black screen or garbled graphics on boot

Bug #102712 reported by cwhamsun
8
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
usplash (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Have been using feisty with no issues on this laptop for quite some time. I did not use the laptop for a week or so, but Mon. apr. 2 ran updates which prompted action about a partial dist. upgrade , which went through ok. First reboot progress bar underneath logo immediately after GRUB and prior to login screen resulted in a black screen, no ability to change tty(spelling?). So I hard rebooted and things were ok. Several cold boots since then went fine, but a reboot out of windows caused this time a black screen with garbled colored lines. Have Ubuntu installed from (alpha 2 or 3) with no issues, also installed Kubuntu desktop via synaptic. This was a clean feisty install on a hard drive with a fresh windows install done just before on a new hard drive. (Old one died). IBM thinkpad A30 (non-wireless version). Has ATI MobilityRadeon graphics. Xorg.conf lists "driver" as "ati" and Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY". This is the stock xorg setup, I have not tinkered with it the xorg.conf, or attempted a proprietary ATI driver (if there even is one for this card). Have had no prior graphics issues with feisty on this machine, nor dapper, edgy, or breezy. I am not sure what other relevant info I can provide. Feel free to contact me if there are any questions. Also, since the init has been changed I am not sure how change to see the verbose screen instead of progress bar after grub, so I am not sure if any errors occurred but will provide any important log files of try to recreate bug and look for init errors or whatever is needed to help. Sorry for not being able to provide more detail on a particular error or package etc. In summary this has happened two times out of maybe 10 boots in last day or so. Both times were on soft reboot, not initial cold boot.

Revision history for this message
Miguel Martinez (el-quark) wrote :

Dear cwhanmsun, thanks for your bug report. Could you tell me what are your grub options? I think I had a similar problem, and the black screen issue seems to disappear if I don't use the vga=791 option.

Revision history for this message
cwhamsun (cwhamsun) wrote : Re: [Bug 102712] Re: black screen or garbled graphics on boot

I looked at my grub options and they are standard. No
extra stuff, whatever the installer picks, nothing
changed by me. Dual boot with windows xp pro. I have a
laptop though so no video settings, I am not sure if a
desktop would add the video by default or not. I have
vga=xxx settings on my desktop but that has gentoo
installed. At the time I also had kubuntu installed,
which I added afterwords with synaptic. Maybe it
caused some problems because of that. I couldn't get
the issue to go away so I reinstalled it and haven't
added kubuntu to it. Sorry I no longer have the
original menu.lst file so I don't know if that made it
added some vga=xxx settings or maybe pointed to a
bootsplash file that wasn't there or something.
Here is my current top entry"
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic
root=UUID=bf847bba-d64d-4e1e-befe-f81240379335 ro
quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
quiet
savedefault"

It could be something with the splash flag, on gentoo
you have to specify the splash image and then also the
vga=xxx settings. It looks like this has some
automatic setting for that and maybe didn't set things
correctly. If you have any other questions let me
know, seeing your menu.lst may help, I hope I was
helpful but I never figured out exactly why mine was
doing it.
Carl

____________________________________________________________________________________
Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/

Revision history for this message
Albin Tonnerre (lutin) wrote :

Hello,
can you try the fix proposed in bug 129910 fixes the issue ? (basically, add fbcon to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, run sudo update-initramfs -u, and reboot with vga=whatever). I think your issue might be caused by that bug
Cheers

Revision history for this message
cwhamsun (cwhamsun) wrote :

Thanks, I found out it is an issue with my graphics
card on my model of laptop.There is some kind of
design flaw that causes things to malfunction
sometimes.
Thanks for the suggestion though

____________________________________________________________________________________
Need a vacation? Get great deals
to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
http://travel.yahoo.com/

Revision history for this message
ruchi (www-ruchi) wrote :

I faced the similar problem today. My IBM thinkpad T40 was working perfectly yesterday but when I booted several times today, it would give a blank black screen after grub options instead of login screen. I just let the last attempt stay for a while and the login screen appeared after say 2-3 mins. Weird!!

Revision history for this message
cwhamsun (cwhamsun) wrote :

Check out thinkwiki.org . It is about thinkpads and linux. They have pages on which models have particular issues. I cannot provide any feedback about my thinkpad cuz it died. To be more precise, it seems to be on and the screen does not work any longer. Something fried, I am guessing the graphics chip as that was the problem with my model that was widely reported on that site. Oh well, it was old and served me well. I will try to resurrect it one day. My thinkpad ran hot, and the graphics chip seemed to be too close to the processor and had no heatsink or anything. There is tons of info on thinkwiki for every model.

Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

Thanks for your bug report. Can someone confirm if this bug still happens with Gutsy?

For people that get a completely black screen and a very long boot time before GDM/X appears, try the following steps and please confirm if it gives results.

1. Open your System / Administration / Screens and Graphics menu and keep in mind your actual screen resolution.
2. Edit /etc/usplash.conf and if the resolution is this file is not the same as the one you have in Gnome/X, change it to be the same as the one you have when you use your computer and save. To edit this file, you can type this in a temrinal : gksu gedit /etc/usplash.conf
3. Once you have edited the file, type this in a terminal to apply the changes to usplash : sudo update-initramfs -u

Changed in usplash:
assignee: nobody → saivann
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

** Sorry for the mistakes :

1. Open your System / Administration / Screens and Graphics menu and keep in mind your actual screen resolution.
2. Edit /etc/usplash.conf and if the resolution in this file is not the same as the one you have in Gnome/X, change it to be the same as the one you have when you use your computer and save. To edit this file, you can type this in a terminal : gksu gedit /etc/usplash.conf
3. Once you have edited the file, type this in a terminal to apply the changes to usplash : sudo update-initramfs -u

Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

Changed in usplash:
assignee: saivann → nobody
status: Incomplete → Invalid
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.