Problem - ATI Radeon X1950XTX + Dell 3007WFPHC = no boot

Sat Dec 5 19:42:21 UTC 2009

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Hi *,

As the subject says it already I have a problem regarding booting a
previously running Kubuntu 9.10 installation.

My system:

- - Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H motherboard
- - AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620 Quad-Core
- - 4GB RAM
- - ATI Radeon X1950XTX PEG

The kernel I tried first is the latest in Karmic: 2.6.31-15.50 (generic,
amd64). I also tried the vanilla 2.6.32 without change.

The situation is the following:

I wanted to change from a dual-headed CRT setup into a single-headed LCD
setup using the mentioned Dell 3007WFP-HC as I successfully run another
Dell 3007WFP-HC at work with a Radeon HD2400PRO. So I changed the
xorg.conf accordingly, turned off the system, plugged out the CRT's and
plugged in the Dell. Then I turned on the machine which brought me to
the usual grub menu but after that the display remained black and the
system doesn't boot any further. The backlight of the display is turned
on but nothing (not even a blinking cursor or something) is displayed
and the system sits there forever.

I can reboot the system using CTRL+ALT+DEL and if I plug off the monitor
cable than the kernel continues to boot. When the system is booted
without the monitor plugged in I plug it in, restart KDM and voila, all
things are fine and the display comes up properly. In addition there is
no warning and no error in the logs that would point me to any direction.

In the logs I see this:

...
[    2.250193] Freeing unused kernel memory: 728k freed

[    2.250388] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 7792k

[    2.395052] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded

[    2.395080] r8169 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 ...

[    2.395143] r8169 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64

[    2.395176]   alloc irq_desc for 27 on node 0

[    2.395179]   alloc kstat_irqs on node 0

[    2.395191] r8169 0000:02:00.0: irq 27 for MSI/MSI-X

[    2.395660] eth0: RTL8168c/8111c at 0xffffc90000672000, ...

[    2.395890] usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev

[    2.400429] input: Microsoft Microsoft 5-Button Mouse with ...
[    2.400502] generic-usb 0003:045E:0039.0001: input,hidraw0: ...
[    2.400536] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid

[    2.400538] usbhid: v2.6:USB HID core driver

[    2.403855] ohci1394 0000:03:0e.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 ...

[    2.470131] ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): ...
[    3.780218] ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] ...

...wait, wait, wait ... nothing happens at all...
...pluggin off the Dell, and whoa:

[  178.848332] PM: Starting manual resume from disk

[  178.848336] PM: Resume from partition 8:17

[  178.848338] PM: Checking hibernation image.

[  178.848579] PM: Error -22 checking image file

[  178.848583] PM: Resume from disk failed.

[  178.879493] EXT4-fs (sda5): mounted filesystem with ...

[  183.587543] Adding 3903752k swap on /dev/sda1.  ...

[  183.594043] udev: starting version 147

[  183.712255] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team

[  183.872782] lp: driver loaded but no devices found

[  183.915753] EDAC MC: Ver: 2.1.0 Dec  3 2009
...

Using a different graphics card (a Radeon HD4770) works as expected
during boot (although other problems occur later which are caused by the
young driver support). And as my problem occurs in a very early stage of
the kernel boot process I don't see that it should be a driver problem.

Recovery modes work as expected too.

Thanx for any help,

Ancoron
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