Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6) - RESOLVED

[jglen490]

I have a bug #193125, that I am trying to validate as fixed in II. The bad news is that no Alpha so far has successfully booted on my machine. My laptop is somewhat long in the tooth, but no matter what I do, the Alphas get to a certain point in the live cd boot process and then die. Of course it's impossible to look at any logs, since it's a live cd never even gets to a command line, much less a GUI logon screen. All I can "see" is a very briefly displayed message of some sort, then the screen immediately blanks, the CD drive settles into silence and no input device responds.

The first thing I do at the initial menu is select F6 and blank out the "quiet" parameter. I leave the "splash" parameter as it has proven useful as a kind of landmark as to where the error might be occurring; and that is right after the Kubuntu splash clears away, the mystery message is displayed (I think it's two lines) and immediately the screen blanks.

It may be an X problem, but the Savage driver works quite well in 8.04 and presented no problem upon initial install of HH.

I'm not willing to try an actual install as I don't have a lot of disk space and I sure as heck will not sacrifice my existing, working HH to something that may not ever work on my platform.

My machine is an IBM ThinkPad T20 (PIII 700mhz/512 MB/12 GB). The video system is 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV, and audio is a Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]. Very vanilla, fairly old, but there should be no problems.

I know it's early yet, but it's weird that to me that this hardware should present any problems at all as I know others have installed successfully with much more esoteric hardware.

Any thoughts?

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Yeah, I don't have any thoughts either - at least none that are good.

This do know, that others are having reasonable success with Intrepid on various other hardware platforms. I must conclude that my hardware is non grata, for some reason.

I've been trying Kubuntu, to no avail, so I tried Ubuntu a couple of times. Before trying I checked the md5, just as I did with Kubuntu. I used a low speed in K3B (4x) and selected to verify after the burn, just as I did with Kubuntu. I tried various variations with option F6 once I booted to the initial menu, just as I did with Kubuntu. I can't be 100% sure, but it appears to die right after trying to start kdm, or gdm today. The screen goes blank and the cursor goes to the upper left corner for a very short time. The CD rattles a short time, then settles and stops. The only thing that works after that is the power button.

I guess it must be the video circuit, a Savage/IX-MV. Old stuff, but simple and it always works, even in those cases where I have needed to adjust xorg.conf, for one setting or other. Since this is a laptop, there's nothing I can do about that.

I guess I'll just wait until the end of October when the final comes out and see if that works. I think I've burned enough CDs for now.

ADDED: I have filed Bug #275045.

[jdtiede]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

I'm having the same blank screen problem. F6 doesn't help. The only way I can use ibis A6 is to select safe mode and enter 'seamonkey' at the prompt. Am looking forward to the increased wireless support and I lost wireless with hardy after a power outage of 8 days and was never able to get it back (madwifi).

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Well, I wish mine would get to any kind of prompt! What are your system specs?

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

II is alpha.

It's a "piece of work" right now.

See you in October. If it works, it works, if it doesn't well 8.04 is good enuff.

:-X

[dibl]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

I would think the VESA mode would work, even with your video chip.

Another notion -- if you want to try one more CD, try the Alternate Install -- just to see if it boots up in text mode. You don't have to actually install the OS, but it would be interesting to see if it works in text mode. I'll bet it will.

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Didn't see it under the F4 options, ergo, didn't think about it .

I suppose one more CD is worth the try. Thanks dibl .

[dibl]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Check the md5sum on your downloaded ISO image, then burn it slow -- 4X speed. Sometimes it ends up a coaster anyway. :P

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Downloaded - check.

Verified md5 - check.

Burn at 4x - check.

Cold boot - check.

Select "english" at initial menu, select F6 - remove "quiet" - check.

Hit enter - Wow, got some menus - select,select,select, wait - DOH!!! This is NOT a LiveCD - ABORT, ABORT, DO NOT SCREW UP CURRENT INSTALLATION!!

Whew, still have current HH - check.


Sorry, dibl, this is not what I was looking to do. So, again I'll wait for something that boots as a LiveCD.

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

O.K., I'm a sucker. I downloaded, validated, and burned Intrepid Beta.

Stuck it in the CD drive, booted, same result.

I tried. At the initial screen, I modified the boot options to remove "quiet" and add an invalid VGA mode (vga=763). It gave me a list of video modes, I selected a VESA mode (actually, I tried this a few times to try some different VESA modes). Nope. Got a flashing cursor and a quiet machine.

