Having managed to get my hard disk detected, I'm on to the next
problem. When I do a regular boot, my system appears dead:
The screen is black.
There is no response to any keyboard or mouse activity, including
ctl-alt-del, ctl-alt-backspace, ctl-alt-+ or - (minus key).
The odd thing is that the log, included the xorg log, didn't show
anything that looked like a problem. I can ssh into the system, and
top shows xorg taking up 99% of the CPU. I believe some earlier logs
showed some signs of it attempting to start repeatedly, though I could
not confirm that recently.
The immediate question is the appropriate forum for working this out.
Here? Xorg? Some other debian list (-user?, X?)?
More details, if you're still with me :)
I've been booting into single user mode as a work-around. Knoppix had
no problem with X.
I guessed randomly when asked for the mouse device (I picked the one
with mouse or mice in it), and suspected problems there. I tried
changing it later to /dev/psaux without any benefit. I also tried
removing it from the layout, but it may have been used anyway: the log
says "The core pointer device wasn't specified explicitly in the
layout. Using the first core pointer device."
I also added some higher resolution modes to the default list provided
by the installer.
Most of the X FAQs give guidance in diagnosing error messages. I
don't seem to have them.
I tried aptitude remove gdm; this took out a huge set of packages, but
didn't quite manage to remove gdm itself. Standard boot still ends
with blank screen and no response to keyboard. A second try removed
gdm. When I did telinit 2 I got "welcome to the debian base
installer," which walked me through the 2nd part of the installation
again.
I have an nvidia 6600 chip ("NVIDIA Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600?]"
says the Xorg.log). A later entry says "PCI: ... nVidia .. unknown
chipset (0x0142) rev 162" but this is neither a warning nor an error.
I'm using the stock, non-proprietary, nv driver. This is
PCI-Express, not AGP.