Black screen during install after configuring of xserver (on certain intel graphics cards)

[Zunbeltz Izaola]

When instalation with the "Text-mode install CD", after doing all steps, screen goes black. It hapens when the the installer is configuring x-server (more or less 68% of the last stage).

The funny thing is that you can continue with the instalation. If you press enter key "blindly" some times, the process goes to the end; the cd is ejected and the laptop is rebooted and the newly installed version starts correctly.

laptop: Samsung X05
see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/SamsungX05

[Xan (dxpublica)]

With vga=771 in installation disk, the installation does not produce this bug. At least for me (My computer is Acer 5612WLMi, with 1280x800 (WXGA 15.4'')).

Perhaps you should try it for showing if all have black screen bug have this solution.

If all people solves this bug with 'vga=771', then the bug should be marked as solved or not-bug

Not of all,
Xan

[wgaa (e-janssen-whv)]

I had the same problem, installing on a i845G based system. I solved it by disabling the framebuffer with this boot-param:
debian-installer/framebuffer=false

I could finish the installation, but when X finally starts the screen is black again. This is no problem with bad configured hsync or vsync, i checked that. My LCD stays on, so there IS coming a video signal. But it's just completely black. It's possible to work blindly then again (logging in, hearing the welcome sound...).

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Found 6 duplicates with multiple confirmations.

[Rodrigo Novo (rodarvus)]

reassigning bug to xserver-xorg-video-i810, since it appears to be a driver issue.

I also modified importance to 'high', as it prevents users with this board from installing Dapper.

[Rodrigo Novo (rodarvus)]

Thank you for the bug report!

Unfortunately we need more information to proceed debugging the root of this problem. Please attach the following here, when/if possible:

- Output of 'sudo lspci -nvv'
- Output of 'sudo discover --disable=parallel,serial,usb,ide,scsi,pcmcia --format="%S\t%D\n" video'
- Output of 'sudo xresprobe i810'
- Output of 'sudo ddcprobe'
- /var/log/Xorg.0.log
- /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This information can be retrieved both from an installed system, and from the livecd.

Finally, it would be nice if you could try to reproduce the problem with the current Edgy livecd, since it has a new version of the i810 driver, which is supposed to fix this problem.

You can download the current livecd from here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/

Please note that the current version (20060823) is known to be broken (but unrelated to X.Org). Please wait until version 20060824 is available before attempting to download the livecd.

Thank you in advance!

[wgaa (e-janssen-whv)]

In the meantime I found out that the second problem - the black screen after starting X - does not appear when I use the on board (Shuttle FB51 in a SB51G) VGA output, only when using the output of the AGP DVI Out Card (see http://eu.shuttle.com/archive/en/cv21.htm). Since the quality of the analog VGA output is not as good as the DVI I prefer to use DVI.

At the moment I can not use the Ubuntu System. But as far as I can tell with standard xorg.conf there weren't any errors regarding the problem in Xorg.0.log.

Perhaps I am just missing an xorg.conf option for telling the driver it should use DVI output. But I expected the driver to autodetect on which interface a monitor is connected. Also since there IS an (all black) video signal on DVI I tend to believe that it is a driver problem.

I can post the outputs you requested from dapper and edgy live cds in a week or two.

[Xan (dxpublica)]

I give you my configuration files.
These are the files of my system. In this system I installed ubuntu with vga=771 as an option in installation disk for eviting this bug.

I hope these serve you.

Perhaps I could try edgy live cd but know immediately. Say me if you need it incondionally. I will download it... .

Thanks,
Xan.

[mmaurer (mbfmaurer)]

Attached are the relevant configuration files.

If there is anything more you need, let me know.
 At what time (UTC) will the 20060824 version of edgy be posted?

Thanks for taking care of the bug.

[mmaurer (mbfmaurer)]

Sorry for the double post. This time really with the files.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

I have just tried the edgy alternate cd of the 26 of august and it works reliably: no black screen.

