Hi, I finally got Ubuntu server edition 10.4 LTS installed. But After the installation my computer boots and after the BIOS screen there is a blinking cursor and then the monitor says that there is no input. How can I fix this? I am running a Dell Optiplex SX270, no modifications. Please help.

See if you can boot it into runlevel 1, then check slash post nfo from dmesg and /var/log/messages or wherever (r)syslog logs system messages to. Elif it doesn't boot but if you get to the GRUB commandline try some kernel args like noacpi, noprobe, noraid (those probably won't work for you but you get the idea) to see if it gets you further. Else if the machine (Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics, ICH5) doesn't boot at all then please provide way more info: if tweaking the BIOS graphical options (allocate more memory) works, if there's another OS installed, if TLS installed OK, if the installation can be accessed using the installer CD rescue mode.

I cant boot it into anything. After the Bios page there is a blinking cursor that allows me to type, but It goes away after a few seconds, too fast to type anything, and then the monitor just goes blank and says its not receiving input. Also its a dell BIOS so I doubt there is much room for tweaking. I will check though.
I am reinstalling Ubuntu on expert install and I just installed the entire X server package directory. Hopefully that will do something.

Edit: Nope it doesnt help. I do have a 20" widescreen though. And the Optiplex has a Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics Video with DVI-I connector. is that supported?

Boot a Live CD, preferably KNOPPIX wrt HW detection, then please attach plain text file with output of: dmesg, lspci, 'fdisk -l' and 'dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 of=/tmp/sda_mbr.dat && file /tmp/sda_mbr.dat' (replace device name of bootable harddisk).

sure.everything is in the txt files. Also I get a grub error now before the screen blanks, it says error: no such disk
I tried a few things and it seems grub is royally screwed up.How Do I reinstall it, or install it, or what ever.
I believe I fixed the screen problem. I burned and booted 10.04 live and It had some option called something like nomodeset. Now, I need to try to reinstall grub then get that nomodeset applied to my server installation.

It keeps telling me that the installation failed when I tried to reinstall grub2.


Also I think I screwed up Fstab. I tried to repair it but I couldnt figure out which device connected to which file system and mount point. Help?!

Attached Files

	output file.txt (22.0 KB, 13 views)
	fdsk.txt (519 Bytes, 10 views)

Thanks. Disk layout and dmesg output don't look odd.


What did you do?


Cool. Note "nomodeset" enables the kernel to work with older HW so this may hurt graphical performance a bit though but it beats having a machine that doesn't boot at all...


Now, I need to try to reinstall grub then get that nomodeset applied to my server installation. It keeps telling me that the installation failed when I tried to reinstall grub2.[/QUOTE]
The docs say the GRUB 2 package is called "grub-pc" (dep: "grub-common") and that grub2 is a "dummy transitional package", that running 'sudo grub-probe -t /dev/sda /boot/grub' should show if you have installed it to /dev/sda (as opposed to the start of a partition) and that for re-installing GRUB 2 you don't need to re-install the package but just run 'sudo grub-install /dev/sda'. So what errors have you been getting? (I spose you've also seen slash used this and that?)


You have /dev/sda1 (type Linux) so I could guess by size you have /boot on /dev/sda1 and therefore since /dev/sda5 is of type "Linux LVM" that "/" resides there (and probably using labels instead of device names) but there's no way of telling definitively (by what's been posted) what is mounted where. Post your /etc/fstab? BTW in any more or less recent distro release you have access to /dev/disk. So you've got 'e2label', 'tune2fs -l', ls -l /dev/disk/by-label' and 'dmsetup status' to find labels regardless of what /etc/fstab says.

as I said Fstab was messed up. I tried to fix it so you wont get any help there. but the only devices it had listed before I changed it was aufs and tmpfs, and it didn't have a mount point, just 0,0.

Here is what the tmpfs line said:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid, nodev 0 0



when I type in "sudo grub-probe -t /dev/sda /boot/grub" it tells me to type sudo grub-probe -help for more information.
so that doesnt seem to work.

and when I type in 'sudo grub-install /dev/sda' it just tells me it cant find the boot device.
I will try to re-write the fstab file

thanks for your help. but I just reinstalled ubuntu-server with the nomodeset and it worked fine. Thanks for you time.

NP, have fun!