Ubuntu – Ubuntu doesn’t detect the ATI VGA card, only Intel, using ‘lspci | grep VGA’ & ‘sudo lshw -C video’

I found a solution for while googling. You have to put a script in rc.local specifying which VGA you want to use.

This link explains everything.

I will post important notes here:

1. First install needed driver and script from git

   sudo apt-get install git && cd ~/  
   git clone https://github.com/mkottman/acpi_call.git  
   cd acpi_call && make  
   sudo insmod acpi_call.ko  
   chmod a+x test_off.sh
   

2. de-activate ATI VGA

   sh test_off.sh
   

3. Now you can check if your ATI VGA is already disabled by lspci -vnnn | grep VGA.
   It will show the following output:

   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0116] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 3650M] [1002:6760] (rev ff) (prog-if ff)

4. If it works, to make this run at boot, edit /etc/rc.local:

   sudo insmod /acpi_call/acpi_call.ko
   sudo sh /acpi_call/test_off.sh
   

5. Also, remove radeon blacklisting by editing /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

   #blacklist radeon
   

   You should have xorg.conf like this to make VGA detectable :

    Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "aticonfig Layout"
    Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
    EndSection
   
    Section "Module"
    Load "glx"
    EndSection
   
    Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    EndSection
   
    Section "Device"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    # Driver "fglrx"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
    EndSection
   
    # Section "Screen"
    # Identifier "Default Screen"
    # DefaultDepth 24
    # EndSection
   
    Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
    Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Viewport 0 0
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
    EndSection
   

Note: To activate ATI/AMD radeon VGA again: Just comment what we've added to rc.local

Solution 2

I found this solution from askubuntu.com, I might be easier to put into practice:

This question assumes using vga_switcheroo.

Add this to /etc/fstab:

none  /sys/kernel/debug debugfs defaults 0 0

You'd better install the proprietary drivers from the release repository :

sudo apt-get install fglrx fglrx-core fglrx-amdcccle fglrx-pxpress
sudo ln -svT /usr/lib /usr/lib64 #Only for Ubuntu 64bits
sudo amdconfig --initial

never again, it's NVIDIA or nothing next time!

My previous laptop was nvidia hybrid and it was as difficult as for amd graphic cards to configure :)