[Lubuntu] Some PC's or LTSP clients stall during boot at a blank, black screen

[John Hupp]

It was a slow-dawning realization for me as I continued to research 
this, but I too was concluding that I needed various 
xserver-xorg-video-* packages.  However, checking just now, I find that 
I already have the meta-package installed (xserver-xorg-video-all) that 
installs their whole suite.

I see that the binary drivers fglrx and fglrx-updates are available but 
not installed.  So perhaps those are an option here, though I may have 
read somewhere that there may be some complications uninstalling those 
if they don't provide a solution.

I'm now wondering how I can troubleshoot what xorg is doing.  On the 
server, I have /var/log/Xorg.0.log to look at, for instance, and though 
I don't know how to read that very well, I can tell that it selects a 
certain set of drivers to try to load, and provides various kinds of 
information about how they loaded (or didn't) and with what settings.  
But in this case with LTSP clients, though I have syslog messages being 
forwarded from the clients to the server, that does not include the xorg 
log messages, right?  If that's so, then perhaps I would want to ssh in 
to /var/log/Xorg.0.log on the client, but my current recollection is 
that ssh to the client fails when I get these stalled startups.  I think 
I need to double-check that.

Can I force usage of a certain driver?  I read that this was supported 
with xorg.conf, but that does not exist by default now, and I think Xorg 
uses an automated configuration system called KMS, about which I know 
next to nothing.  But perhaps a configuration via xorg.conf is still 
respected/supported?

-----------------

In any case, as a result of running the lspci and lshw commands with 
several setups, I now have a better identification of a few of the 
hardware items:

Worked:
- PCI Matrox Millennium II MGA 2164W (PCI card)
- Intel 82810E (integrated)
- ATI RV200 QW [Radeon 7500]
- ATI Rage 128 Pro AGP
- ATI Rage 128 RF/SG AGP
- HP VectaVL PC w/ integrated video, probably either:
         Matrox G250 2X AGP
         Matrox Millennium G400 4X AGP

Partially Worked (got past the blank, black screen but then failed somehow):
- Diamond STL III S540 XTRM32M 82 (AGP card)
- Diamond Speedstar A50 with SiS 6326AGP chip (AGP card)

Failed:
- Trident 3DImage 9850 (AGP card)
- S3 Trio64V+ (PCI card)
- Diamond Viper with Power Weitek 9000/9001 and Oak Technology T9351 
chips (PCI card)
- ATI 210888GX [Mach64 GX] (PCI card)
- ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 1x/2x

On 12/8/2012 2:41 PM, Ioannis Vranos wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 7:17 PM, John Hupp <lubuntu at prpcompany.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for having a look at this.
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto
>> I didn't detail this fact in this thread, but for the cards that stall at a
>> blank, black screen during a normal boot, I can configure LTSP to just boot
>> to a shell (successfully) rather than to trying to load ldm, which results
>> in the stalled boot.  From the sell I can use the commands mentioned in the
>> article:
>>      lspci | grep VGA
>>      sudo lshw -C video
>> I can get Lubuntu's identification of the current card and find out if it is
>> supposed to be supported (from the next link).
>>
>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCards
>> Although who knows if that supported-cards info will be current.  I thought
>> I read somewhere about some distros that newer libraries were causing more
>> regressions for older video hardware.
>
> Had you a look at the xserver-xorg-video packages? For examples, see below.
>
>
>
>> Worked:
>> - PCI Matrox Millennium II MGA 2164W (PCI card)
>> - Intel 82810E (integrated)
>> - An ATI-based AGP card sold as a MIC E-G012-02-1214(B)
>> - ATI Rage 128 Pro (AGP card)
>> - ATI Rage 128 (AGP card)
>> - HP VectaVL PC w/ integrated video, probably either:
>>          Matrox G250 2X AGP
>>          Matrox Millennium G400 4X AGP
>>
>> Partially Worked (got past the blank, black screen but then failed somehow):
>> - Diamond STL III S540 XTRM32M 82 (AGP card)
>> - Diamond Spdstr A50 with SiS 6326AGP chip (AGP card)
>>
>> Failed:
>> - Trident 3DImage 9850 (AGP card)
> Have you installed the xserver-xorg-video-trident package?
>
>> - S3 Trio64V+ (PCI card)
> Have you installed xserver-xorg-video-s3 for this? And so on.
>
>
>> - Diamond Viper with Power Weitek 9000/9001 and Oak Technology T9351 chips
>> (PCI card)
>> - ATI Mach64 (PCI card)
>> - eMachines eTower 500i w/ integrated video, probably:
>>          ATI Rage Pro Turbo 2X AGP
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/lubuntu-users/attachments/20121208/7a3a6752/attachment.html>