Hi Guys,

It is the first time for me posting here but I've been an on and off user of Slackware for many years. Yet this is the first time I've run into a problem I cannot solve and I hope you guys might be able to shed some light on the issue.

About 50% of the time I start X (yes I boot up in console) the screen stays black with a non blinking cursor in the top left corner. The other 50% of the time it starts normally. Also the system does not complete freeze, If i push the power button it will initiate shutdown (though i cannot see any output) and will power-off after about 10 seconds. Changing terminals does nothing unfortunately.

I am using the nouveau driver. If the system is started with nomodeset, this problem does not occur (but the graphics performance is very bad then). I tried to use the nvidia driver itself but that always results in a black screen on boot (cannot even login the console).

I do see a couple of I2C nouveau errors in dmesg, but they also occur if the boot is successful. Xorg.log is not really helpful. I can post both of the logs though if needed.

Hope you guys have an idea

Kind Regard,
Mel

Which exact graphics card are you using?

Hi ReaperX7,

I am using a NVIDIA GTX760 graphics card, although lspci flags it as a GTX660.

Kr
Mel

The nouveau driver doesn't always work best for every Nvidia card. If it's registered as a different card it could have a hardware fault which is why nouveau and nvidia drivers both have issues.

Have you tried using nouveau or nvidia drivers with a display manager like KDM rather than startx?

As far as the logs, can you run the following commands and post the output of each?

Also can you post the /var/log/Xorg.log.0 and /etc/X11/xorg.conf files as well?

I just installed too, same thing with me, it works if you put nomodeset at the boot prompt. eg: linux nomodeset, I switched that on to do it automatically through pkgtool configuration so I don't have to press tab and manually add that line at boot. Now I don't know for sure if it booted me with radeon or vesa, will find out soon, putting on gallium-nine stuff, if wine recognizes it then all is good.

nope, got an error:

Native Direct3D 9 will be unavailable.
For more information visit https://wiki.ixit.cz/d3d9
err:d3d9:d3dadapter9_new Your display driver doesn't support native D3D9 adapters.

I need to change something, don't know how, I didn't need to configure a xorg.conf according to the install guide.

After the mass upgrades of 21 April, I had a similar problem a NVidia GT 730 based card.
After doing a little research I found it is possible to get to the sign on prompt by using the nomodeset option.
Afterwards, through a little trial and error I found using nomodeset is the "long way around."
After the files are installed during a fresh installation and while you are going through setting up your system, you are asked what screen resolution you would like to use for the terminal. Using the "standard" selection, which is non vesa (that is the key, non vesa), solves the problem and you can sign on at the prompt and install your NVidia driver.
BTW, IMHO, the "official" NVidia driver is, all around, the best option.

In my case, I had a dark screen after a few seconds into the startup sequence. The issue was resolved, on one case, by having KDE start at the login prompt by modifying /etc/inittab and setting the default runlevel to 4, instead of 3. On another instance, I had to compile and install a newer kernel, since I also wanted some newer features, which were not included on the kernel I was using.

Just my two cents,

FBobbioC

@ReaperX7, i will check when i get home tonight and post all my logs. cheers!

@pednick, as far as i can see using nomodeset disables nouveau completely. my desktop is a lot slower afterwards (works 100 though)

@wizardone, hmmm, i just checked my elilo config, that still reads vga=normal. on bootup the nouveaufb sets the resolution to 1920x1080 though. I tried different boot option like nofbaccel, didnt work unfortunately. I am little stumped. Updated my kernel to 4.0.1 to test. same problem still happens. Maybe i should try a clean install of slackware 14.1 if all else fails. Though i can live with it like this for now. the system doesn't hardlock so i can still shut it down without risk of FS corruption. just have to reboot once or twice. I would like to install the official driver but I always have the problem that my screen goes completely black during bootup (even without X) and I can't see anything...

For me the display completely stops responding at the point in the boot sequence where it switches to the nouveau driver. Adding the nomodeset option to get to the prompt to be able to install the proprietary drivers works for me. This is on a Geforce GFX750ti; latest generation of the Maxwell cards (see nvidia naming).

I'm not too surprised it doesn't work for me as this is a card that needs some tricks to get it running with nouveau, see phoronix. Note that this article discusses that the newer Nvidia card only get basic support added in 3.19, which is newer then the current kernel. So that might be the cause for GTX 730 as well as also that is a relatively new card.

Here are my logfiles from dmesg and xorg. I have no Xorg.conf file. Maybe you can see something.
I have tried updating to 4.0.1, doesnt seem to help either. I will try to upgrade to nvidia drivers even though it failed the last time. Wish me luck!

Attached Files

	dmesg2.log (86.5 KB, 24 views)
	Xorg.0.log (8.2 KB, 24 views)

I have managed to install the nvidia driver now. now i just have one helluva ugly console hopefully the X start problems will be solved

I had this problem a while back. It turned out the issue was with automatic hardware enumeration by the X server. I got control back by adding

Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"

to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf's Section "ServerFlags" (and then manually configuring my keyboard and mouse).

Extra hint: If the power button is still working, that means the ACPI daemon is also still working, which means it isn't a total system hang. An easy way to get control back without a reboot: edit /etc/acpi/acpi_handler.sh to change the init level to 1 instead of 0. Then, when you press the power button, the fully-running state is taken down to single-user mode with a login prompt. No reboot needed.

Edit: or change the init level to 3 in the script, and use "telinit 4" to test the X server. Much faster runlevel switching that way.

Cheers! but for now it seems to work with the nvidia binary driver! Hopefully it will stay that way! cheers for all the help

Disregard last post. just worked once, since a post can't deleted here had to write something.