the incorrect driver is installed within the Kernel for my particular card, Ive read that people with the 390 also get the same issue+ 70% of those users ive read thru have just given up with no end solution found

 

I have discovered that I can either do this via the "nano" program or by using the " xhost +si:localuser:root; sudo gedit /etc/default/grub " command in terminal.  They both seem to do the same thing, what is the difference, Is one better to use than the other?

 

Nayr438 - When I re-install Manjaro, I will certainly give this a go thx for being patient! Also sorry for not doing discord thing but I dont own a mic and type like a old turtle, so itll probably do ure head in

 

 

I did come across this post that seems to have fixed the issue, but am unsure going ahead with it as it also requires me to edit the " /usr/share/X11/20-amdgpu.conf "file and im not to sure if this is a good move, it is a new one for me to try tho?

 

https://community.khronos.org/t/i-can-not-get-vulkan-to-work-with-mesa-drivers/7393/7

Naturally if anyone else coming across this post wishes to try and help fix one 5 month old problem, let me know what I need to do

[GCandy77]

On 2/28/2020 at 6:16 PM, Sauron said:

Start from scratch, do things properly. If something doesn't work as you expect, don't try 30 random things in a blind effort to "fix it" - ask.

Started from scratch as you can see above, Ive installed/updated all the usual, mesa + vulkan drivers, updated  proton ( just in case ), but have not installed/updated WINE or DXVK/D9VK

 

Im asking now ... what do I need to do?

[Sauron]

22 hours ago, GCandy77 said:

3 - Is it not possible to install 2 different versions of Linux on separate drives and have them use their own kernel?  I just assumed you could and all the files would be kept separate as they were on complete separate SSD`s? 

Yes, that's exactly how it works. I don't recall saying otherwise. What I said is that when you installed Manjaro it already installed the kernel for itself so installing another one makes no sense.

22 hours ago, GCandy77 said:

Since all the mess above Im now planning to have both PopOs & Manjaro on the same SSD. Is this a wise move & can it be done?

But why? Can't you just pick one? This is such a confusing mess for no reason - just use Manjaro and focus on that.

22 hours ago, GCandy77 said:

AMDGPU does not work for me

Try this https://forum.level1techs.com/t/amd-r9-390-finally-usable-on-linux/131922

(the R9 390 is basically identical to the 290)

skip the kernel upgrade on manjaro, you don't need it

[Nayr438]

If the link you referenced fixes the issue, just go with it, its essentially the same as my post, just through grub instead.

The Link Sauron shared has some additional grub commands that i'm not familiar with that may help as well.

 

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'

 

If that command outputs

        Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
        Kernel modules: amdgpu

 

Then you are on amdgpu, which is the end goal.

 

[GCandy77]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Yes, that's exactly how it works. I don't recall saying otherwise. What I said is that when you installed Manjaro it already installed the kernel for itself so installing another one makes no sense.

But why? Can't you just pick one? This is such a confusing mess for no reason - just use Manjaro and focus on that.

Try this https://forum.level1techs.com/t/amd-r9-390-finally-usable-on-linux/131922

(the R9 390 is basically identical to the 290)

skip the kernel upgrade on manjaro, you don't need it

Thx Sauron, il give that link a good read.   I honestly didn't know what I was doing regarding the kernel, but lesson learned! 

 

The reason I want to run Manjaro & Pop side by side is because im relatively new to the linux world and would like to run a few different distros before I settle down with 1 in the end + its quite a fun learning experience after using MS products for the last 25 years.

 

Nayr438, again thx for your time and suggestions!

 

Im going in ... wish me luck

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, GCandy77 said:

The reason I want to run Manjaro & Pop side by side is because im relatively new to the linux world and would like to run a few different distros before I settle down with 1 in the end + its quite a fun learning experience after using MS products for the last 25 years.

That's fine but you shouldn't be experimenting while you're troubleshooting a core issue like getting your graphics card to work correctly.