Arch Linux

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

[SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

After cluttering the hell out of my Arch system, I decided to go for a fresh install. I burned a new 2009.2 release CD, but when I tried to install with that, I had some problems with alsa. I just thought "forget this" and used my reliable 2008.6 release FTP cd, which I had installed with successfully on this machine about 4 times.

So now I have the base system installed, alsa is working fine, but X is giving me some problems. I've been following the beginner's guide (the one I printed off at the time of the 2008.6 release which has always given me success before) closely, but whenever I do

# X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

The screen flashes a bit, some white squares here and there, and then it goes completely black (backlight still on). There is no "x" cursor like I usually see, and worse than that neither Ctrl-Alt-Backspace nor Alt-F1 will exit X. I have to do a hard reset to get my computer back, for nothing else will elicit a response. I've been changing settings, working with my xorg.conf, messing with the nvidia drivers, doing everything I see in the wikis and previous forum posts, but nothing seems to work.

Usually, I use the nvidia driver for this computer, but the X baseline test works just fine without it. I'm not sure what could be going on here.

Any suggestions?

Last edited by Redrazor39 (2009-06-09 16:00:01)

Vasto

Member

Registered: 2009-06-09

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

I'm subscribing to this topic because I have the same problem. 8400GS M graphics card

xorg.conf: http://dpaste.com/53148/
Xorg.0.log http://dpaste.com/53149/

Last edited by Vasto (2009-06-09 05:15:07)

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: [SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

Hey I got my problem fixed.

After scouring the wiki, other forums, and generally the rest of the interwebz for hours, I've found that this has to do with X not accepting keyboard/mouse input.

The thing that really fixed it was adding

Option "AllowEmptyInput" "False"

to the "ServerLayout" section of my xorg.conf. For some reason this option is true by default, meaning keyboards and mice using the kbd or mouse driver (I forgot which one) won't work. You can't even Ctrl Alt Backspace your way out. This option should do it.

Before that, make sure you've created an xorg.conf with

Xorg -configure

. Then, after installing the nvidia driver, do

nvidia-xconfig

. I don't know if this has to be done for it to work, but this is just what I ended up with and now it works.

I hope that helps. It's such a weird option that I found on one random Linux forum, yet nowhere in the Arch documentation.

Vasto

Member

Registered: 2009-06-09

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

Thanks, for posting your solution. I still can't Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, but I can now ctrl-alt-f2 ctrl-alt-f1 ^c to exit. I think my problem stems from HAL failing to start. I'll post my solution here hopefully.

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: [SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

There are a couple things you can try to get this back. It depends if you're using hotplugging or not (honestly, I have no idea what that means).

It's all covered in this section of the wiki:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X#C … 27t_exit_X

Vasto

Member

Registered: 2009-06-09

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] X just shows black screen, no x vector, no kbd/mouse response

Thanks, for your help. I managed to get everything installed. :-)