Recovering from 3rd party drivers, with Jockey

What happens if you enable a 3rd party driver (like ATI) with Jockey, but after a reboot your graphics is broken and you can’t log in to revert?

Answer: Use the command line version of Jockey!

Here’s how you can revert any installed 3rd party driver using Jockey from the command line:

• At log in (perhaps with a broken X screen), switch to another terminal using the key combination:

Ctrl + Alt + F2

• Log in as root
• Get a list of enabled drivers from Jockey:

jockey --list

• Disable the driver (such as the ATI driver):

jockey --disable=kmod:fglrx

• Once it has finished, reboot!

When using Jockey, you should ensure that you have the latest updates applied, in particular the latest running kernel. This is because you might otherwise get a driver for a newer kernel, which might break your system upon reboot, or fail to activate.

You can also try using akmods with Jockey, which will build a new driver for you on reboot, if one does not exist for your running kernel (no matter what that is!).

-c