no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor :(

[vbgunz]

what could possibly cause ttys 1 through 6 to break? I am trying to switch to them and only see a blinking underscore. google is not helping and I am reeeeaaaally lost here. Can anyone please offer any suggestions?

[dibl]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

When you see the blinky underscore, try Alt-F1 or Alt-F2.

[vbgunz]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

i found the cause of the problem. it is in vga=791. I had this option since dapper, edgy and feisty and never had a problem. my upgrade to gutsy from feisty was botched so I made a fresh install. not sure why, but I cannot get vga=791 at all anymore. I tried vga=ask but I get some really horrible resolutions. not sure whats wrong but it is quite upsetting

any idea on how to improve the vga resolution or how to do anything to find out what is the highest I can go that actually works? if it helps, it seems I am using vega vga but actually have an Nvidia card in the long run.

Any help issincerely appreciated!

ps. I will try the alt+f1|f2 as soon as I get the chance!

[dibl]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Interesting. On my Gutsy installation, there is no "VGA=" boot option. But on my Elive installation, there is VGA-791. Hmmmmmmmm! and both work.

So, VGA=ask is giving you all bad choices....

What is your display chip -- is there a proprietary driver that you could try?

[vbgunz]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

I tried vga=ask and get a list 0 through 9, a and b. they don't really say the size but instead something like 80x40, 140x60 or something like that. the higher ones do not work...

I seriously think something broke here. it worked superb in dapper, edgy and feisty. this all started on Gutsy. if it helps, I can see usplash at 1280x1024. I would like the terminal at this size or even bigger but am having heartache and pain of trying

how do I find out what my display chip is? vga=ask is not helping and 791 just doesn't work like it used too. I am open to any options here.

Thanks you!

[Snowhog]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Open a konsole and type:

lspci | grep Display

[vbgunz]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

running 'lspci | grep Display' returns nothing

Just running lspci results in:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Bridge (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600] (rev a1)
02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
02:01.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem
02:03.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:05.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)

[Snowhog]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Retry using:

lspci | grep controller

We can already see, that you have a GeForce FX 5600 video card:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600] (rev a1)

[vbgunz]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

yeah. I have 1680x1050 resolution while in X *but* something like 640x480 in the ttys. honestly, who can really love such a resolution? when I start with vga=ask, I see something like 'vega vga' but have no idea how to change that. I'll take the highest resolution in tty as possible. to be honest, anything is better than what I have by default :/

thank you snowhog!

[Snowhog]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Rog131's FAQ: Links - How to Install AMD(Ati) Proprietary Linux Display Driver (fglrx) may be of help.

[Snowhog]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

yeah. I have 1680x1050 resolution while in X *but* something like 640x480 in the ttys.

One thing to keep in mind: When you open a tty terminal session, the same x-server session that you have in X isn't being used. I believe you would need to run startx from within the tty terminal you are running, but that's a guess.

[kubicle]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Could be this bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ls/+bug/129910). I suffered from it myself...My solution was to use card specific framebuffer drivers after the 2.6.22-12 kernel (where vesafb still worked for me).

With card specific framebuffers (radeonfb and savagefb, for example) I've gotten my 1400x1050 ttys back. There are a few workarounds in the bug thread for vesafb as well...I didn't have any luck with them, but others did.

[dibl]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

I dunno -- with an Nvidia card, I'd give the Envy script installer a shot.

http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

[vbgunz]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

I would really like to thank you all for your help. I really felt I would never get this answered. kubicle linked to a forum thread that helped me to solve my problem. in fact, I ended up with a solution that gave me better than vga=791 (1024x768@16k). I now have vga=795 (1280x1024@16M). This is better than I had hoped. here are my steps.

edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
add the following

• vga16fb
• fbcon
• vesafb

edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer
comment out the following (prefix with #)

• blacklist vesafb
• blacklist vga16fb

last but not least, run the following in a terminal

• sudo update-initramfs -u

I really cannot thank you all for your help! it was and is very much appreciated!

[Snowhog]

Re: no tty 1 through 6. blinking underscore/cursor

Glad that you got your problem resolved! Isn't running Linux fun!! (Actually, it is fun.)