Graphics Resolution- Upgrade /Blank Screen after reboot

[ladasky]

Hello again, bogan,

Thanks for sticking with me.

Does that include trying 'Ctrl+Alt+F1' or F2-6 ? Do any of those give text that show where the hang-up occurred.?
Afterwards, does 'Ctrl+Alt+F7' show text, or return you to the Aubergine screen. [?blank??Cursor?]

So, you are basically recommending that I try bulldozing on to the next step, even if I do not see what MAFoElffen's guide tells me to expect? OK, I tried. None of the tty key combinations give me anything. Sorry. I'm still staring at Aubergine and quiet hard disks. I tried over a ten-minute period to get a keyboard response.

But as long as we're ignoring the instructions, let me ask you this. Is there a way for me to install that new 295.49 driver revision to my hard disk, when I have booted from the alternate install CD? After all, I was able to edit /etc/default/grub. I should be able to do more sophisticated things. I'm thinking that perhaps I don't even need to edit the boot line, if only I have a working video driver installed.

Using another computer, I downloaded the NVidia driver installer, NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.49.run (which is the right one for my system, I have an AMD CPU and I'm running 64-bit), and put it on a thumb drive. I mounted the thumb drive from the alternate install CD shell, and tried to run the NVidia installer. It failed, though I did get a few prompt screens first. Maybe I have to do something with chroot (an unfamiliar command to me) to make sure that files are going where they should?

It is, as you have found, very confusing.

Oh hell yes. As Bones would have said: "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a software engineer!"

[bogan]

Hi!, ladasky,

It is a very long time since I tried it myself when I was still very much a newbie, but the following is an extract from Post #2 of this thread:
[Quote]

To mount an installed system from a LiveCD:
(This example is to install drivers, but similarly could be used to mount a system and reinstall grub or kernel image)

1. Boot a Live-CD,
2. Find your "Installed" partition, e.g. /dev/sda5 (where you've installed the OS ... the "/" partition)

 sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

3. If you have a dedicated boot partition: sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot

 sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev 
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys 
sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc 

 # by bogan: I think the 1st 'proc' should be 'bind'

4. "changeroot" to /mnt

 sudo chroot /mnt /bin/bash

5. Now you're "on" the installed system, see the chroot man page for details

Do what you need to do from there, like install drivers, install a kernel, install grub, etc. Once you are through, Press <cntrl><x> or just enter the command "exit". That gets you out of the chroot. Then unmount your mounts... If you don't... oh well. [End Quote]

From there, as yours is a nvidia card, go to the instructions in Post #280 [ about page #71] or use

nvidia-installer -f

if you feel brave.

If it were not nvidia then Post #2 has an index including other options.

I should perhaps add that I have felt,from reading your first Post, that what you describe is a bit different from most reports i have read; otherwise I would have recommended the above much sooner. I tend to ask for as much info as is practical, to avoid suggesting what is just a guess. EDIT: Added to which, it is a Raid system, about which I know nothing, except that it adds even more complexities with Linux.

Best of luck. Chao!, bogan.

[ladasky]

At 2:30 AM yesterday, my Aubergine Nightmare finally came to an end!

So, you are basically recommending that I try bulldozing on to the next step, even if I do not see what MAFoElffen's guide tells me to expect? OK... as long as we're ignoring the instructions, let me ask you this. Is there a way for me to install that new 295.49 driver revision to my hard disk, when I have booted from the alternate install CD? After all, I was able to edit /etc/default/grub. I should be able to do more sophisticated things. I'm thinking that perhaps I don't even need to edit the boot line, if only I have a working video driver installed.

So, last night I FINALLY accomplished exactly that. My comments follow. Yes, they are long. And there's a question at the end.

It is a very long time since I tried it myself when I was still very much a newbie, but the following is an extract from Post #2 of this thread:
[Quote]

To mount an installed system from a LiveCD:
(This example is to install drivers, but similarly could be used to mount a system and reinstall grub or kernel image)

1. Boot a Live-CD,

All right, so those of us who are using RAID cannot boot from the LiveCD, we have to use the Alternate Install CD. This makes some things harder, and some things easier.

When you boot the Alternate Install CD, select "Rescue a broken system". A series of questions will follow which makes it look like you are re-installing your operating system. The first time I saw these questions, I panicked and quit. Don't do this, keep going. Yes, it will say "Installing the base system." I now think it's installing this base system onto a virtual RAM disk. Yes, you will re-enter your host name, so you can connect to the Net.

Eventually you will reach a menu with partition options. Do not select any of your physical partitions to mount. Instead, select "Assemble RAID". On the next page, press the space bar to select "automatic." You will then be returned to the partition options menu. Your RAID partitions should now be included among the choices on the partition menu.

