Blank Screen During Boot

cshenkan · 2015-02-11 14:03:13

after my latest upgrade I restarted and now the screen goes blank around the point the font changes and it finishes saying kvm disabled by bios. It then goes black and stays black. I've seen an answer posted here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=86357 in one of the comments. But it's been months since I did any linuxing. So I need some help. How do I mount my root and boot partitions while booted to live media (usb)? I know which is which in lsblk. My next question is what do I then do to chroot into it? I'm guessing mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/root ? Then chroot to it.

Assistance would be much appreciated. Once I get there I can start trying to change some options with mkinitcpip.conf and in Radeon.conf as I have a Radeon card. The changes are listed in wiki here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Disable_KMS but I seem to be having trouble turning modest=0 on while on live media. If someone could assist it would help a lot as my windows box died (of course) and this is my only pc at the moment. I heard this may fix my issue of someone else has another fix please share. Radeon card, 64bit, manufacutrd by HP as HP compaq elite. Has ran arch over a year fine so far and love it compared to other distros

Thanks for the help in advance I feel like a noob I used to be able to do this stuff in my sleep but I've been stuck on a windows server and infrastructure at work for a while now.

Cheers fellow archers.

karol · 2015-02-11 16:06:18

Read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Change_root
When did you upgrade previously?
Can you switch to a working tty after the screen goes black? Is the screen powered off, backlight off or ...? Are you booting to a tty or straight to X?

Edit: It's not 'modest=0' and there's no 'mkinitcpip.conf' either. Be sure not to make these typos while trying to fix things.

Last edited by karol (2015-02-11 16:08:21)

cshenkan · 2015-02-11 18:21:38

Sorry was typing on an iPhone. I'll try switching to a new TTY when I get home from work. The screen is powered on, it displays the DVI connection icon in the corner showing it does have a conneciton, everything is just black. I'm booting straight to X. I managed to get in on a live usb, and mount my root home and usr directories. But after doing so I can't seem to get chroot to cooperate. As I recall I just do chroot /mnt/root_mount_point and that should be it yes? Should I use the special arch chroot or regular? I know you use arch chroot when installing but I'm not doing so.

Assuming I finally get chrooted in, I'm hoping modeset = 0 works. From the post I referenced, doing modeset = 0 in radeon.conf after creating /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf and doing mkinitcpio -p kernel26 after making changes to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf Not sure what changes to make exactly, but I guess I'll reread the wiki over and over till I get it. I hope this fixes the issue as it did for the other person.

I have a specific quesiton about mkinitcpio -p kernel26... is that the right argument? Should I use kernel26 or is it specific to the machine? I see in the wiki mkinitcpio -p linux. Which is the correct command?

My last update was yesterday. Before that it had been about a month. And I hadn't restarted in about a week or two.

Does this seem correct? Will it fix my issues?

Thanks

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-02-11 20:57:19

You should mount your partitions and use `arch-chroot`, just like you did when installing Arch.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … ase_system

If you use `chroot` you will have to mount /proc, /sys & /dev first as described in the link given by @karol.

You should use the "linux" preset if you are using the stock Arch kernel (there are presets for other kernels in /etc/mkinitcpio.d/):

# mkinitcpio -p linux

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mk … activation

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2015-02-11 20:58:28)

karol · 2015-02-12 04:15:32

cshenkan wrote:

I have a specific quesiton about mkinitcpio -p kernel26... is that the right argument? Should I use kernel26 or is it specific to the machine? I see in the wiki mkinitcpio -p linux. Which is the correct command?

Some wiki articles are awfully outdated and you can find older forum posts that tell you to run 'mkinitcpio -p kernel26', but that was for linux 2.6 kernel and we're on 3.something now.
'mkinitcpio -p linux' is the correct one for the stock linux preset. You can use other kernels with other names.

cshenkan · 2015-03-03 03:17:06

Thanks a bunch think I know what to do now will attempt tonight now that I have the time. Work is a bitch

Arch Linux

#1 2015-02-11 14:03:13

Blank Screen During Boot

#2 2015-02-11 16:06:18

Re: Blank Screen During Boot

#3 2015-02-11 18:21:38

Re: Blank Screen During Boot

#4 2015-02-11 20:57:19

Re: Blank Screen During Boot

#5 2015-02-12 04:15:32

Re: Blank Screen During Boot

#6 2015-03-03 03:17:06

Re: Blank Screen During Boot

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