Comment 296 for bug 129910

Fabio,

>I believe this is a BUG
I am sensing that I perhaps have inadvertently put you on the
defensive, which was not my intent.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that this is a bug, and I'm not
singling you out. It's just that this is already a long thread, and
more "me too" could actually make it harder on the developers to
figure out how to solve the problem.

In your particular situation, it comes down to a judgment call whether
to post here or the forums. If you believe you have something to
contribute that will help the developers fix this bug, you are in the
right place. If you're merely troubleshooting your own issues, the
forum is the right place. As is true in the rest of life, wisdom is a
better guide than knowledge.

>I have run points 1 to 7. Now, when I switch to tty-1 (Ctrl-Alt-F1), I
>got a 640x480 screen on which is displayed the boot sequence until
>"running local boot scripts..", then the cursor is blinking and I cannot
>enter anything . The other ttys are completely blank. If I try to go
>back to tty-7, the computer freezes and I have to hard reset.

Here are a few suggestions to isolate the problem. Work them
sequentially. Between each, review your log files to see if you get a
clue about what's going on.

* I've seen behavior you are describing when the BIOS was buggy
(sometimes the video card BIOS, sometimes the system BIOS). (Yet
another reason to pressure Intel and AMD to open up the BIOS.) Try
turning off all power management in X and in your BIOS and see if you
get the same results. You might also check with the manufacturer of
your computer and see if later BIOS upgrades refer to any issues with
suspend to RAM, hibernation, or other power management issues. Leave
the power management off while you troubleshoot.

* The nvidia-glx driver may be the culprit. Back up
/etc/X11/xorg.conf. Disable the proprietary video driver using the
Restricted Driver Manager. Reboot to see if the results are the same.

* Boot into recovery mode, and run "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg",
specifying the "nv" driver instead (the open source driver for nvidia
cards). Then reboot as normal to see if the results are the same.
Continue to use the nv driver while you troubleshoot.

* Perhaps your console configuration is out of whack. Run, as root,
"dpkg-reconfigure console-setup". Reboot.

* [Advanced troubleshooting technique; do only if you are comfortable
doing it.] Rename the appropriate files to prevent gdm, xdm, or kdm
(as the case may be) from starting. The instructions are in
/etc/rc2.d/README. Reboot.

* Boot into recovery mode. Run "lsmod | grep fb" to see what
framebuffer drivers you are running. If vesafb and fbcon are not
loaded, use modprobe to load them. Use the instructions for fbset to
see if you can get a working framebuffer. If you can, something about
the modules and drivers loaded with runlevel 2 are interfering with
the framebuffer.

If you are able to get your framebuffer loaded, undo (one at a time)
each of the prior steps to get your machine to where it should be.
Report back on results.

Loye Young