Re: Blank screen at boot with kernel 3.1
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:56:15 +0000
Rémi Moyen <rmoyen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm installing Debian on a new computer and although the install of
> stable version works fine, after upgrade to testing I am unable to
> boot on the 3.1 kernel. There is no X on the machine (for the moment)
> and I get a blank screen a few seconds after boot. I suspect a problem
> with the graphics card (NVidia GTX 570) and nouveau, but couldn't find
> a workaround.
>
> Here are the details. Sorry, that's a bit long, but I wanted to put
> all I can here. Also, note that I'm not in front of the machine right
> now, so I'm typing this from memory and some notes, and cannot test
> stuff until tonight...
>
> I've bought myself a new computer and want to install a Debian/testing
> on it. I burnt a CD with the latest stable to start with (I was not
> quite sure how to get a testing CD and anyway I've had years of
> upgrading various Debian so I was quite confident the stable ->
> testing upgrade would work fine). The installation with the CD works
> perfectly, I can use the graphic installer and I install the
> "standard" system (no graphical environment at that point).
>
> After reboot, I get a working Debian/stable with kernel 2.6.32 (I
> think). First thing I do is to change sources.list to add the contrib
> & non-free repos as well as the testing ones (main, contrib &
> non-free). Update, full-upgrade: almost everything seems to be
> updated, as expected, including installing a kernel 3.1.0. No error
> messages, except one warning when the kernel is upgraded about
> potentially missing firmwares for my network card (realtek) and
> nouveau. For nouveau, these are the same warnings as described here,
> for example: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=185&t=83587.
>
> Now, this is only a warning, but after this, whenever an upgrade step
> rebuilds the initrd, I get warnings about missing firmware for
> realtek. Only for realtek, nothing about nouveau here. So I install
> the firmware-realtek package, and lo and behold, the warning disappear
> when initrd is rebuilt. Because I never get warnings about nouveau
> while generating initrd, I don't know whether these missing firmware I
> was warned about are really missing...
>
> Are these firmwares really useful? I couldn't find anyone on the web
> saying so, all I find are messages where people ask about it. They
> don't seem to be anywhere in any Debian package (even in non-free).
>
> OK, so now I get what I think should be a working up-to-date testing
> system. Rebooting on the 2.6.32 kernel works again perfectly. But
> rebooting on the 3.1 kernel starts to boot (it prints at least the
> "waiting for udev to be populated" message) and then all I get is a
> blank screen. Some messages get displayed before, but so fast that I
> have no hope to even catch a glimpse of a word. The screen flickers
> when it becomes black, at about the time where in the 2.6 kernel the
> screen resolution changes, so I guess this is the step that fails.
> With the blank screen, I can't do anything. Keyboard seems dead (at
> least "Caps Lock" doesn't respond, although "Num Lock" does). The
> machine is still alive and can be logged-on remotely, but that's all.
> I didn't see anything strange in syslog or dmesg, but I might have
> missed something.
>
> I stress here the fact that I am only working in console. No X server
> has been installed yet, and certainly no display manager (so when
> booting, it stays in console). I will install an X server later but I
> feel that I should fix problems one at a time... (actually, I did a
> first install with the graphic environment as well and things didn't
> work better, so I started again a fresh install without it, to better
> isolate problems)
>
> >From searching on the web, it looks like a KMS or nouveau problem. I
> have tried blacklisting nouveau (by adding a custom file containing
> "blacklist nouveau" in /etc/modprobe.d), but this doesn't change
> anything. I tried also installing the nvidia driver (since I want to
> install it ultimately anyway), by installing the nvidia-glx package.
> It installs OK, build the 3.1 DKMS kernel module without errors, but
> still get the same error when booting. It does install an X server at
> that stage (which is expected) but this server is normally not started
> at boot, so I'm still only dealing with console. I also tried to put
> "nomodeline" in the boot parameters (/etc/default/grub, then
> update-grub) but again, this doesn't change anything.
>
> So I'm stuck with a working 2.6.32 kernel, and a broken (and unusable,
> at that point) 3.1 kernel.
>
> As a last resort, I wanted to try and install the nvidia module on the
> 2.6 kernel (thinking that I could stay with that one for some time,
> assuming later versions of the 3.1 kernel will work better that the
> current one...), but trying to do so requires the kernel headers,
> which in turns requires an older version of gcc, and one thing causing
> another, aptitude would basically downgrade most of my system back to
> stable, which is not what I want (I mean, if I wanted a stable system,
> I would have stuck with it from the start).
>
> So, does anyone have an idea of what is causnouveauing the problem, and how
> to fix it? I must say that I am very disappointed, my old computer is
> running the 3.1 kernel without ever complaining (well, not about this
> at least...) and I was not expecting such big problems with a brand
> new one...
>
> Thanks!
Remi try first blacklisting nouveau
/etc/modprobe.d/
HTH
--
Best wishes / 73
Richard Bown
e-mail: richard@g8jvm.com or richard.bown@blueyonder.co.uk
nil carborundum a illegitemis
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