[mmaurer (mbfmaurer)]

Just tried edgy alternate cd of the 29.2 of august, and it did not work on my laptop (with Intel graphic card), though it works fine on another machine (not with an Intel graphic card).

[Zunbeltz Izaola (zunbeltz)]

I had tried the alternative cd of 29 august and the screen gets black
(graphical card i810). I attach the requested configuration files of my installed system (upgrade to 5 of september)

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Same problem with i865 (Intel 82865) chipset on Dell GX270. When installing, display turns black with two white characters on it. Installation completes by just waiting. I will try the proposed bug bypasses. This problem exists on Dapper. Breezy works normally.

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

Couple of things I found out:

Install with daily: Doesn't work (really weird errors, might not be related to this bug)
Install with daily-live: Doesn't boot at all (black screen)
Install with knot-2, works (X, gdm, everything).
Update from knot-2 with apt-get dist-upgrade: Black screen.

I'll try to get into the machine with SSH somehow... then run the commands and get some logs.

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

Output of 'sudo lspci -nvv'

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

Output of 'sudo discover --disable=parallel,serial,usb,ide,scsi,pcmcia --format="%S\t%D\n" video'

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

Output of 'sudo xresprobe i810'

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

My outputs... sorry for them being in one posting each... didn't really think about putting them all together. ;)

Anyway, dccprobe couldn't be found and I don't know the package of it, so I didn't do that.

In the meantime, I'll try to figure out exactly what package broke it... because as I said, for me it broke when dist-upgrading knot-2 to the most recent version.

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

Okay, I managed to get it working again... and at least for me, this is *not* an xserver Bug.

Everybody who has the "Installer stops on xresprobe with black screen + two characters", this is probably the correct bug.

For everybody who has edgy and has a working usplash but at some point the display blanks, please try this:
- Log into single user mode
- sudo nano -w /etc/apt/preferences:
Package: usplash
Pin: version 0.4-15
Pin-Priority: 1001
- Save, exit (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+X)
- sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This will downgrade usplash and should fix the bug (did for me). I will soon post a bug number for the bug in usplash.

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

In case you have the usplash bug, this is it: Bug number 55274.

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Bypassing the bug with "vga=771" works with i865.

Tested with 6.06 LTS Dapper, PXE network boot, i865 (Intel 82865) chipset on Dell GX270. I also have "ramdisk_size=64000" in boot options, but I think it is not relevant to this bug or bypass.

[youp (joseph-massot)]

I have the same problem in Edgy, just when i want to reboot, it 's impossible to go further than the first image of edgy, in my screen, i have got a blackscreen after, i can access to command like sudo, but without graphic servor...

I have had this problem yesterday and i have downloaded edgy yesterday too ...

[grkravi (grkravi)]

I too had the same black screen issue while installing from LiveCD and
after upgrading from Dapper.
My Dell inspiron 5160 has the XGI VOLARI XP5 driver (intel 855 chipset). I was able to resolve this issue by upgrading from dapper and shifting to trident driver (instead of Vesa which was working fine with Dapper) and added modeline to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf from /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. Attaching the initial (bad) xorg files and the modified ones.

[Stéphane Marguet (stemp)]

Zunbeltz Izaola (and to other experimenting this issue), are these solutions worked for you ?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Works just fine with Feisty live cd of late february.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Kaleo: nice to hear.

Could someone else confirm that this is fixed?

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Anyone? Please confirm that this is fixed in Feisty..

[wgaa (e-janssen-whv)]

I tried this
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/herd-5/feisty-desktop-i386.iso
one and it works for me. DVI output is usable as well after X has started which wasn't
the case before.
Unfortunately, when using DVI output the native resolution of my display will not be
detected and the highest mode I can configure in the Settings Window is 1024x768.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Ok, thanks! Marking as fixed, can't pinpoint which update made it though..