Arch Linux

GuyNamedRob

Member

Registered: 2008-04-04

Posts: 15

shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

Hi,

I have a strange thing happening at shutdown with Arch:  the list of shutting down closing procedures are in strange colours.

My equipment:  HP Pavilion 7965 (P4-1.7Ghz) with a ATI All-in-Wonder 7500 (Radeon 7500).  I'm running Arch, gnome, and the ati open source driver.

the startup listing of events (sorry, not sure of the vocabulary for these things) has nice white font and colours, yet at shutdown/reboot, the list of events is discoloured.  The DONE text is black, the white font is purple, etc.

Has someone encountered this sort of thing?  My searches haven't turned up anything yet, perhaps because I haven't figured out the right vocabulary for these processes.  Any help or pointers is appreciated.

Thank You,
Rob

pyther

Member

Registered: 2008-01-21

Posts: 1,395

Website

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

Does the same problem occur if you don't start X?  (ex. boot computer, then shutdown computer)

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Lexion

Member

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 510

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

There's a line in /boot/grub/menu.lst:

color cyan/black cyan/blue

That is the default setting, and if your color settings are not that, then
you can change them.

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Ashren

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2007-06-13

Posts: 1,229

Website

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

I've something similar and it was because of fb settings in grub's menu.lst. Try changing your color depth in the kernel line. I.e.

#  FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
#     +-------------------------------------------------+
#          | 640x480    800x600    1024x768   1280x1024
#      ----+--------------------------------------------
#      256 | 0x301=769  0x303=771  0x305=773   0x307=775
#      32K | 0x310=784  0x313=787  0x316=790   0x319=793
#      64K | 0x311=785  0x314=788  0x317=791   0x31A=794
#      16M | 0x312=786  0x315=789  0x318=792   0x31B=795
#     +-------------------------------------------------+

# general configuration:
timeout   5
default   0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue

# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
#
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
#
#-*

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 vga=773 root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

This is because your colordepth in xorg interferes with the framebuffers - I believe. Can't remember if it is because it is too low or too high. Experiment.

Last edited by Ashren (2008-04-05 11:34:02)

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GuyNamedRob

Member

Registered: 2008-04-04

Posts: 15

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

Hi,

Here's hoping this thread is still being folllowed...

Thank you for the suggestions.  So far the issue is not corrected, though I have experimented and learned some things:

I had triggered Xorg by booting to Runlevel 5 in inittab, instead of launching the gdm daemon.  By booting to runlevel 3 without gdm (a terminal only launch?), typing reboot results in a proper colour shutdown and reboot.

Enabling gdm at runlevel 3 DOES result in the corrupted colours.

Further experimenting with the "vga=791,792,etc" in /boot/grub/menu.lst produced no visible change.

On rereading my initial post, I just want to clarify that these corrupted colors occur only during the shutdown portion of a reboot or a shutdown.

From what I know about how Linux desktops boot and shutdown, this color issue seems to be based in Xorg:  as Xorg turrns off and hands the screen back to the framebuffer (is this what controls the screen when Xorg isn't "on"?) the colors are corrupting.  So this is either an Xorg issue, a framebuffer issue, or a driver's interaction with either of those.  Am I missing some potential causes?  And I guess, what are the next moves to correct this?

I'm willing to do the footwork, but I'm still new to this level of Linux.  Any tips are appreciated,

Thanks,
Rob

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

In my opinion it is a framebuffer issue, since that's where you get dropped to when X is not running. From what you say it seems to me that your X driver messes it up (which is actually a bit surprising, because it shouldn't affect it at all). I'd say try changing your X driver to 'vesa' and boot like that. Vesa shouldn't do any bad stuff with your graphics card.

GuyNamedRob

Member

Registered: 2008-04-04

Posts: 15

Re: shutdown&reboot text has wrong colours

Hi,

I have solved the shutdown colors issue!  Thanks for the suggestions.  It did turn out to be the framebuffer's "vga=" setting.  After more experimentation, it turned out vga=773 setting works.  I don't know if I just missed it last night, but it works fine through several reboots now.

Thanks again,
Rob