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When I boot the Archlinux 2009.02 x64 'core' iso CD,
Grub comes up ok, and hitting enter switches to the normal black
console showing the initrd and kernel flags just before booting the kernel.
But as soon as the kernel starts booting, the screen switches to a double-wide font,
40 column wide text that and wraps around oddly, and immediately text disappears
off the bottom of the screen, as if I were seeing only the top 25 lines of a larger screen.
I tried adding the 'vga=773' flag to the kernel flags [as per the wiki], but that made it worse.
I can boot various other kernels on that machine; redhat 9, rtlinux, suse, fedora 3/5/7, etc.
Hardware: Northgate AMD64, Diamond Viper V550 VGA card, Dell 2405FPW monitor
I'm new to archlinux, but have worked with many linux distros for >10yrs.
Can't say I've ever seen this before; the console usually always 'just works'.
I'll try some other vga= kernel boot flags, but I thought I'd ask if this is a known problem.
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Witch resolution is your monitor reporting?
.::. TigTex @ Portugal .::.
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For the default boot:
o In grub (normal screen), monitor says: 640x480 60hz
o After kernel boots (double wide text): 720x400 70hz
BTW, I also tried vga=791, vga=795, and tried adding the logo.nologo options as well
with no improvement. Tried vga=ask, and selected modes 0, 1, and a few others.. all
seem to result in either double-wide text or no text at all (random colored boxes).
When the vga=ask menu comes up the screen still looks 'normal'.
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Looks strange to me.... maybe kernel it's trying to alocate some framebuffer and corrupts screen layout. I never saw anything like that.
Is your ISO ok? maybe you should try i686 version to see what appens.
.::. TigTex @ Portugal .::.
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Always, always check the MD5 checksums after downloading...it saves a lot of pain later. The first .iso I got was corrupted.
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md5 checked ok
Still trying more vga modes with no useful effects.
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Pulling an older 2007.08-2 core release to see if that makes a difference.
While waiting for that to dl, tried with a different monitor (Sony) and different cable
with no change; still get the 40 column super-wide text.
I guess it's some kind of incompatibility with the card (Diamond Viper 550 with 16M)..
guess I'll try changing that next.
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Older arch version booted normally (2007.08-2 "Don't Panic").
So it must be some kind of incompatibility with the newer Archlinux 2009.02 release
and the Diamond Viper V550 cards.
Not sure whether to report this as a bug to Archlinux or the kernel or..?
I didn't try changing cards, cause I assume that would fix it.
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