Gutsy rc boot is a dark experience

[Bruce Marshall]

On Tuesday 16 October 2007, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> I've been running the gutsy leading edge on my X31 laptop for a while now.
> Recent updates, combined with some ill-advised meddling on my part, took
> the system to a point where it would no longer boot.  So I grabbed the
> RC release and installed from the beginning.  Most things seem to work
> well, but...
>
> Once grub passes control to the kernel, the screen goes black.  It stays
> that way until the login screen shows up.  In between is a
> discouragingly long time when the only sign of life is the disk activity
> LED.  I've learned to be patient, knowing that the system will
> eventually come back to me, but it sure would be nice to have my display
> back during the boot process.
>
> Has anybody else seen this?  Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> jon

Yes, this is a problem.....

The workaround for the moment would be to add   vga=normal  on the kernel boot 
line.

I would also remove for the moment the   "quiet splash" options on the kernel 
line.  This should give you a text line boot where you can see what is 
happening and then you can work from there to find the right options.

I think something is seriously farkled with the kernel's framebuffer usage as 
the settings I used to use in feisty (vga=795) no longer work in  gutsy.

I'm still playing with the settings.