When I installed Slackware 11.0 last year on my Thinkpad T43, I chose the wrong keyboard layout during install. Consequently I couldn't Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to get out of the x black screen because the key mappings were wrong. Choosing a different keyboard map that matched my T43 more closely got around that. It saved me from having to cold boot every time I got the black screen, at least.

So you might also ensure you have the right keyboard map selected during install. That won't fix your x problem, but it makes it less painful to debug it since you'll be able to exit back to the cli without having to boot.

Thanks for all the help everyone.


Road_map: I tried the settings you suggested. Still no go. :confused:

What do I have to do to try and debug this problem. Where should I be looking for errors? Thanks.

also I don't know what the kernel level driver for the trident card is but I only see ali_agp, is there another one? you could try modprobing these to see if there is an issue with the kernel inserting the modules.

you can also try using (as root) xorgsetup as opposed to xorgconfig?

bioe007: I've tried using xorgsetup (as root). It also freezes up. As far as the modprobing, what should the command look like? 'modprobe ali_agp' or 'modprobe trident'? Thanks for all your help btw.

it seems ali_agp is already loaded, but for example with X running on my lappy;

so you see there should be at least (AFAIK) two modules for your card. one for the agp (already loaded - ali_agp) and usually there is a another than uses drm. I'm not sure what that one is. I tried looking in my own .config but it eluded me.

for my setup it is the i845 chipset and ATI radeon card, so for AGP the intel_agp, then for drm the radeon module.

Hmm, is there a way I can explicitly log the relevent events or areas I need to be logging? For example, those were the modules loaded when you were already in X, my problem is that it doesn't even make it that far. I 'startx', the screen goes blank like it's initializing, and then freezes. I check the logs and there are no errors. So I essentially need to log lsmod output right after I 'startx' no? If so, what is a good way to approach this? Thanks.

there are some options in man Xorg you can try:

then you can check module insertion from dmesg | tail -<number>

where <number> is some number of lines up to let you see whats what..

hth

I had the exact same problem. startx would just blank the screen and nothing would work. Not even Ctrl-Alt-F* to get to the command prompt. Had to do a cold boot every time. I've had previous versions of slackware as well as other distros on this machine and they ran fine so I did not suspect a hardware issue.

After reading the posts here I got the output of lspci -v to get the details for my graphics card, ran xorgconfig (or xorgsetup, i dont remeber which) from the command line and then everything ran fine.

send, i hope you got yours working now.

thanks to all for the help.
john

I had this problem before installing the nvidia driver. I would logout of xfce and it would just be a black screen. Slackware 12

bioe007: I tried the 'Xorg -verbose 3 -probeonly &' command and X still freezes. I am at a complete loss as to what exactly is going on. I'm still up for suggestions. I really want to get this working, so I'll keep trying.

Thanks for all the help everyone.

Same problem with 1805-S203
 

I'm dealing with the same problem, the computer still freezing. :confused:

Black screen lock-ups
 

Hi there!

Just thought I'd add my 2 centimes worth...

I had exactly the same issues as are being spelled out here and this is how the story went:

Slackware 12 on Sharp laptop - S3 Savage video.

Leaving KDE was essentially impossible since any attempt to log-out or reboot in ANY way locked the computer to a BLACK SCREEN. No combination of keystrokes would do anything useful so powering off was the only way out.

Initial Googling brought results pointing to making amendments to a couple of files - THIS DID NOT WORK FOR ME but I include it *just* in case it helps a future reader.

~~~~~~Quote Begins~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My solution --

1. open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add to Section "Device":
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"

2. open /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc and uncomment/add this line:
TerminateServer=true

If you're using Gnome, you might want to instead do

2. open /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf and uncomment/add this line:
AlwaysRestartServer=true

This forces the system to restart the X server completely instead of just resetting it.
Thanks for all the help!!

~~~~~~~Quote Ends~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I said this didn't work for me but the following did:

from a command line, preferably before starting X issue -

lspci -v (pipe it through "less" if needed ie lspci -v | less)

near or at the bottom will be your video cards name, model number which you should make a note of.

Now before continuing make a back up of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file as it will be over-written in the next step. The backup obviously is just in case it all goes wrong (but it shouldn't)

Next, again at the cmdline run xorgconfig.


This will take you through a menu driven setup for your keyboard, mouse, screen and video card - its pretty straightforward, if you don't know something either take the default option or err on the side of caution.

In my case there were no exact matches for my model of card but I was able to scroll through and find a generic model from the manufacturer so I chose that.

Once complete you can issue "startx" and once KDE is running log-out and/or reboot just to check.

Worked perfectly for me, I hope this helps you!

PS As noted earlier my laptop's gfx card model wasn't listed so I might go one step further and download the proper drivers from VIAARENA at some future time but hey if it ain't broke...

A temporary fix...
 

I copied /etc/X11/xorg.conf-fbdev to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and i got into X, and it partially worked.

this is a bit of a shot in the dark.. can you try ?
if you see something like 'append pci=assign-busses' then try adding to your lilo.conf entry and remember to run /sbin/lilo then reboot & try

also you can try appending: pci=routeirq

even both..

you can also try playing with this section of your xorg.conf, there are some options you can try in 'man trident'