The RAID partitions are named logically, but perhaps cryptically. On my machine, the RAID1 partition that was built from /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 was named /dev/md/0; that from /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2 was named /dev/md/1; and so on. Select your RAID's boot partition and proceed. If you have a separate /home partition, you won't be using it in this session, and it doesn't matter whether you mount it.

Finally, you will reach the Rescue menu. Select "Execute a shell in <your root partition>". You will get a "#" prompt.

The end result of this is that steps 2-5 of the LiveCD guide that bogan posted (and which I quoted below, to keep things nice and parallel) will have been handled for you. All necessary devices are mounted, and you are root. You should never need to type sudo while working in this shell.

2. Find your "Installed" partition, e.g. /dev/sda5 (where you've installed the OS ... the "/" partition)

 sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

3. If you have a dedicated boot partition: sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot

 sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev 
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys 
sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc 

 # by bogan: I think the 1st 'proc' should be 'bind'

(Aside from ladasky: I'm pretty sure that proc is correct, it is one of the virtual file system types listed in the mount docs. In any case, as I write above, this seems to be handled automatically when you execute a shell from the Alternate Install CD.)

4. "changeroot" to /mnt

 sudo chroot /mnt /bin/bash

5. Now you're "on" the installed system, see the chroot man page for details

Do what you need to do from there, like install drivers, install a kernel, install grub, etc. Once you are through, Press <cntrl><x> or just enter the command "exit". That gets you out of the chroot. Then unmount your mounts... If you don't... oh well. [End Quote]

OK, I updated grub from here (several days ago), and then installed the NVidia 295.49 driver (last night).

Now, the instructions diverge again from here. The text console that you get from the Alternate Install CD shell is the least functional console I have used in a LONG time. Navigation with arrow keys is crippled. Page scrolling is crippled. You cannot even edit files in vi, unless you enter this command first:

export TERM=linux

I don't remember where I found this tip, and I'm not exactly sure what it does yet. But do it, unless you want to do all your work in sed. Even after you do this, scrolling is not fully implemented. Documents which run longer than a screen's length are still hard to edit.

There's supposedly another terminal-based text editor called nano, but the Alternate Install CD environment doesn't appear to include it. In any case, if it depends on scrolling like vi does, it might have the same problems. And in case anyone reading this isn't clear, one major difference between booting from the Alternate CD and the LiveCD is that, in the former case, graphics modes were never started. So using gedit is also out of the question.

From there, as yours is a nvidia card, go to the instructions in Post #280 [ about page #71] or use

nvidia-installer -f

if you feel brave. If it were not nvidia then Post #2 has an index including other options.

Page 71? I get ten posts per page, so it's on page 28 for me. In any case, here's a link to the post you mean. I will quote directly from it here, and supply my in-line comments as I did above. No, I did not feel brave enough to try nvidia-installer.

Solution Step I
Possible problem may be that the nvidia package you are using through ubuntu is not building correctly for "your" Linux kernel.

1.) First we'll do some cleanup, prep and make sure everything is there for any dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc-4.5 g++-4.5 libxi-dev libxmu-dev freeglut3-dev
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r'
sudo nvidia-installer --uninstall
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

You may get some file not found messages on the 4th or 5th command. That is okay. continue. We just want to make sure that older modules are removed or not there so that they don't cause a conflict.

I followed this step as written, though I didn't understand sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r' at first. It's shorthand. What you should do here is execute the command uname -r. Then, tack on the output to the "linux-headers-" argument, to get the name of the correct linux-headers file. Example: I got "3.0.0.12-generic" from uname -r. So then I executed apt-get install linux-headers-3.0.0.12-generic .

2.) Next we want to check and update our blacklist to make sure any files and modules that we know of can cause conflicts are in there.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

We want to make sure they have these lines... Some of these wouldn't be on a fresh install but would be a problem if it was updated from a previous version. Add these lines and save:

blacklist vga16fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist rivatv
blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96

The important part an a fresh install, is that nvidia and nouveau do not like each other!!! They cannot coexist. The nvidia-X listed above would be if you were going with whatever was current for a Goeforce 6100 and above nvidia card. You could remove the nvidia-173 or nvidia-96 lines if you using those drivers. The top 6 in the list above should be there.

Again, I followed this as written -- although, as I mentioned, editing files from this console is proving to be very difficult.

Hey, and where's step 3? Oh well...

4.) Download Newest Nvidia drivers from here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index5.aspx?lang=en-us
Please write down the filename and where you saved it to.

Did it earlier, as I mentioned. I had it on a thumb drive which appeared on my system as /dev/sdc1. To mount it, I did the following:

mkdir /media/usb (you can name the mounting directory however you like)
mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb

When I was done working, the /media/usb directory persisted. You might want to clean it up when you're done, with a rmdir /media/usb.

