After Installing Suse 10 And Rebooting, My Laptop Screen Remains Black!

armandoluis · 11-10-2005, 06:32 AM

HI,

I AM A TOTAL NEWBIE TO LINUX.

I FINISHED INSTALLING SUSE 10 ONTO MY HP ZV5000 LAPTOP. THE INSTALLATION WENT WITHOUT A PROBLEM.

HOWEVER, WHEN MY MACHINE REBOOTED, THE SCREEN REMAINED BLACK.

THE KDE INTERFACE DID NOT APPEAR!

I HAVE A GUT FEELING IT COULD HAVE EVERYTHING TO DO WITH MY GRAPHICS CARD....ATI MOBILITY RAEDON 9000/9100 IGP

IF ANYONE COULD TELL ME WHAT COULD BE WRONG AND HOW I COULD RESOLVE THIS PROBLEM STEP BY STEP.

I AM LOOKING SO FORWARD TO CHANGE FROM WINDOWS TO LINUX.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP.

REGARDS.

LUIS

mickyg · 11-10-2005, 06:46 AM

When you say it remained black do you mean that X server didn't start and you are left with a shell (or command prompt) which you can log in to, or is your monitor just black with no means to log in?

If it is just black, what happens if you, whilst holding down Ctrl and Alt, press F1? This should take you to the first console where you can log in and run sax2 or yast2 to try to reconfigure our graphics card settings.

armandoluis · 11-10-2005, 06:51 AM

THANK YOU FOR REPLYING MICKYG.

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT X SERVER IS. SORRY!

THE SCREEN IS SIMPLY BLACK WITH NO COMMAND PROMPT OR ANY OTHER MEANS OF ACCESSING SUSE 10.

I HAVE SWITCHED THE LAPTOP OFF AND ON AGAIN. IT BOOTS UP AND ONCE AGAIN I GET A BLACK/BLANK SCREEN.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS MICKYG.

THANKS.

mickyg · 11-11-2005, 03:37 AM

Seems this has been asked here before. Have a look at this. The last post seems to have the solution. Let me know if this solves your problem, or if you need any help with it.

P.S. X server is essentially the display/windowing/grpahics server. It provides a means of displaying graphics to the screen. KDE/Gnome/Fluxbox (all window managers) etc run on top of the X server. Suse 10 will use the Xorg server, www.x.org, which is an implementation of the X server. The older implementation of the X server was XFree86. So when people talk about XFree86 or Xorg they are talking about two different implementations of the same thing. Hope that helps.

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 11:07 AM

HI MICKYG,

THANK YOU FOR YOUR EXPLANATION WHICH WAS VERY INFORMATIVE.

I DID CHECK THE LINK YOU SENT ME AND READ THE ADVICE GIVEN BY LINEXVB.

FOR YOUR INFO I HAVE SUSE 10 AND WINDOWS XP PRO INSTALLED ON MY LAPTOP. THUS DUAL BOOTING.

AT THE GRUB BOOT SCREEN I DID PRESS F2 AND TYPED 3...........GUESE WHAT......THE LAPTOP BOOTED INTO A BLACK SCREEN AND NOT TO A TEXT CONSOLE.

SO, I BOOTED INTO THE SUSE SAFE MODE AND EVENTUALLY GOT TO A TEXT CONSOLE.

I AM FAMILIAR WITH DOS, BUT NOT LINUX COMMANDS.PLEASE EXCUSE MY IGNORANCE.

AFTER I HAVE LOGGED INTO ROOT WHAT DO I NEED TO TYPE TO EDIT /ETC/11/XORG.CONF?

I HAVE TRIED TYPING..........SUDO.GEDIT/ETC/X11/XORG.CONF.......NO HOPE

I HAVE TRIED TYPING...........GKSUDO.GEDIT/ETC/X11/XORG.CONF.......NO HOPE

WHAT EXACTLY DO I NEED TO TYPE TO EDIT THE XORG.CONF FILE?

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP.

abisko00 · 11-11-2005, 11:28 AM

In SUSE, the graphics configuration should be done with sax2. Edit xorg.conf only if you know what you are doing!

It seems as if your framebuffer isn't correctly configured as well as the x server. In the same line where you type '3', add 'vga=<parameter>' and pick a value from the table below:

Code:

    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305    0x307   
32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316    0x319   
64k |  0x311    0x314    0x317    0x31A   
16M |  0x312    0x315    0x318    0x31B

You should get a text console with the proper setting. Login as root and type 'sax2' for the configuration of the X server.

BTW: Please stop using caps lock! It makes your post hard to read and may be considered as 'shouting'.

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 11:32 AM

Thank you.

I will try your advice now.

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 11:46 AM

I did press F2 at the GRUB boot screen and typed the following....

3,vga=0x303

About 5 lines of text apeared but then the screen went black and stayed that way.

Did I type the command correctly?

abisko00 · 11-11-2005, 11:48 AM

Use space instead of comma.

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 11:52 AM

I typed.....

3"space"vga=0x303

exactly the same happened.

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 11:53 AM

should i try a different value instead of 0x303?

abisko00 · 11-11-2005, 11:59 AM

Maybe there is a setting in the grub configuration that interferes with your custom setting. You could try to boot with 'failsafe' and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst:

- login as root
- type 'pico /boot/grub/menu.lst'
- save changes with Ctrl+O
- exit pico with Ctrl+X
- change the vga setting (you should be able to use 0x316 or even 0x317 on a standard 15'' monitor)
- run 'sax2'
- test, save and reboot

Hopefully it will work now!

armandoluis · 11-11-2005, 12:30 PM

i did exactly as you instructed....

i noted that in the menu.lst file the vga=317.....

so i left the menu.lst file as is....

i saved and exited....

i ran sax2...

the graphic interfaced appeared and the only options i got were...

change configuration
ok
cancel

i entered the........ change configuration....

monitor details.....

card: ati rs300 5835

monitor: unconfigured

resolution: 800x600 (svga)

colors: 16.7 mio

i pressed test....i got the xfine2 screen and the idle timer counting down. all appeared fine.

so i saved and rebooted.

verdict..............

i selected suse 10 and got a black screen again.

what other options do i have. i really want to work with suse 10.

abisko00 · 11-11-2005, 12:39 PM

Puhh! Tricky!

There are several things you could try:

- change menu.lst to the value you tried initially (vga=0x303)
- configure 'monitor' in sax2. Choose e.g. LCD 1024x786@60Hz
- choose 'vesa' instead of 'radeon' in sax2 (sax2 -m 0=vesa)
- read /var/log/Xorg.0.log and search for errors (lines beginning with (EE) or (WW))
- check your bios if you can share more memory for the graphics card (helped on my Dell system)

armandoluis · 11-14-2005, 06:42 AM

Hi,

I've tried your suggestions with no luck.

In the meantime, I have downloaded suse 10.1 alpha2.

I'm going to install this version and hope they have included drivers/patches for the ati and nvidea graphics cards.

Thanks for your help and will let everyone know what happened.