ladasky
September 8th, 2012, 08:33 PM
Once again, I beseech the Ubuntu Gods for release from my suffering.
My configuration:
Gigabyte GA-MA78-US2H motherboard, 8 GB RAM, AMD x6 1100T CPU
NVidia 460 family GPU card
Ubuntu 11.10 OS, 64-bit, no other operating systems to complicate matters
Two hard drives operated in RAID1 configuration, administered by mdadm
I have found that I need a very recent NVidia GPU driver (version 295.59) (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=12022500#post12022500) to get this system to boot. Frequently, when Linux kernel upgrades come in, my system initially refuses to reboot. About four times out of five, I have to rebuild the video driver manually. I'm an old hand at this by now.
Due to some other problems which I believe were inconsequential (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039073), I did a fresh re-install of 11.10 recently, and I got kicked all the way back to the 3.0.0.12 kernel. Yesterday I accepted the kernel upgrade to 3.0.0.25.
On reboot, I got the high-resolution Ubuntu splash page and I thought -- good, I don't have to rebuild the video driver this time. Usually, when I have to rebuild the driver, I don't even get the splash page, just a blank Aubergine screen.
But then, the system just hung. Ctrl-Alt-F1 through -F6 did not bring up any terminals for me to use to log in and recompile the video driver. I shut the system down and restarted it. This time I did not get the splash page, only Aubergine.
This made me think that I had to go back and rebuild the video driver the way that I have to do when I first install the OS. So I got out my alternate install CD, booted into a rescue shell, and recompiled my video driver.
On reboot, I got the Ubuntu splash page again... and then it hung, again. I watched the system for several minutes. Occasionally I would see a little hard disk activity. Every 30 seconds or so I'm used to seeing a quick flash of my hard disk activity light, I think it's the ext4 file system doing some housekeeping. Interspersed with that, I saw a few, longer bits of hard disk activity. Ctrl-Alt-F1 through -F6 did nothing. After a while I rebooted with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
The system will still boot from the standard 11.10 CD. As long as I remember to go to the boot options menu, select the nomodeset option, and then "Try Ubuntu without installing", I can get the system to the GUI. Of course, I don't have mdadm when I boot from the CD, so I can't mount my RAID. But I can see both hard drives and all of their partitions if I run gparted. Everything seems to be intact.
So, does anyone have an idea what my problem might be this time? Thanks!
EDIT:
On re-reading my own earlier post, I noticed that I had similar symptoms once before. Linux kernel 3.0.0-12 through -20 would run with NVidia driver 295.40. When I upgraded the kernel to -21, I HAD to upgrade the NVidia driver to 295.59.
I'm currently investigating the hypothesis that I need to upgrade to a more current NVidia driver once again to support the -25 Linux kernel. I visted the NVidia web site, and the current Linux driver version is 304.43. I'll report back.
I find this maddening. Is there any way to AUTOMATE this part of the Linux upgrade process?
My configuration:
Gigabyte GA-MA78-US2H motherboard, 8 GB RAM, AMD x6 1100T CPU
NVidia 460 family GPU card
Ubuntu 11.10 OS, 64-bit, no other operating systems to complicate matters
Two hard drives operated in RAID1 configuration, administered by mdadm
I have found that I need a very recent NVidia GPU driver (version 295.59) (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=12022500#post12022500) to get this system to boot. Frequently, when Linux kernel upgrades come in, my system initially refuses to reboot. About four times out of five, I have to rebuild the video driver manually. I'm an old hand at this by now.
Due to some other problems which I believe were inconsequential (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039073), I did a fresh re-install of 11.10 recently, and I got kicked all the way back to the 3.0.0.12 kernel. Yesterday I accepted the kernel upgrade to 3.0.0.25.
On reboot, I got the high-resolution Ubuntu splash page and I thought -- good, I don't have to rebuild the video driver this time. Usually, when I have to rebuild the driver, I don't even get the splash page, just a blank Aubergine screen.
But then, the system just hung. Ctrl-Alt-F1 through -F6 did not bring up any terminals for me to use to log in and recompile the video driver. I shut the system down and restarted it. This time I did not get the splash page, only Aubergine.
This made me think that I had to go back and rebuild the video driver the way that I have to do when I first install the OS. So I got out my alternate install CD, booted into a rescue shell, and recompiled my video driver.
On reboot, I got the Ubuntu splash page again... and then it hung, again. I watched the system for several minutes. Occasionally I would see a little hard disk activity. Every 30 seconds or so I'm used to seeing a quick flash of my hard disk activity light, I think it's the ext4 file system doing some housekeeping. Interspersed with that, I saw a few, longer bits of hard disk activity. Ctrl-Alt-F1 through -F6 did nothing. After a while I rebooted with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
The system will still boot from the standard 11.10 CD. As long as I remember to go to the boot options menu, select the nomodeset option, and then "Try Ubuntu without installing", I can get the system to the GUI. Of course, I don't have mdadm when I boot from the CD, so I can't mount my RAID. But I can see both hard drives and all of their partitions if I run gparted. Everything seems to be intact.
So, does anyone have an idea what my problem might be this time? Thanks!
EDIT:
On re-reading my own earlier post, I noticed that I had similar symptoms once before. Linux kernel 3.0.0-12 through -20 would run with NVidia driver 295.40. When I upgraded the kernel to -21, I HAD to upgrade the NVidia driver to 295.59.
I'm currently investigating the hypothesis that I need to upgrade to a more current NVidia driver once again to support the -25 Linux kernel. I visted the NVidia web site, and the current Linux driver version is 304.43. I'll report back.
I find this maddening. Is there any way to AUTOMATE this part of the Linux upgrade process?