Arch Linux

NTHQ

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 11

Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

Hi everyone. I am fairly new to Arch (just installed it last week) and just messed up my computer... please bear with me.
I wanted to install a splash screen so I installed splashy. I might have been a little reckless with the installation which resulted in booting into a black screen.
I wasn't sure whether to go for Uvesafb or KMS so I just went with Uvesafb.
In the "Prepare the system" section it says "Remember to remove any framebuffer-related kernel boot parameter from the bootloader configuration: the vga=<foo> would force the old vesafb to load; the video=<foo> parameter would not be used when uvesafb is compiled as a module (as in the Arch Linux stock kernel)." I didn't know what that meant so I just ignored it (that's very reckless I know...)
As for the second line (Procure disabling KMS before attempting to boot into framebuffer. Failure to do so will result in a pitch-black screen, leaving no option but to restart the machine with Ctrl+Alt+Del. For Intel cards, append i915.modeset=0 to GRUB's entry to disable KMS.), I figured since I'm not going for KMS, it wasn't necessary so I just went on.
My laptop has an AMD processor and an ATI graphics card so I didn't see the point of installing 915resolution. I did it anyways and after doing so it said that 915resolution is only compatible with Intel cards. So I uninstalled it.
I followed the rest of the wiki and then rebooted my computer to see how it goes.
The splash screen shows up and some texts show up behind the progress bar that I couldn't read. The screen then goes black and the cursor shows up. But that's all there is. By randomly clicking, I could tell that gdm had loaded and I was able to find the password text box to log in. After logging in, the screen remained black. I could launch Firefox using a keyboard shortcut but everything was still black.
I know this is all my fault for not doing the proper research but how do I fix this?

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

With your favourite Live CD.

NTHQ

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 11

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

With your favourite Live CD.

Rightly so, but what can I do with the Live CD to repair this? I've used my Ubuntu Live CD to change the conf files to what they used to be but I still get the same problem. How do I rebuild initramfs from the Live CD (if that will solve my problem)?

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,896

Website

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

Use Arch cd and chroot in to repair install

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Mr Green

NTHQ

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 11

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

Use Arch cd and chroot in to repair install

I've chrooted into it and undid everything and yet it doesn't change anything. I've uninstalled splashy and v86d, reedited the conf files to their original form. Perhaps there is some modifications that I am not aware of that happened during the installation. Packages I installed were splashy-full, v86d, and 915resolution-static which I have all removed. Files I've modified include rc.conf, mkinitcpio.conf, /boot/grub/menu.lst, and uvesafb.conf. Aside from pacman I ran the command mkinitcpio -p kernel26

NTHQ

Member

Registered: 2011-01-13

Posts: 11

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

**BUMP**

Can anyone help me fix this please? I really don't want to reinstall everything...

ennui

Member

Registered: 2010-08-23

Posts: 21

Re: Installed splashy and now I just get a black screen

I am having exactly the same issue... I too have chrooted and removed splashy-full as well as any reference to it in the config file and ran mkinitcpio -p but on boot I get the splash screen which freezes. Wah!