Black screen with blinking cursor after login (solved!)

[rayyu]

This happened on the 32-bit editions of Porteus 2.1, Razor-QT and KDE versions--both downloaded from the links in the release announcement and created through the wizard

Btw, my laptop is an Lenovo Ideapad s110, and I've never been able to install any version of Porteus on it

Anyway, what happens is that after login, I try to start x and it fails, I end up with a black screen and a blinking cursor, which I can control with the mouse somewhat--clicking, holding, and dragging selects an area of...well, nothing. It's like I was highlighting a paragraph of black letters on a black background.

Sometimes this happens before I'm even able to finish logging in

Any idea what this is? I'd really love to get Porteus on my netbook

[fanthom]

smells like GMA500 poulsbo chipset.
please boot 2.1 to text mode and run 'lspci -knn > /mnt/your_stick', copy also /var/log/dmesg on your usb (or any other writable media).
would be nice if you could deliver Xorg.0.log so please run 'startx' and when you get a hang switch to VT2 with CTRL+ALT+F2 -> login as root -> copy /var/log/Xorg.0.log on the stick.
please reboot to any working OS and upload these 3 files to pastebin.com and link here for a review.

thanks

[rayyu]

Hi, I was hoping to be able to do it myself but I'm afraid it's beyond my newbie powers

I had porteus installed on a usb and booted into text mode. I followed your instructions
lspci -knn > /mnt/usb
cp /var/log/dmesg /mnt/usb
startx
ctrl-alt-f2
login
cp /var/log/Xorg.0.log /mnt/usb

However, after that, my usb stopped working completely. Wouldn't boot, wouldn't show up on the two laptops I tried. So I installed porteus on another usb.
So I repeat the steps again, but this time I copy the three files to an existing home partition on my netbook, which has #! installed. I reboot, and my /home partition is inaccessible. Couldn't open it, gparted didn't really recognize it. Oh well, the #! installation wasn't important anyway

I reformatted the entire hard disk with gparted and repeated the steps, copying the files into the newly created /dev/sda1. While I was in text mode, "ls /mnt/sda1" showed that the three files were in there, but when I booted into another livecd, that partition was, again, inaccessible and unrecognizable.

It sounds strange and unlikely, but it seems like copying the files into a partition or a usb made it unusable After a few hours, I have to concede this battle to sleep U^_^ Sorry, would you mind telling me where I went wrong here?

[francois]

1) Reformat partition ext2 for most usb and then leave 1mb for swap. Install porteus anew. I you get in text mode, use xrandr command and give us the output. Give also the output for the lspci command (we are looking for the graphic controller info, especially). See:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3286 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1366x768       60.2*+
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3     56.2  
   640x480        59.9  
VGA1 connected 1920x1080+1366+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+
   1680x1050      60.0  
...
...
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
root@porteus:~# 

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09)
...
...
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2230 (rev c4)
root@porteus:~# 

2) buy a usb stick said to be compatible linux. Do everything anew.

[rayyu]

Odd--my problem appeared when I tried to start Porteus with a CD.
I did as Francois said, used another laptop to install Porteus on a usb and booted my netbook with it.
Everything works!

Don't think it was a faulty cd because I've used several brand new ones in the past...either way, everything works and I'm ecstatic. Thank you!

[francois]

Good for you. Enjoy with us this wonderfull distribution. 8)