5.). To install these drivers, Xorg cannot be running. You need to shut down the X-Session. You can either do this by going to a terminal session and:

sudo service lightdm stop

If you are using natty or earlier shut down GDM:

sudo service gdm stop

This step is irrelevant when using the Alternate Install CD, and in fact generates some error messages. As I mentioned above, you've never started any graphics services. So, there are no graphics services to be stopped.

6.) Login and change directory to the directory where you saved your file. (Remember you wrote that down in step 4.)

7.) Mark the downloaded file as executable.

sudo chmod a+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-270.41.19.run

You may have to substitute the name of the "runfile" filename to the one that you downloaded for your card. (Remember you wrote that down.) The command above will mark this file as executable.

I did all of this as described, except, of course, that you don't have to "log in" at the beginning of step 6, you are already logged in.

OK, now for one more problem. We're almost done...

8.) Install drivers

    sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-270.41.19.run

You may have to substitute the name of the "runfile" filename to the one that you downloaded for your card. (Remember you wrote that down...) This will install and run the nvidia-installer. You have to have a working Internet connection to run this installer.

This will not work from the Alternate Install CD text console. The problem is that NVidia's installer assumes by default that you have a pretty high-functioning console, one that can run an ncurses interface. You can't! The console is awful! There's a license agreement at the beginning of the installer, and you have to accept the license agreement by clicking on a button with your mouse. Well, of course, you don't have a mouse. And if there are any keys on the keyboard which allow you to navigate to that button and click it, I never found them. Any key combination I tried said that I had declined the license agreement, and aborted the installation.

You need to override the installer's default assumption that you can run ncurses. This is how:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-<whatever version>.run --ui=none

I got that information from this page at NVidia's web site. (Yeah, RTFM. Half the trick, I've come to realize, is figuring out which of the TFM's to R.)

The installer will then proceed in an all-text mode, suitable for a dumb terminal.

From here, I typed exit, which brought me back to the Alternate Install CD's rescue menu. I selected "reboot."

AND. IT. WORKED.

I did not need to continue with these final two steps (hey, two Step 9's? Whatever.)

9.) Some versions of the installer miss this step (configure X), if it did skip it, then

sudo nvidia-xconfig

9.) Start GDM or LightDM according to your version of Ubuntu. Example:

sudo service gdm start

Hopefully it will now load. At least if you did all this, we are pretty sure that the correct current drivers are built for your current linux kernel.

Best of luck. Chao!, bogan.

I did, eventually, have good luck! Thanks to you, and to MAFoElffen!


Now, I said that I had questions. Here they are.

The very first thing that my fresh installation of Ubuntu 11.10 did for me was... to offer me hundreds of updates. Among these is the offer to update my kernel from 3.0.0.12-generic, which is what's on the installation CD, to 3.0.0.19.

Wait a minute. Didn't I just walk through the valley of the shadow of death to ensure that my CPU kernel and my video driver were built using the same compiler revision? If I start changing my kernel, what are the odds that I could break this thing all over again?

And now this has me thinking about the point of keeping the older Linux kernels accessible in GRUB. I never understood what would, and what would not, be altered between kernel revision bumps. If I accept the kernel upgrade, do I have a fail-safe, or not? I do not use Windows much, but I've noticed that it includes an option to roll your system back to the last known working configuration. If each new Linux kernel installation is a checkpoint, that would be good to know.

[bogan]

Hi!, ladasky, Congratulations!! You made it! Raid as well.

The moral is: Always fully update before any system changes!!

You Posted:

The very first thing that my fresh installation of Ubuntu 11.10 did for me was... to offer me hundreds of updates. Among these is the offer to update my kernel from 3.0.0.12-generic, which is what's on the installation CD, to 3.0.0.19.

Wait a minute. Didn't I just walk through the valley of the shadow of death to ensure that my CPU kernel and my video driver were built using the same compiler revision? If I start changing my kernel, what are the odds that I could break this thing all over again?

When a driver is installed from the producer's Download site files, following any update to the kernal or header files, it will usually be necessary to reinstall the drivers affected.

In my experience, updating 11.10 from 3.0.0-12 to -13 & -14 needed a re-install, as did from -16 to -19, the others did not. Presumably, it depends on your system and just what the kernal changes involve.

Not having a Raid system I either re- run the desired NVIDIA...run file, or use nvidia-installer -f and that is that. For you it sounds much more complex. Do you still have to use the Aternate LiveCD/Usb next time? Can you not do it from the installed system??

I thought the need to use the LiveCD/Usb was only to overcome a situation when booting to even a text tty was impossible.

Also for me there is no problem in navigation in the nvidia installer, the arrow keys do it normally.

Chao!, bogan.

[oboonto]

Hello,
I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop on an Acer Aspire One D257 netbook (2GBRAM, 500GB HDD) from a live USB stick. It boots and runs perfectly as long as I don't pull the stick. When I try to boot from HDD I get the symptom described above - blank screen with blinking underscore cursor.

