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#1 2010-04-18 13:08:34

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

[SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

When booting, it seems to be a normal part of the process for it to change the resolution towards the start. Problem is, for me, totally randomly, as it does this change sometimes the image simply doesn't come back, and it remains black. Even stranger - on some occasions the entire screen just turns blue, or become a series of white vertical lines. At this point it just gets stuck, and I have to reset the machine. As a reasult, it tends to take about 5 boots to actually make linux start up properly... (But in the event it doesn't die while starting up everything else works fine, I can even load up KDE or Awesome with no problems and use the machine with no problems...)
My graphics card is an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro, and I'm using the open source drivers.

Any ideas? Might it be worth switching to the Catalyst display drivers?

Last edited by daperson (2010-04-20 21:30:39)

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#2 2010-04-18 13:15:01

chpln
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2009-09-17
Posts: 361

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

This sounds like a problem with KMS.  I'd try adding 'nomodeset' to your kernel parameters.

E.g., /boot/grub/menu.lst:

[...]
kernel /vmlinuz26 [...] nomodeset [...]
[...]

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#3 2010-04-18 13:38:02

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

I'll try that, thanks.

However, this problem has been happening since straight after finishing linux setup (In fact, I think it happened on the first boot after finishing setup) - so surely this rules out window managers and such?

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#4 2010-04-18 13:42:53

hokasch
Member
Registered: 2007-09-23
Posts: 1,461

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

KMS means Kernel Mode Setting, so it has nothing to do with X - more info is here.

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#5 2010-04-18 13:46:29

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

Ah. My bad. Too many acronyms I need to learn tongue.

Anyway, thanks, your suggestion has fixed it, but also produced a new problem.
I, rather stupidly, didn't mention that I have two montors - prior to implementing this fix of yours, when in X the desktop area was extended across both monitors - but now both monitors mirror each other. Granted this is probably a fairly small price to pay for making the system usable again, but, still, can this be corrected?

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#6 2010-04-18 13:51:25

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

Also of note, when I attempt to re-enable the dual screen support as before via running:
xrandr --output DVI-0 --left-of VGA-0
I am told that the screen size may not exceed 1440x1440, and it does not operate as it did previously. Odd.

Last edited by daperson (2010-04-18 13:53:35)

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#7 2010-04-19 09:41:22

chpln
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2009-09-17
Posts: 361

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

You should be able to configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf to work around this.  I think something like the following would sufficient if using hal.

Example xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier  "Default Server"
        Screen      0                   "Default Screen" 0 0
        [...]
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Default Device"
        Option     "Monitor-VGA1"      "display0"
        Option     "Monitor-VGA2"      "display1"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "display0"
        Option     "DPMS"               "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "display1"
        Option     "DPMS"               "true"
        Option     "LeftOf"              "display0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier    "Default Screen"
        Device        "Default Device"
        DefaultDepth  24
        SubSection "Display"
                    Virtual 2048 2048
        EndSubSection
EndSection

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#8 2010-04-20 21:28:35

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

Excellent - this worked perfectly with a couple of tweaks (As my crazy graphics card has one VGA and one DVI port, for some odd reason).
Thanks a lot!

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#9 2010-04-20 21:33:46

daperson
Member
Registered: 2010-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Screen goes black or odd while booting. Dual screen issues.

FYI, here is my Xorg.conf as it stands (For helpfulness)

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "dri2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "auto"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    #DisplaySize      410   260    # mm
    Identifier   "display0"
    VendorName   "BTC"
    ModelName    "LE1940"
    HorizSync    31.0 - 84.0
    VertRefresh  56.0 - 76.0
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection#

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "display1"
    VendorName "BTC"
    ModelName "LE1940"
    HorizSync 31.0 - 84.0
    VertRefresh 56.0 - 76.0
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    Option "LeftOf" "display0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "ati"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName   "Radeon X1650 Pro"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option "Monitor-VGA1" "display0"
    Option "Monitor-DVI1" "display1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Card0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Virtual 2880 2880
        Modes "1440x900"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "enable"
EndSection

Last edited by daperson (2010-04-20 21:34:08)

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