Arch Linux

Henry Flower

Member

Registered: 2010-04-12

Posts: 66

[SOLVED] Blank screen starting X

I'm having problems getting X started on a new Arch installation.

This is a Lenovo Y700 laptop; output of lspci | grep -e VGA -e 3D is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 530 (rev 06)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M] (rev a2)

I have xf86-video-intel, mesa and (xf86-video-vesa installed.

~/.xinitrc is:

#!/bin/sh

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then

    xrdb -merge $sysresources

fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then


    xrdb -merge "$userresources"

fi

if [ -f "$usermodmap" ]; then
    xmodmap "$usermodmap"
fi

# start some nice programs

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
 for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?*.sh ; do
  [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
 done
 unset f
fi

lxterminal &
exec openbox-session

running startx produces a blank screen.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions!

Last edited by Henry Flower (2017-06-14 11:09:58)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,456

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Blank screen starting X

See the Note box here then follow one of the two options to set up your video drivers:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

Alternatively you may be able to disable the discrete video card in BIOS/firmware settings.  But you can't leave it enabled and just pretend it's not there.

If disabling the NVIDIA card or setting up hybrid drivers don't work, then please post the xorg log from the failed session.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,104

Re: [SOLVED] Blank screen starting X

If you don't explicitly install the nvidia driver you usually can pretend it's not there, since nouveau should™ do the right thing and suspend the card. But yeah a xorg log and maybe a dmesg would be nice.

Henry Flower

Member

Registered: 2010-04-12

Posts: 66

Re: [SOLVED] Blank screen starting X

Thank you both -- pretending it wasn't there didn't work, but following the Optimus instructions did.