black screen on tty1
 

Hi everybody,

after upgrading to FC4 I can not longer switch to tty1..6 (Ctrl+Alt+F1..6) since all I see is a black screen. The text modes are ok when booting until X is loaded, then I don't see text anymore (even when turning off my pc, I don't see anything (black screen)).

my /etc/inittab w/o comments looks like
id:5:initdefault:
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now
pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"
pr:12345:powerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6
x:5:once:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

any ideas of this weird behaviour?

Thx in advance
Claudio

Check your /etc/lilo.conf and where it says vga=SomeNumber try changing it to vga=normal, then rerun /sbin/lilo and reboot.

mmmm, I'm using grub instead of lilo, posting my grub.conf just in case

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

I don't know if your advice can be applied to grub.

Neither do I!

When I had problems with my VT's (unreadable screens, and could not see the shutdown process) the above change to lilo fixed it. I think it is something to do with "framebuffers", but I am not sure. Does FC offer you the option of using lilo?

That is exactly what is happening to me, can not see the shutdown process nor access to the tty terminals... I will try to check if I can solve it even using grub, google a little bit about the framebuffers thing. Thanks for your help.

black screen on tty1 and on leaving X
 

I am pretty new to linux and have been wrestling with this one on my Samsung X05, running FC4, with an Intel i852 video board. I finally cracked it by adding the line 'Option "VBERestore"' to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in the Device section. This option helps X to restore the video mode from the original text mode when X quits or switches to text mode. Still trying to work out why I can't get more than 1024x768x8 without horrible screen corruption...

Ben