No CTRL-ALT-Fx terminal video with nvidia-glx-new driver and vga=normal

[Rick Sammis]

System: clean install of Feisty final release.
Video card: Nvidia GeForce 6200 A-LE 128MB w/bios 05.44.a2.0304.
Display: Dell M781s.
Video driver: nvidia-glx-new 1.0.9755+2.6.20.5-15.20.

Installation of driver successful and X display nominal. CTRL-ALT-Fx to any terminal results in apparent loss of video signal (monitor goes blank and led goes out). CTRL-ALT-F7 and X display is recovered with no ill effects. Problem does not occur with default "NV" driver installed.

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

I stumbled across this comment at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UsplashUntilDesktop and wonder if it's related:

"X saves the existing mode and uses that when returning to text consoles. If the console is still in a graphical mode when X is started, it will return to a graphical mode when the user presses ctrl+alt+F1. This will prevent the text consoles from working."

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Thank you for your bug report. Moving from Ubuntu -> linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20 because it's binary driver related.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Rick:
Does temporarily disabling usplash and setting vga=normal in the grub boot prompt make any difference?

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Setting to needsinfo pending reply from Rick.

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

Sitsofe,

I'm presently booting with usplash disabled. Adding 'vga=normal' makes no difference.

Thanks!
Rick

On Sat, 19 May 2007 08:19:08 -0000 Sitsofe Wheeler <email address hidden> wrote:

>
> Rick:
> Does temporarily disabling usplash and setting vga=normal in the grub boot prompt make any difference?
>

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Rick:
OK could you try adding
vga=795
to grub next?

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

Sitsofe. Appending "vga=795" at boot corrects the problem. What does this tell us?

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Rick:
I wasn't actually expecting there to be any change so I'm somewhat taken aback. I'm not an expert but I guess it suggests that the nvidia X driver is not happy to share the framebuffer (I just hope it's not a sign of things to come - I know its things like this that Red Hat cite for not using doing any sophisticated with the in kernel framebuffer - see http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2007-May/008288.html ). This sounds like it might be a duplicate of Bug #32389 . Subscribing mjg59 to get an expert's view on this.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Setting back to unconfirmed.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Subscribed mjg59 to see if we can get an informed explanation...

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

Sitsofe. You may wish to rename this bug. It appears that setting the video mode to anything other than "normal" corrects the problem.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

A better dup target might be Bug #86666 ...

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Rick:
Can you post the output of
cat /proc/cpuinfo
uname -a
please?

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

Sitsofe:

rick@Dino:~$ sudo cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 47
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2000.000
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow up pni lahf_lm ts fid vid ttp tm stc
bogomips : 4022.61
clflush size : 64

rick@Dino:~$ uname -a
Linux Dino 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Wed May 23 01:46:23 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Rick:
Hmm you have a AMD64 but it's running a 32bit kernel...

Thanks!

[Rick Sammis (rsammis)]

I can add that I experienced this same problem after booting the Linux Mint v3.0 (Cassandra) Live CD with the same hardware. I was able to correct it by adding "vga=771" to the boot command line.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

I think this might be a known bug - http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=93015 (this comment refers to later drivers though. I don't know if there was a known issue for sure in the 97xx series on certain cards)

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 beta?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

This package has become obsolete so we're closing out the bug report as WONTFIX.
Thanks for reporting it though!