I tried the install path - same result.

I've updated the bug I filed (#275045). I will hate to say goodbye to *buntu, but that's the way it seems to be going.

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

I'm no longer concerned. I'm pissed.

I posted the following on the Ubuntu forum, and so here likewise:

So far I have tried Alpha5 (Kubuntu), Aplpha 6 (Kubuntu), Beta (Ubunut, Kubuntu, Xubuntu), and 20081020 Daily (Kubuntu). NONE of them has successfully booted as a LiveCD. I did try the Alternate CD on Beta (Kubuntu) which seemed to work - Ididn't press on with the install as I didn't want to screw up my perfectly good 8.04 platform.

In each case I tried F4 (safe video) and various combination of boot options from F6. All this on an older but very vanilla IBM T20 laptop. I've never run into this problem on any distro and especially never on a *buntu distribution. The boot process goes through every load step without any notice or error, until it comes to the point where kdm or gdm is to load. The screen goes blank, as per normal, sometimes a flashing cursor is displayed in the upper left. Then the screen blanks completely, the CD drive spins down, and there is no further activity. There is no response from keyboard input or mouse. All I can do is physically poweroff.

I thought perhaps I might be having hardware issues with my CD drive, but I stuck in my 8.04 CD and booted up very nicely to the LiveCD screen in KDE. I know I am one of the few who have had absolutely no success with II in LiveCD mode, but it doesn't look good for continued success with *buntu - at least in my corner of the world.

Some have suggested that 8.10 with KDE4 may be trying to run the LiveCD under compiz and someone suggested a work-around. Sorry, the first use case should be to boot to the lowest common denominator in terms of video (namely the system's video components using the simplest modes of display). And sorry again, but a workaround is not a solution to such a problem. 8.04 works correctly as a LiveCD, 8.10, at this point in the game with 10 days or less to final release should also work as a LiveCD.

I have reported a bug (275045) and have reported this problem also through testing channels. I guess the worst part is that Ubuntu has shown no interest at all in this problem. Yeah, it's only one system having this problem, but if it continues through final release, I guess I'll have no recourse but to move on to another Linux product - and do my best to convince others to follow likewise.

This has been extremely frustrating and saddening at the same time.


You all are a great community, but this is too much. There is NO excuse (even the Beta excuse) for this to be happening so consistently across so many iterations of *buntu.

[assettt]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

My laptop also has a savage graphics chip and live CD of any Ubuntu 8.04 variant will not boot successfully and neither the alternate will complete installation. Anyway I installed Kubuntu 7.10 and then upgraded to 8.10 via adept.

[jglen490]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6)

Well, I've always been a sucker for a pretty face , so I downloaded and burned the RC - just for one more try. It downloaded correctly (verified the MD5) and burned DAO at 4x. Rebooted, selected F6 and removed "quiet", and mashed the Enter button.

After I picked up my jaw from the floor upon seeing the "x" in the middle of my screen and then seeing KDE 4.1 pop up, I did some exploring. It did come up displaying at 800x600, which sucks but in a good kind of way. I tried messing with the "effects" options and ended up with an unusable black screen, but that's O.K., a reboot and back in the saddle again.

It looks different, and not necessarily "bad" different either. I will save a few files from my current 8.04 (i.e., xorg.conf, modules) so I can correct some of the problems that always seem to pop up with every new release that I've tried since 6.06, especially to get 1024x768 that always seems to be a problem with the Savage chip and driver. I pre-ordered a CD through Shipit, it's just easier that way, and I hope to press on with a clean install (it's just what I do) in a few weeks.

Not so pissed anymore, but actually curious now. We'll see what happens. Call me a skeptic, but I won't throw my Hardy CD and DVD away either.

[jwhibdon]

Re: Getting Concerned (II Alpha 6) - RESOLVED

I had the exact same problem and have tried every release and the daily build every three days. I can only get II Alpha 4 to boot and install. I have saved the Alpha 4 CD. I tried the RC yesterday no joy. So just for fun I install the Alpha 4 CD installed Synaptic and updated. I installed my standard set of software and all works even the Nvidia 173 driver? I download the Ubuntu RC and it loaded the live, I did not install. I did install Ubuntu Beta when it first came out and it works fine. I just do not like gnome no mater how much I try it I keep coming back to KDE.