I followed the Troubleshooting Flow Chart
Step 1. Do you have a Grub Menu?
- No: While booting, Press shift key (don't hold down) multiple times to see if the Grub menu will come up.

- No, it doesn't, and after 10 seconds the disk will spin down.

- - If no, comment out /etc/default/grub/ GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=00. and rerun "update-grub" chroot'ed from a LiveCD... instructions second half of post #3.

I have to boot from a live stick every time and the running system looks and feels like running from HDD - am I chroot'ed anyway? How do I tell?

I hesitate doing things I don't really understand. The file grub exists, but it's in /etc/default/, not in /etc/default/grub/. Is it safe I edit the file and rerun "update-grub" ?

I've looked for the GRUB menu list and other GRUB stuff but it seems I have no GRUB installed yet. I could live without it, I only got one system on this disk. If it only would boot from it...

Will I have to configure and install GRUB all manually or is there a chance it will set up automatically?

I guess I'm not a complete noob but googling all the GRUB/GRUB2 stuff leaves me more confused than I was before Can nobody really make a smart bootloader/bootmanager that works without problems?

[bogan]

Hi!, oboontu,

You Posted:

The file grub exists, but it's in /etc/default/, not in /etc/default/grub/. Is it safe I edit the file and rerun "update-grub" ?

Yes, It is safe to edit /etc/default/grub, and run "update-grub", after you have 'chroot'ed.

You need to use 'gksu gedit /etc/default/grub' or 'gksu nautilus /etc/default/', and double-click on 'grub'; in order to have permission to Save the edit.

It looks, to me, as if the Grub loader got installed on the USB. If so you would need to follow the instructions to purge and re-install grub grub-pc & grub-common.

EDIT: Or try the short-cut:

 sudo fdisk -lu

This will list the partitions, note the first three letters, sda or sdb...etc of the HDD partition, & substitute your last letter [ no number] for the X in sdX in this command:

 sudo grub-install /dev/sdX

Then

 sudo update-grub

and re-boot.

Chao!, bogan.

[oboonto]

That helped,
thank you very much bogan!!!

I'll print out a GRUB manual before my next Ubuntu installation. Maybe that will be GRUB3 or GRUB4 as my current 12.04 is (supposed to be) LTS

BTW, I experienced log-in problems this morning. I can't log in to ubuntuforums.org from the new Ubuntu. I had two Windows machines already logged in and logged one out but that doesn't help. Please don't reply, it's way off topic here. If the problem persists I won't post again anyway

Many thanks and best regards,
oboontu

[bogan]

Hi!, All.

There is a new nvidia driver version 295.53 available from nvidia downloads. This Link is for the 32 bit version, check you get the correct one.
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/linux...driver-uk.html

Edit: Updated Thursday May 17th;

nvidia-installer --latest

now returns: v295.53 and the currently installed version, without altering anything.

nvidia-installer -f

will install 295.53 after un-installing the previous version.

NVNews says of version 295.53:
QUOTE:
Please note: This NVIDIA Linux graphics driver release supports GeForce 6xxx and newer NVIDIA GPUs,
GeForce4 and older GPUs are supported through the 96.43.xx and 71.86.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers.
GeForce FX GPUs are supported through the 173.14.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers.


bogan.

[canoemoose]

Hi all,
I've just upgraded to 12.04 and am now having graphics issues.

I've got a homebuilt desktop with an ATI Radeon HD 5770, which I run dual-headed. Under previous versions of Ubuntu, I used the proprietary drivers as obtained direct from AMD as these worked the best.

After upgrading, a normal boot from GRUB dumped me at a black screen.
I had no option for safe graphics mode on a recovery mode boot, but I was able to install the proprietary drivers from the command line.
A normal boot now dumps me, via Plymouth, to a console login on tty1 - nicely modeset and all.
Attempting either "sudo service lightdm start" or "startx" causes a hard freeze.

Safe graphics mode is now available, but refuses to work - when I select "Run in low graphics mode for just one session", after the "stand by one minute while the display restarts" message I get thrown back to the recovery menu. Nothing interesting is happening on any tty.

If I select "Reconfigure graphics" (to attempt to not use the proprietary drivers) and reboot, a normal boot dumps me at a non-modeset console login on tty1, and the X server refuses to start as before. Low graphics mode behaves in the same way.

What further info can I provide, and what should I try next?
The system booted fine from a live CD.

[bogan]

Hi! canoemoose,

I do not know a lot about AMD/ATI video cards, but if you have worked your way through MAFoElffen's Step-by-Step Troubleshooter in Post #1, without remedy, then I would suggest disabling or removing the AMD drivers and see what the default drivers produce.

I recognize that I am presuming there are default AMD drivers, as there are for nvidia's, but no doubt someone who knows better will correct me if I am wrong.

Chao!, bogan.