[ubuntu] Karmic on Toshiba A305-S6196, problem with ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver

http://ubuntuforums.org – I just installed Karmic on a Toshiba Satellite A305. I tried the live CD first, everything seemed to work correctly (sound, correct screen resolution, wireless connection all good). I went ahead and let Synaptic install 105 updates, then requested install of ATI/AMD FGLRX graphics driver. After reboot, the white ubuntu logo (new feature for Karmic, apparantly) showed up for a few seconds. The logo disappeared, and the light on my caps lock key started flashing. At this point, the computer is competely hung. So... two questions: 1) Has anyone seen this happen before? I've been googling around, and haven't found any references to it, but perhaps I've just been using the wrong search terms. 2) I would like to boot into safe mode and un-install this graphics driver, but I never get a GRUB menu. I'm sure that there's a key or key combo to hit to make grub stop and display the kernels to boot from, but I don't know what that is. OBTW, I rebooted in to the live cd and poked around in /var/log. The machine crashed at 2009-12-13 05:36, here are all the log entries at that time... Code: -r-----  1 root              adm  50023 2009-12-13 05:35 dmesg.0 [  12.380795]        (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [  12.380797]        (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) -rw-r--  1 root              utmp  16384 2009-12-13 05:36 wtmp [binary file... ] -r-----  1 root              adm      0 2009-12-13 05:36 dmesg -r--r--  1 root              root      0 2009-12-13 05:36 udev -r--r--  1 root              root    251 2009-12-13 05:36 dkms_autoinstaller fglrx (8.660): Already installed on this kernel. -r-----  1 syslog            adm  376024 2009-12-13 05:36 messages Dec 13 00:36:55 tiger-laptop kernel: [  16.796839] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready Dec 13 00:36:55 tiger-laptop kernel: [  17.160859] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver drwxrwx--T  2 root              gdm    4096 2009-12-13 05:36 gdm -r-----  1 syslog            adm  24576 2009-12-13 05:36 lpr.log Dec 13 00:35:57 tiger-laptop udev-configure-printer: add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-0:1.0 Dec 13 00:35:57 tiger-laptop udev-configure-printer: invalid or -rw-r-----  1 syslog            adm  61440 2009-12-13 05:36 daemon.log Dec 13 00:36:52 tiger-laptop avahi-daemon[918]: Successfully called chroot(). Dec 13 00:36:52 tiger-laptop avahi-daemon[918]: Successfully dropped remaining capabiliti-rw-r--r--  1 root              root  3859 2009-12-13 05:36 pm-powersave.log /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/sched-powersave false: **sched policy powersave OFF success. -r-----  1 syslog            adm  376024 2009-12-13 05:36 messages -r-----  1 syslog            adm  24576 2009-12-13 05:36 lpr.log -r-----  1 syslog            adm  61440 2009-12-13 05:36 daemon.log -r-----  1 syslog            adm  581632 2009-12-13 05:36 syslog -r-----  1 syslog            adm  494936 2009-12-13 05:36 kern.log -r-----  1 syslog            adm  135168 2009-12-13 05:36 debug Dec 13 00:36:54 tiger-laptop NetworkManager:    SCPlugin-Ifupdown: device added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/lo, iface: lo): no ifupdown configuration found. Dec 13 00:3-rw-r-----  1 syslog            adm  494936 2009-12-13 05:36 kern.log Dec 13 00:36:58 tiger-laptop kernel: [  19.456643]  domain 0: span 0-1 level MC Dec 13 00:36:58 tiger-laptop kernel: [  19.456647]  groups: 1 0 -r-----  1 syslog            adm  135168 2009-12-13 05:36 debug Dec 13 00:36:57 tiger-laptop udev-configure-printer: add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb5/5-0:1.0 Dec 13 00:36:57 tiger-laptop udev-configure-printer: add /device -rw-r--r--  1 root              root      0 2009-12-13 05:36 Xorg.0.log Most signifigant, I would say, are the following: Code: -r--r--  1 root              root    251 2009-12-13 05:36 dkms_autoinstaller fglrx (8.660): Already installed on this kernel. Code: -rw-r--r--  1 root              root      0 2009-12-13 05:36 Xorg.0.log Also, there are a number of log files for X.org in ./gdm/ which are all empty. As far as I can tell, it looks like the fglrx driver barfed because it was conflicting with something already in the kernel (?? barton makes vague mumbling sounds, indicating that he has no idea how video drivers are actually loaded by the kernel, or what that message actually means ??). Anyway, it seems that this happens just about the time that X.org wants to start (x.org at least manages to get all of its log files open...) then kernel panic. (Hardware)