I don't know how can I use this without sshing into it. Any idea who might be turning the backlight off? I guess the wide class of the video cards is affected by this bug.
]]>Okay, let's try a different tack. Any chance the back light is turning off? SSH in and look around in /sys/class/backlight and see if you find the 'file' that controls the brightness and see what is in it. Try writing a bigger number to that 'file'. Either that, or grab a flashlight (torch) and illuminate your display at an angle in a low-light room. Can you see anything on the display? (BTW, this is just a WAG [wild arsed guess])
Yes, it is a backlight issue. Something turns it off.
# pwd
/sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0
# ls -l
total 0
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 actual_brightness
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 bl_power
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 brightness
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 28 18:28 device -> ../../../0000:01:05.0
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 max_brightness
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Nov 28 18:28 power
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 28 17:27 subsystem -> ../../../../../../class/backlight
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 type
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 28 18:28 uevent
actual_brightness=7
bl_power=0
brightness=7
max_brightness=7
type=firmware
Edit: Oh, byte may be on to something
]]>Are you using a display manager? Which one?
lightdm
Can you change to a different console with CTRL-ALT-F2 and login?
No, screen remains black. It's like something during boot makes screen completely dysfunctional.
If you can ssh in, you can read the journal. Anything interesting in the Journal?
I couldn't find anything obviously wrong in system.journal
What is your graphics chip set? Is it a hybrid graphics system?
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270]
This isn't a hybrid graphics system.
I updated again today, with forced update of all packages, and still a black screen.
]]>Now laptop boots, but screen gets black right after the kernel boot messages.
I verified that this isn't an Xorg problem, because this happens even with Xorg disabled and Xorg.log untouched. System itself works, I can log into it through the network.
What is wrong?
]]>I've a Thinkpad T60 with the same problem. I've not yet tried your solution of downgrading yet.
But I found a temporary solution myself. Once the system boots up, enable DPMS by running the following command in the terminal. Only works for x86 platform (should work for both 686 - 32 bit and x86-64/amd64 - 64 bit).
sudo vbetool dpms on
Let me know if this helps. Meanwhile, I'll try your solution and see if that permanently fixes this issue. Thanks.
]]>