Ubuntu Natty 64 boots into black screen

[realstarman]

My Ubuntu Natty 64bit boots into black screen. Grub appears and after selecting Ubuntu, there is a blinking cursor for some secs and then the black screen.
It's a dual boot and the other side (Windows 7) boots just fine.
When I edit the grub menu and boot with acpi=off, Ubuntu boots just fine.

After install, Ubuntu didn't have these problems. Only after about 2 months usage, the problem started surfacing. I am trying to find out what I have done that could cause it.
Rather than a complete reinstall – which is a hassle because I am actively working on this machine and rebuilding it would cost me more than a day, I'd like to debug it. (besides, just reinstalling doesn't really tell me what's wrong, it's just potentially curing a symptom without revealing the cause).

Graphics Adapter is ATI. I am not running proprietary drivers. I tried this directly after the first install and ran into issues with Unity not coming up.

Laptop is a Lenovo Edge E520.

I checked syslog, and lshw, etc. but could not make sense of what I found and found no post on the www that could help me.
I am not new to Ubuntu but do not consider myself a power user or an expert (Rather a user with some experience and IT-knowledge).

Would appreciate any hint (besides reinstall the system).

Some info I used during my first attempts to find the root cause:

Uname -a shows:
starman@thinky:/var/log$ uname -a

Linux thinky 2.6.38-11-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:17:25 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I checked the syslog and found that the unsuccessful boot seems to stop while logging the RAM map:

Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: imklog 4.6.4, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.6.4" x-pid="440" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] (re)start
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky rsyslogd: rsyslogd's groupid changed to 103
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky rsyslogd: rsyslogd's userid changed to 101
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky rsyslogd-2039: Could no open output pipe '/dev/xconsole' [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ]
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Linux version 2.6.38-11-generic (buildd@allspice) (gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu4) ) #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:17:25 UTC 2011 (Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic 2.6.38.8)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic root=UUID=395a566b-9851-489f-976d-fee88fef92a0 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009d800 (usable)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000000009d800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000ba99f000 (usable)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000ba99f000 - 00000000bae9f000 (reserved)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bae9f000 - 00000000baf9f000 (ACPI NVS)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000baf9f000 - 00000000bafff000 (ACPI data)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bafff000 - 00000000bb000000 (usable)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bb000000 - 00000000bfa00000 (reserved)
Oct 12 06:38:35 thinky kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000f8000000Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky kernel: imklog 4.6.4, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.6.4" x-pid="470" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] (re)start
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky rsyslogd: rsyslogd's groupid changed to 103
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky rsyslogd: rsyslogd's userid changed to 101
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky rsyslogd-2039: Could no open output pipe '/dev/xconsole' [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ]
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Linux version 2.6.38-11-generic (buildd@allspice) (gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu4) ) #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:17:25 UTC 2011 (Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic 2.6.38.8)
Oct 12 06:39:29 thinky kernel: [    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic root=UUID=395a566b-9851-489f-976d-fee88fef92a0 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 acpi=off
… <continue with successful boot>

lshw shows for display:

           *-display UNCLAIMED
                description: VGA compatible controller
                product: NI Whistler [AMD Radeon HD 6600M Series]
                vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
                version: 00
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller cap_list
                configuration: latency=0
                resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:e2600000-e261ffff ioport:5000(size=256) memory:e2620000-e263ffff
        *-display
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
             version: 09
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
             configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
             resources: irq:18 memory:e0000000-e03fffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff ioport:6000(size=64)

[realstarman]

Anybody with some system/debugging knowledge willing to help?

[effenberg0x0]

Hybrid Graphics. Not my specialty, unfortunately. But Ubuntu docs has a section for it:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

Regards,
Effenberg

[realstarman]

Not sure, if this is the root cause though.

Kernel seems to be ok:

starman@thinky:~$ sudo grep -i switcheroo /boot/config-2.6.*
Password: **

/boot/config-2.6.38-10-generic:CONFIG_VGA_SWITCHEROO=y
/boot/config-2.6.38-11-generic:CONFIG_VGA_SWITCHEROO=y
/boot/config-2.6.38-8-generic:CONFIG_VGA_SWITCHEROO=y

But switcheroo is not enabled (no switch file):

starman@thinky:~$ sudo ls -l /sys/kernel/
insgesamt 0
drwx------  15 root root    0 2011-10-19 08:22 debug
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 kexec_crash_loaded
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 kexec_crash_size
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 kexec_loaded
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root    0 2011-10-19 06:30 mm
-r--r--r--   1 root root  380 2011-10-19 06:30 notes
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 profiling
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root    0 2011-10-19 08:22 security
drwxr-xr-x 106 root root    0 2011-10-19 08:23 slab
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 uevent_helper
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 08:22 uevent_seqnum
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 2011-10-19 06:30 vmcoreinfo

Not sure what I should do now....

[KingYaba]

I get this problem, on rare occasions, when I installed updates during the previous session. Something about it boinking x because when I'm in CLI the command startx won't work. Boot Ubuntu into failsafe graphic mode and uninstall your ATI driver. Reboot regularly and reinstall. Then reboot again.

Go to the AMD/ATI website and try the proprietary driver.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Follow the instructions from the Wiki.

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page

[realstarman]

Upgraded to oneiric. Boot works now (but screen resolution is wrong and cannot install ATI driver -> new thread).

Thanks for the help so far.