[Fix] gdm3 doesn't start after installing ATI/AMD drivers in Debian !

Jan 15, 2014 • tutorials, linux

Recently, I wrote an article on [How to] Install AMD/ATI drivers in Debian. There in the article, I have warned my readers, it better to install the drivers by the way I have explained there and not by downloading corresponding drivers from their site and Installing it. Why I told you because if you install by downloading the driver from their site, there is a good chance that your gdm3 crashes while rebooting your machine. Now what if it is already happened ? Now your gdm3 really crashed , what to do ? Re-installing gdm3 or installing another desktop manager like KDE or lightdm won’t work. Its because they also will have the same compatibility issue as before. So, if your gdm 3 already crashed, we have to Un-install the drivers and then reboot so that gdm3 will load again and then we have to re-install it in such a way thatt it won’t cause a problem with the display manager. Now follow the steps to recover gdm3 :

1) Reboot your machine again and from GRUB, choose the Debian recovery mode ( usually the 2nd option) and login to the command line as a root.

2) Now go to /usr/share . There you can see several folders. They will be a folder named some what like “AMD driver” or “ATI ….. “. If you see a folder related to AMD, that will be the one where we have our Uninstall.sh script. Now all we have to do is to run that script and reboot after it.

3) Your gdm3 will again start to work properly. To run the “Uninstall.sh”, do the following commands :

 
   #Moving to the directory
    
   cd /usr/share
    
   #Giving the Shell the executable permission
    
   sudo chmod 777 uninstall.sh
    
   #Executing the script
    
   sudo ./uninstall.sh

That’s it. Your gdm3 will again start to function properly from now. Now you can Install the Grpahics driver in the safe way so that it won’t be a mess again. You can read my article to learn more about installing drivers the easy way : [How to] Install AMD/ATI drivers in Debian ?

Anirudh Anand

Head of Product Security & DevSecOps at @CRED_club | Application Security ♥ | CTF lover - @teambi0s | Security Trainer - @7asecurity | certs - eWDP, OSCP, OSWE