black screen after boot up on fresh net-install (Nvidia quadro, Debian 6.0.4); trying to get to terminal mode
On a Dell Precision workstation, there is an Nvidia Quadro card with a
weird connector in which we have a "dongle" thing that provides plugs
for four monitors. I've been running RedHat Linux 5.5 for a while and
decided to try the Debian net installer
The graphical install proceeds as usual (I've done Linux installs at
least 50 times), the packages install, the grub install is fine, the
system restarts, I choose Debian, and some lines display very quickly
before the monitors turn off. In the graphical installer, the mouse
and the display work fine. Unlike the olden days, the installer never
comes to a "configure X11" section, it never asks me to choose a
driver or whatnot. So I have no idea what settings it has assumed.
I've rebooted and in the kernel line replace "quiet" with "text" and I
can see more messages scroll by quickly, but very early in the process
the monitors turn black. I have no way of knowing if the system is
running in the dark, I've tried to ssh into the system,but there's no
answer. But, then again, I don't know if the sshd service is running.
I see various posts about the black screen after startup issue, but I
don't find anybody who seems to understand the cause.
If you know what to do, or if you can give me some of the proper
terminology to describe this problem, then I can Google some more.
"black screen of death" was my first guess :), but that leads to a lot
of posts about Windoze :)
pj
--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science Assoc. Director
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 Center for Research Methods
University of Kansas University of Kansas
http://pj.freefaculty.org http://quant.ku.edu
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