[clue-tech] Ubuntu lock-up problems

[Dennis J Perkins]

On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 11:42 -0700, Michael J. Hammel wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 11:19 -0700, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> > The problem appears to be somewhere in X.  The Arch Linux boot disk,
> > which does not use X, never locked up.  The Ubuntu install disks for
> > 8.04 and 8.10 lock up, using either Ubuntu or Kubuntu.  Fedora 10 locks
> > up on the splash screen.
> 
> If you mean the multiple colored bars that go left to right during boot
> on F10, I believe that's a frame buffer display and not X.  That could
> mean that the kernel driver for your video chipset is not working
> properly with your hardware.

No, it's past the progress bars.  The splashscreen is displayed and I
can move the move, but the CDROM drive is still busy loading.  As soon
as it stops, the mouse is frozen.

> You can exit the frame buffer splash on F10 by hitting any key.  I just
> hold down the Ctrl or Shift key while the BIOS boot runs.  That should
> get you a text mode only boot up.

I'll try this later today.

> > I cannot switch Kubuntu, which is installed, to VGA.  I found that there
> > is no VGA driver.  I also tried VESA, and there is a VESA driver, but it
> > won't run.  The fglrx driver fails too.  Only the radeon driver wants to
> > run.
> 
> My bad.  The VGA driver is called "vesa".  It's a generic driver for
> VESA standards that runs in basic 800x600 (might do 1024x768) in up to
> 24bit mode.  See "man vesa".
> 
> If vesa won't run I'd say either this isn't a video problem or you're
> really hosed.  VESA is pretty much the bottom end, default fallback if
> no other X video will work.

I was very surprised that VESA failed.

> > I tried adding noacpi to the kernel options, but that doesn't help.
> 
> Assuming you can break out of graphical boot splashes, you should be
> able to get to the command line in single user mode.  At that point,
> you'd have to try and disable video drivers from the kernel.  I've never
> had to do that so I don't know what the impact would be.
> 
> Honestly, if VESA doesn't work for you, I'm thinking the video card/chip
> is fubar.  Unless you have some other device in the box on the PCI bus
> that's causing some kind of conflict.  If so, start pulling those out
> one at a time until the boot works.  Then you know the culprit.

I think the chip is good.  I was running LFS with GNOME for three years
with no problem.  I'm giving the computer to someone else (if I can get
past this problem) so I installed Kubuntu.  

Since this is a laptop, pulling devices will be kind of difficult.

> > I added NoDRI to xorg.conf, and that doesn't matter either.
> 
> If VESA isn't working then DRI wouldn't matter.  Your X server never
> started DRI with VESA.

True.  But the Radeon driver will use it.