Re: vga in lilo
Pierre wrote:
> work anymore, the kernel boots fine but all the consoles stay black.
> Does anyone know how to resolve that? I would greatly appreciate some
> help.
I saw your first message also, but I didn't feel I had much to offer
you. However, since you were SO persistant, and since it appears that
maybe the lists.debian.org server is just overloaded, not actively
blacklisting me ;-) -- I'll answer now.
I am not an authority. This is what I believe to be true:
- You cannot assume every adapter will support "791". I tried
it on my laptop and it choked.
- You *must* specify the numerical mode in decimal format, it
cannot be in hex. Tip: use kcalc or similar calculator to
make the conversion. Or write a little Perl tool.
- It is best to let lilo tell you what you can ask for. Get your next
boot-up to include the directive "vga=ask" so that you can review
the modes offered. Do not use the mode *index* number that LILO
displays, use the actual (decimal form of the) numerical mode code.
Mode index number can _work_ but can change if hardware or kernel
changes (?), is not robust way to specify mode.
I built a 2.4.21-preN kernel recently (needed some usb updates) and the
resulting kernel seemed to be very broken wrt framebuffer / (s)vga
support. I couldn't get a display at all at boot-time except with no
mode specification at all (plain vga). I cannot say when or why and am
certainly not ready to file a bug report on this, but I strongly suspect
that something's been whammy-ied at or a little before 2.4.21 and that
it'll come to light sooner or later in the form of a known bug, if it
hasn't already. BTW, the way I got around that was to only apply the
patches relating to usb that I needed, not the entire
2.4.21pre{whatever, it was 7 I think} changes.
Good Luck.
--
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