Comment 9 for bug 605837

@Manfred, yes you're right: I was talking about 2.6.36.2.

However, the patch on its own did not help. I had to change:
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
to
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1280x1024
in /etc/default/grub and re-run update-grub.

Somehow "keep" was also causing the virtual consoles to not be available (apart from VT7 where kdm was running).

Using 1280x1024 explicitly fixed it for me, although I am using GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024 anyway.