Booting off of F12 Alpha disk display goes blank.

jvillain · #1 27th August 2009, 12:05 AM

On booting off of the F12 Alpha DVD I get to the initializing hardware part and then the screen goes blank and never returns. This happens before the test your disk pop up. I still have keyboard as I am able to do an alt+ctrl+del to reboot. I know the disk is OK because I threw it in another machine and did a check sum on it. I have tried alt+ctr+<F1-12> and none of them will let me see any thing. I also tried alt+ctr+<+/->. I tried the safe mode and I have tried the rescue option. I have tried appending 'linux singe' to the boot prompt . I have tried 'modprobe vesa' as well as nv and nouveau and none of those help. The display still goes blank at initialization time. Because it hasn't mounted the disks yet I have no logs to look at.

It is a P3 system with an old gforce3 card and an LG W2353V monitor. Can any one think of a way to force it to stay in VGA/text mode long enough for me to see what is going on? I don't have another computer around with a serial port so I can't try to dump the console to serial.

Debroyston · #2 27th August 2009, 04:50 PM

I have tried F12-Alpha-x86_64-Live.iso and F12-Alpha-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso but neither will boot. There is a message on screen to say that "No Signal Received".
The motherboard is Asus P5E3 with an Intel E8200 Core2 duo. I have a graphics card using the Nvidia GF8500GT chip set and 2Gb of memory.
Does any one else have this problem?

Correction.
Message on screen reads "No Signal Detected"
I also notice that there is no Internet connection.

phoenixpb · #3 27th August 2009, 05:33 PM

i have the same problem
during the boot monitor goes off (no signal)

(nvidia 4 MX card)

**AdamW** · #4 27th August 2009, 07:22 PM

there should be options at the very first boot menu to install in 'basic graphics mode' (which is vesa), or text mode.

jvillain · #5 27th August 2009, 10:23 PM

There is no 'Text Mode' but I tried the 'Basic' mode with no luck. These are all NVidia cards though so that should tell us some thing. The fact that Debroyston get a a no signal rather than out of range or some thing else may be telling us that the video card is not initializing at all rather than being misconfigured. Does any one know if there is a way to force the installation environment to use a specific driver and resolution? Modprobe as a kernel variable doesn't seem to cut it.

If I can find the power cable for my old laptop I will try hooking them together with a null modem cable and try passing

console=ttyS1,9600 console=tty0

on the kernel prompt. If it works I may be able to see some error messages to help narrow this down.

I would open a bug report but I really don't have enough to report yet for it to be useful.

Hoyt · #6 28th August 2009, 01:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamW

there should be options at the very first boot menu to install in 'basic graphics mode' (which is vesa), or text mode.

My CD has neither a "basic" or "text" boot mode - I cannot find a way to load the vesa driver.
Some users have seen a kernel panic, I do not. I do see the "]" messages.

jvillain · #7 28th August 2009, 04:59 AM

Do you have a live disk or and install disk Hoyt?

Zlobniy Shurik · #8 28th August 2009, 06:46 AM

The same problem...
Video - HD 4850 (other hardware according to http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pu...7-6e3d43f981f3)

I try to load system with any kernel newer than 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 - failure...

After loading smartd I see blank screen, Ctrl+Alt+F1-F7 - not working.

Xorg.log in attachment

I try without xorg.conf and with xorg.conf created by Xorg :0 - configure - no difference

But with kernel 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 - all working perfectly!

Debroyston · #9 28th August 2009, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Debroyston

I have tried F12-Alpha-x86_64-Live.iso and F12-Alpha-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso but neither will boot. There is a message on screen to say that "No Signal Received".
The motherboard is Asus P5E3 with an Intel E8200 Core2 duo. I have a graphics card using the Nvidia GF8500GT chip set and 2Gb of memory.
Does any one else have this problem?

Correction.
Message on screen reads "No Signal Detected"
I also notice that there is no Internet connection.

I have now tried downloading LXDE and XFCE from the Spins page. Both would not boot. How can this happen? Surely, one of the testers should have discovered this!

**AdamW** · #10 28th August 2009, 09:52 PM

One of the testers who happens to have the exact same hardware as you? Er, well, that's a fairly long shot.

Just because you all see the same _symptoms_ does not mean it's the same _problem_. So far all we know is 'it doesn't boot'. My inclination is to suspect something in the graphics stack (at the kernel or X.org level, hard to tell) in all cases but it's really not particularly clear.

One parameter NVIDIA users can try is 'nouveau.modeset=0', give that a shot and see if it changes anything.

jvillain · #11 28th August 2009, 10:42 PM

nouveau.modeset=0 did get me farther down the road. I at least get to the "Running Anaconda Installer" message before the screen goes blank again. I believe it is trying to switch video modes at that point.

That does tell me though that it is trying to use the nouveau driver. I'll do some digging and see if I can find some other settings that I can use.

**AdamW** · #12 28th August 2009, 11:13 PM

if you have an NVIDIA chipset, yes, it will use nouveau by default. The 'basic' option should use vesa at the X.org level, though the nouveau kernel module may still load, so you should still use nouveau.modeset=0 if you try that avenue. Basically, try the 'basic' option with the nouveau.modeset=0 kernel parameter, and see if that does the trick.

jvillain · #13 29th August 2009, 12:27 AM

That did indeed do the trick. I have to admit I am a little lost on how it is able to load both the vesa driver and nouveau driver at the same time, but I willing to declare victory.

For any one that is still having grief after that you can try adding nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the kernel prompt for rescue mode and once you are down there try running anaconda -T. That got anaconda going in text mode for me. I wouldn't try it if you are trying to upgrade as I don't know what the implications would be of running it that way. But if you are doing a fresh install in a VM or on new hardware you have nothing to loose in trying.

Debroyston · #14 29th August 2009, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zlobniy Shurik

The same problem...
Video - HD 4850 (other hardware according to http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pu...7-6e3d43f981f3)

I try to load system with any kernel newer than 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 - failure...

After loading smartd I see blank screen, Ctrl+Alt+F1-F7 - not working.

Xorg.log in attachment

I try without xorg.conf and with xorg.conf created by Xorg :0 - configure - no difference

But with kernel 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 - all working perfectly!

Excuse my ignorance but how do I jnstal kernel 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 ?
I am a fairly newcomer to Linux and can manage some things but this is the first time I have come across this.

jvillain · #15 29th August 2009, 03:46 PM

Have you sucsessfully installed the F12 Alpha disk and are getting a blank screen Debroyston? Or are you getting a blank screen while trying to install? Do you have an an NVidia card or a some thing else?