Ubuntu installer crashes to a blank screen

[Mike Chapman]

Binary package hint: pcmcia-cs

When installing XUbuntu from the alternate CD (I've replicated this behavior with KUbuntu-7.10 & KUbuntu-7.10-alt) on my Toshiba Satellite 1805 the install seems to be progressing just fine but then it stops at 6% of "Select and install software" when it's "Configuring xserver-xorg" and I'm left with a blank screen with a blinking cursor. My initial thought was that it was a graphics chipset issue since it seemed to be installing graphics packages at the time of the crash but now I'm not so sure. When I switch to the message console (ctrl+alf+F4) everything seems to be going good up until this crash when some error messages flash onto the screen. Unfortunately the screen turns blank before you can read any of the messages. I recorded the screen with a video recorder and was able to read the following error messages just before everything goes black (I removed the time stamps):

kernel: [ 1836.460000] pcmcia: Detected deprecated PCMCIA ioctl usage from process: discover.
kernel: [ 1836.460000] pcmcia: This interface will soon be removed from the kernel; please expect breakage unless you upgrade to new tools.
kernel: [ 1836.460000] pcmcia: see http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/pcmcia.html for details.
kernel: excluding 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff
kernel: excluding 0x60000000-0x60ffffff
kernel: [ 1836.476000] cs: warning: no high memory space available!

Based on this I'm thinking that this is a problem with the pcmcia-cs package. I tried passing "noapic nolapic nopcmcia acpi=off" to the kernel at startup but this didn't help.

Also, from an lspci -vvvv on this laptop I get the following:

00:11.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC95 (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Unknown device 0001
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
 Latency: 168
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
 Region 0: Memory at 30100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=05, sec-latency=0
 Memory window 0: 20000000-23fff000 (prefetchable)
 Memory window 1: 24000000-27fff000
 I/O window 0: 00001000-000010ff
 I/O window 1: 00001400-000014ff
 BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- ISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- 16bInt- PostWrite+
 16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

00:11.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC95 (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Unknown device 0001
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
 Latency: 168
 Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 11
 Region 0: Memory at 30101000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=06, subordinate=09, sec-latency=0
 Memory window 0: 28000000-2bfff000 (prefetchable)
 Memory window 1: 2c000000-2ffff000
 I/O window 0: 00001800-000018ff
 I/O window 1: 00001c00-00001cff
 BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- ISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- 16bInt+ PostWrite+
 16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

[Mario Young (mayeco)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. I have classified this bug as a bug in update-manager.

[Mike Chapman (mike-chapmanplace)]

Mario,
Thanks for the help. When I first filed this bug I associated the package pcmcia-cs with it because that is the package that generated the last errors prior to the screen going blank. I believe William Grant changed this to "None" but I didn't see an explanation for it. Now that I read through the link that you included I'm not really sure what the most appropriate package would be. I am not able to boot the live CD or install from the alternate install CD. Would "linux-source-2.6.22" or "debian-installer" be most appropriate?
Thanks.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

pcmcia-cs is dead (PCMCIA lives almost entirely in the kernel nowadays), and in any case I think it's probably not actually relevant here. I suspect xresprobe is up to its old tricks of confusing hardware again. Bryce?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Colin, yes this sounds muchly like bug 127008 (install from alternate CD + issue during configuration of xserver-xorg). In fact I anticipated this might occur:

"One thing I've wondered is other laptops with different gfx chipsets may be experiencing problems like these (but with different symptoms.) So, it'd be good to keep an eye out for any bugs that are occurring for non-intel laptops doing the alternate text install and appearing late in the install process; we could expand this patch to include those cases as well."

I suspect this may be one of those cases.

Mike Chapman, can you please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`? I'll use review this to determine your graphics chipset, and adjust xresprobe to also apply our fix for it.

Of course, for Hardy, it's likely we'll end up dropping use of xresprobe entirely, thus making this issue irrelevant, but I'd still like to ensure we have everything to fix the bug even if we don't drop xresprobe, for completeness' sake.

[Mike Chapman (mike-chapmanplace)]

Attached is my full output from 'lspci -vvnn'. Following is a copy of the output for my video card:

0000:01:00.0 0300: 1023:8620 (rev 5d)
 Subsystem: 1179:0001
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
 Latency: 8
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
 Region 0: Memory at ff000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M]
 Region 1: Memory at fefe0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
 Region 2: Memory at fe000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M]
 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K]
 Capabilities: [80] AGP version 1.0
  Status: RQ=33 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW- AGP3- Rate=x1,x2
  Command: RQ=1 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA- AGP- GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=<none>
 Capabilities: [90] Power Management version 1
  Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
  Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

Thank you very much for your help.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hi, xresprobe is no longer used in Hardy Heron, the development version which will become Ubuntu 8.04. Because of that I'm closing this bug. Please test Hardy (alpha3 or later), and if your hardware still fails to get a correct resolution (or if it drops to failsafe mode), file a bug against the driver package (xserver-xorg-video-$driver). Thanks!