Monitor goes stand-by when entering the text consoles

[syraxes]

Hello,

Here are the facts:
1. Ubuntu 7.10
2. The video card is detected as "intel 915" using the
driver "intel - experimental modesetting ..."
(i've left the configuration exactly as detected at install)
3. The graphical interface is working fine in 1280x1024 , 60hz
4. When pressing Ctrl+Alt+F(x) the monitor goes black.
The keyborad is functional and i can type in commands "blindly".
I also can come back to X with Ctrl+Alt+F7 .

5. With vga=0 or vga=normal I can initially see (in text mode)
the messages written while the different daemons are being started.
But after Xorg starts , the consoles become inoperable.

6. With vga=791/795/775/etc I can see the splash screen.
But the text consoles are still black.

7. I'm not sure whether framebuffer is working properly :
fbset says "/dev/fb0: No such file or directory"
(with vga=795 or 791)

My impression is that the cause of the problem is Xorg or
or the video driver , that is setting a broken video mode
when I press Ctrl+Alt+F1 .

My question is : does anyone happen to know some trick that
might fix the video mode used when switching from Xorg to
the text console? Preferably, I'd like to use a "real"
text mode , not framebuffer.


Thanks,
Adrian M.

[efe-0001]

Hi Adrian,

as You already guessed, there is a problem with the frame buffer: it is simply deactivated due to stability considerations. Must say I never had a problem with that.

How to activate (found that some time ago in another forum):

- Add a line containing "vesafb" to the file /etc/modules
- Comment out ("#") "vesafb" in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer
- set "vga=somewhat" in /boot/grub/menu.lst.
- Reboot.

And you should be done.

Maybe you also want to de-activate the spash screen in /boot/grub/menu.lst ("nosplash nosilent"). I prefer to see the messages during boot and shutdown...

On the other hand, i had hangs at shutdown/reboot because of the splash screen.

btw: what do you mean with "real text mode"? I dont know another console method than the frame buffer. OK, you can have a console via serial line on an ASCII terminal, but i think, those times have gone...

Hope it helps,

Edgar F.

[syraxes]

Edgar,

I've disabled gdm so that it is not executed automatically and
my consoles are fully functional. However, after starting Xorg
the consoles become unusable: the monitor goes to stand-by
when pressing ctrl+alt+Fn. Also, if I stop Xorg the consoles
remain unusable.
So in conclusion: the xorg driver does not restore the video
mode properly .

About what i mean by "real" text mode : yes, i want my consoles
to be ASCII.