Hi,

I had an older box with an on-board nvidia graphics card. I had 12.1 installed, but didn't need the data so just installed (32-bit) 13.37 over it (actually, re-partitioned the and reformatted the drive, so there's no old data; went from resierfs to ext4). The install seemed to work, but wouldn't boot (panic, can't find boot device). Re-installed, looked identical, worked. Almost. When it boots, I see the normal output that I can see with dmesg (kernel boot?), but when init (I think) starts, it want's the console in some kind of vga graphics (non-text) mode. The monitor then tells me it's no longer connected. I know the box is up because I can ssh into it. Is there a lilo config to tell init to never go into vga mode? I saw a rec in another thread to go get the appropriate nvidia driver, but I was looking for a quick fix, since I don't need a graphics mode on this box, at the moment. I'm booting to runlevel 3 (console mode, not X). Ctrl-Alt-F1-6 doesn't have any effect.

I'm using the stock huge kernel (not huge-smp). In addition to the nvidia card I have a Hauppage TV card installed. Monitor is connected to nvidia vga output.

TIA,
dnm

here's some pertinent (I think) output from dmesg:

[ 8.648087] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: c: memory 167045MHz core 199MHz
[ 8.648206] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Detected 32MiB VRAM
[ 8.648402] [TTM] Zone kernel: Available graphics memory: 440766 kiB.
[ 8.648502] [TTM] Zone highmem: Available graphics memory: 493986 kiB.
[ 8.648600] [TTM] Initializing pool allocator.[ 8.649245] agpgart-nvidia 0000:00:00.0: AGP 2.0 bridge
[ 8.649383] agpgart-nvidia 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
[ 8.649577] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode[ 8.649673] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: 64 MiB GART (aperture)
[ 8.649813] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Saving VGA fonts
[ 8.702907] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Detected TMDS transmitter: sil164
[ 8.757888] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Allocating FIFO number 0
[ 8.759788] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: nouveau_channel_alloc: initialised FIFO 0[ 8.760113] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Setting dpms mode 3 on vga encoder (output 0)
[ 8.760248] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Setting dpms mode 3 on vga encoder (o
utput 1)
[ 8.760383] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Setting dpms mode 3 on tmds encoder (output 2)
[ 8.760518] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Setting dpms mode 3 on TV encoder (output 3)
[ 8.814009] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Load detected on output B
[ 8.831010] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Load detected on output B
[ 8.831902] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: allocated 1024x768 fb: 0x49000, bo f5db1000
[ 9.494803] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Setting dpms mode 0 on TV encoder (output 3)
[ 9.494814] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: Output TV-1 is running on CRTC 0 usin
g output B
[ 9.494839] [drm:drm_crtc_helper_set_config] *ERROR* failed to set mode on [CRTC:6]
[ 9.494847] fbcon_init: detected unhandled fb_set_par error, error code -22
[ 9.494966] [drm:drm_crtc_helper_set_config] *ERROR* failed to set mode on [CRTC:6]
[ 9.495580] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 90x36
[ 9.495612] [drm:drm_crtc_helper_set_config] *ERROR* failed to set mode on [CRTC:6]
[ 9.496339] fb0: nouveaufb frame buffer device
[ 9.496343] drm: registered panic notifier
[ 9.496392] [drm] Initialized nouveau 0.0.16 20090420 for 0000:02:00.0 on minor 0

Install the xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist-package from /extra, that should prevent the kernel from changing the resolution at boot-time.

Hi,
I had an almost identical situation. Maybe the solution applies to you too.

When the nouveau driver kicks in for my PC the output changed from DVI to VGA. Just like that.. incredible malware

I also though I lost all console output, but it was accessible via VGA.

After that I started X but found that nouveau and my geforce 6150 internal card do not like each other. When I have the other problems sorted I will remove the nouveau garbage and go for the nvidia installer that simply works and doesn't randomly switch DVI and VGA outputs.