Comment 361 for bug 129910

There seems to be a fundamental difference in handling vesafb between 2.6.24-12 and the previous 2.6.24-11.

2.6.24-12:

Rebuilding the initramfs with vesafb, fbcon and vga16 results in a working framebuffer setup when started with video=vesafb vga=0X31A. However, one is left with a blinking cursor on an otherwise blank screen. A root login is possible and setupcon reveals a functional console at the desired resolution. Switching between ttys leaves one with a blank console again, setupcon brings it back.

2.6.24-11:
Rebuilding the initramfs with vesafb, fbcon and vga16 results in an 80x25 textconsole with working ttys, but vesafb is not initialized:

[ 14.919875] vga16fb: initializing
[ 14.919879] vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000
[ 15.023979] fb0: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device

I found that 2.6.24-12 puts vesafb into /lib/modules/2.6.24-12-generic/initrd/ while 2.6.24-11 does not do that. Manually copying the module into /lib/modules/2.6.24-11-generic/initrd/ and rebuilding intramfs doesn't make a difference.

Go figure.

Hardware: Thinkpad T60, Intel 945, SXGA+ with broken Video BIOS (No 1400x1050)