dist-upgraded sarge (on Dell Inspiron 8200) and things got funky
Hi,
I've been using sarge on my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop for a while now with no
problems. I'm using a custom kernel built from the 2.4 kernel series using
debian packaging tools as well as the non-free nvidia video drivers (I
know... I don't like the fact that they sully my computer either). Anyway, on
Monday or Tuesday I did an update / dist-upgrade (I hadn't upgraded for some
time before that) and on reboot the lcd screen worked fine at the beginning,
but at some point, and always at the same point during the boot, a bunch of
vertical green lines appear (separated by about 5 pixels) and the text seems to
become a series of vertical bars visible between the green bars. At first I
thought this might be a hardware problem, but I ran through the dell
diagnostics and everything works fine. Also it always occurs at the same point
during the boot (presumable when some program starts up, but I can't tell which
one).
The weird thing is that this occurs BEFORE it enters graphics mode, long before
it starts gdm and X. I was wondering if anyone here has experienced or know
anything about this problem. If I don't hear anything I'll be bringing the
computer into work next week so I can plug it into the network and access it
from my work computer to look through the boot messages and try to figure out
exactly what the cause is.
Thanks in advance for your help, I'll update the list if I find anything more.
Chris
--
Christopher H. De Vries Phone: (617) 496-7636
Postdoctoral Fellow FAX: (617) 495-7345
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics email: cdevries@cfa.harvard.edu
60 Garden Street MS-42
Cambridge, MA 02138 cfa-www.harvard.edu/~cdevries/
Reply to: