primary notebook screen remains blank in 9.10

[Aisano]

I used to be running Ubuntu 9.10 on a notebook computer with a secondary screen. Several weeks ago the primary monitor (the notebook screen) started refusing to display anything, not even the bootloader (grub) menu. (It did, however, switch on and off the backlights while booting.) I tried switching to the proprietary NVidia drivers but it was the same thing. So I assumed that the screen was broken, and bought a new notebook computer (what good is a notebook if you need a separate screen).

When I tried to boot this new computer with a 9.10 live cd it displayed the start menu (try, install, memory check etc.) but the display went blank as soon as I chose any other function but "memory check". The cd drive's activity showed that the computer was busy but it would not let me see what it was doing. I checksummed the live cd, burnt another live cd at minimum speed -- nothing helped.

So I downloaded a 9.04 live cd, and could install it without any problems. Everything is displayed without problems on the primary monitor. (I finally had to go back to 8.04 for lack of the proper network driver in 9.04 but that is another story.) So some kind of regression seems to have happened between 9.04 and 9.10, if you consider using the primary screen an asset.

I searched for bug reports about "primary screen" or "dual monitor" but found nothing that matched my problem. Maybe bug 462168 is related to this one but, unlike there, my blanked screen never displays a mouse pointer.

I can provide further data if somebody tells me what could be useful.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

As I mentioned I had to install 8.04 as 9.10 would not display anything and 9.04 did not support my network card (on the live CD, at least). Hoping that an upgrade from 8.04 would preserve my network card driver I ventured that upgrade (using update manager). Ubuntu 8.10 seems to have installed alright but when I rebooted I got a "kinit: trying to resume from ... No resume image, doing normal boot".

Why not.

I logged on in text mode and tried to "startx". It gave me a "Primary device is not PCI; No devices detected... no screens found giving up". I tried a "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg", also with a "-phigh", even tried copying a working xorg.conf from my other (not identical) pc. Nothing worked. Although it had worked satisfactorily under Ubuntu 8.04.

The interesting thing is that Xorg.0.log tells me just the opposite of "startx": "More than one possible primary device found. PCI: (0@0:2:0) Intel corporation unknown chipset... PCI: (0@1:0:0) nVidia Corporation unknown chipset ..." So do I have a PCI primary device or not? [The arithmetic mean of the two messages suggests I have exactly one.]

I tried an "Xorg -configure" but it switched to another screen so fast I could not read its output. Redirecting it to a file revealed an "undefined symbol: xf86GetPciVideoInfo". That does not help me a lot. I am just a poor user trying to get a somewhat current Ubuntu installed on a brand new computer -- for a week now.

Several WWW pages seem to indicate that Linux has problems with multiple graphics cards. I hadn't even known that my new notebook had two but the log output quoted above seems to indicate that.

I have no way of telling if this is a bug or a feature but if Ubuntu means to support installing or upgrading within a week then it is somewhere near a bug. Is there a way of disabling one of the cards? As I mentioned my old PC (9.10) ceased displaying anything on the primary screen weeks ago, which was the reason for me to buy a new one. Still the Xorg.0.log on the old computer says nothing about "more than one possible primary device". Are there graphics cards not supported by Ubuntu? Is there a list of supported cards? It would be helpful.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

Today I found that while I am logged in to Launchpad there are situations where I can search only my own bug reports (don't have a full understanding of the process yet). So I logged off and searched for "More than one possible primary device found" and found bug 267241 ("Xorg fails to start with more than one display adapter"). It seems to be related to my problem but, according to the history, was fixed in september 2009. Still I not only cannot start the 9.10 live CD but do not even get any error message (when I try to install nothing is displayed, so I cannot inspect any log files either).

I found that several hundred (637) bug reports refer to "...more than one display adapter" (9 with "More than one possible primary device found"). I did not check them all but what I found was all "fixed" or "duplicate".

A friend of mine suggested disabling one of the graphics cards, which corresponds to some piece of advice found in bug 311748#14. Unfortunately my BIOS does not allow this.

I now switched back to 8.04, which seems the only version to work on my computer. I have tried to update to 8.10 three times now, and I get a "trying to resume from ... no resume image; doing normal boot" and cannot start the X server. At the moment I have no time for more experiments. Please do not think that I carelessly filed this bug report; I spent days and weeks doing reinstalls, and searching the web while my old computer was still working.

I think this bug can be closed. Obviously my computer is the only one still affected by it, and I am going to stick with Ubuntu 8.04 as long as possible.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

Today a got a hint to try a beta of Ubuntu 10.4 from a live CD. I did (without much hope, sorry, no offence meant to anybody) -- and to my extreme amazement nearly everything that refused to work in 8.10, 9.04, and 9.10 (display, sound, network) started to work like a charm. Even the dual-monitor support (not yet working in 8.04, the only stable edition presently working for me) is not bad; there are rectangles on the screen I cannot reach with the mouse but maybe that will improve over time.

It looks like the 10.04 developers did a remarkable job. When the first stable 10.4 comes out I certainly am going to give it a try. Very good piece of work, folks.

So I can summarize my experience with this bug as follows: On my (rather new) notebook

- 10.04 beta runs from the live CD without major problems

- 9.10 starts from the live CD (judging by the sound played) but does not display anything

- 9.04 starts, displays, and can be installed but has no support for my network card

- 8.10: I did not try a live CD but upgraded twice from a working 8.04, and the X server would not run

- 8.04:installed without major problems but plays no sound

which leaves 9.10 and 8.10 as possibly affected by the bug.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

In the meantime, I get by using 10.04, and most of the time my computer starts up satisfactorily. Only every one in a while it shows a black screen for more than 10 minutes, and then I interrupt it, restart with the previous kernel version (which has changed several times) and only then it tells me it is fs-checking my hard drive. I can live with that though it would be nice to see that information without a reboot.
Obviously no one is interested in this problem, much less the failures with earlier Ubuntu versions, so I suggest somebody close the issue. I don't seem to have the privilege to do that.