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Update: well, now I can laugh about this. The left Alt key actually does the right thing, and the right Alt key produces the behavior described below. Naturally, I was using my right hand to press Alt and my left hand for F1/F2; it didn't occur to me that the two Alt keys might behave differently. :-) Original post follows:
Hello, everyone. I'm anxious to try Arch for a spin, but I'm finding myself thwarted quite early in the install process. Any time after the login prompt comes up, using Alt+F2 gives me a permanent blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. I can't even switch back to console 1 or any other console. However, I can reboot with Ctrl+Alt+Del, in which case I see a normal-looking reboot sequence. I tried the 2009.02 i686 FTP install ISO and the 2008.06 i686 CORE install ISO, both with the same results.
Puzzlingly, out of perhaps ten attempts, I once managed to switch to console 2 without experiencing that breakage, but I was never able to reproduce it.
The computer in question is an IBM Thinkpad T43p. Just to be clear, this is what I'm doing:
1. boot install disk
2. select "boot live CD" from grub menu
3. wait for messages to scroll by
4. login as "root" from login prompt
5. browse files or run /arch/setup
Pressing Alt+F2 during steps 4 or 5 is what gives me the blinking cursor described above.
Can anyone offer a suggestion or solution?
Last edited by Lux Perpetua (2009-02-22 09:34:25)
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