Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

[evans62]

After this latest kernel upgrade in Karmic, my system will not boot maybe 19 out of 20 times. Once I get past the Kubuntu splash screen I get a bunch of garbage video and I can't see what is going on. The monitor cannot tell what resolution the video is, and it gives a weird number for the horizontal and vertical frequency.

The 1 time out of 20 that it does boot OK, it tells me I am running in Low Resolution mode. (My monitor tells me its running 800 x 600) I've gone thru all the options that I see (troubleshoot problem, build new configuration with this hardware, etc) and nothing works.

Booting using Recovery Mode doesn't help. It still gets to a certain point and then I get the garbage video screen.

I've tried booting from Live CD and then going to media/etc/X11 and modifying the xorg.conf for the existing installation, then removing the Live CD and booting. Still no luck.

Cmon guys, if you want me to ditch Windows, at least eliminate these bizarre bugs this late in the Ubuntu development phase.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

I'm having basically the same problem. The issue here is that the bootup process is starting kdm before it starts the video driver.
You might try removing the "splash" and "vga=" options from /boot/grub/grub.cfg and see if that helps. You will get the low-resolution text screen during bootup, but once the video driver loads, you should get a normal screen.
During bootup, I get two error screens. The first one has an OK button, which I hit; the xecond one has a Cancel button, which I hit. Then boot into the login screen proceeds normally.
So far, I have not been able to find the script that is doing this. I can say that it is fixed in lucid, but I don't recommend doing that as other things are broken there.

This is a truly irritating problem, that doesn't seem to be getting any attention.

[dibl]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

It sounds like problems with boot splash screens.

Have you guys tried some of the boot options such as "xforcevesa", or different "vga=xxx" options?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

In my case, I don't have boot splash screens enabled. I have tried various vga= and gfxpayload options, including leaving them out, to no avail. The problem really is that kdm is starting before the drivers. I know this because the fans on the video cards make a lot of noise, and they stop when the driver loads. It's trying to load kdm while the fans are still going, so no driver.
I will have to look up the xforcevesa option and experiment.
Funny this works OK in lucid, which was a direct upgrade from the karmic system. Loads the video driver right away. I'm giving serious thought to trying to load the 2.6.32 kernel in karmic.

Edit: no joy with xforcevesa. Same problems.

[evans62]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

Doctordruidphd, you're right! I cannot see what is going on, because the monitor can't sync up - but if I hit Enter followed by Escape, like you said, then I can hear my PC booting normally and giving me my startup sound.

The only problem is, at this point, the video still isn't working and I still cannot see anything. Now how do I go about fixing my video? I tried copying xorg.conf.failsafe to xorg.conf, which has a "vesa" line in it. This didn't help.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

Try hitting CTRL-ALT-F2 and see if that brings up the text screen.
If it does, then login and:

sudo service kdm stop
sudo service kdm start

If the screen goes blank when restarting kdm, then you need to turn off compositing.
Get back to the text screen, kill kdm (with the 'sudo service kdm stop' command, as above), and then edit your ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc file. Under the Compositing section, set the Enabled value to false. Then try restarting kdm.

Do you have video drivers installed (such as for NVIDIA)? There may be a problem there, too, and they may need reinstalling, which you should be able to do from the text screen.

[evans62]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

Ctrl-Alt-F2 brings me to text I think, but even then the video is not working. I have an ATI X300 video card. Any idea what drivers I need to load?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Still having boot problems after kernel upgrade!!

OK, if you still have the ability to boot your system from the -14 kernel, or from the livecd, then I guess what I would do at this point is edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Find the line that boots the -15 kernel, and remove the vga= and splash options, and see if you can boot into a text console. But since you can't get the text console with the rescue option, I doubt this is going to work, but it's worth a try.

Based on several posts I have seen, it is starting to look like there is something about the -15 kernel that just is not cooperating with some video setups. Kind of hard to file a bug report, when all you get is a blank screen. If you can ever get into the system on the -15 kernel, it might be worth taking a look at dmesg, and see if it kicks out any error messages.

For what it's worth (not much) I cannot get either the Ubuntu or Kubuntu karmic livecds to boot on my system, and they both fail with black screens, no matter what boot options I try. Somethin' ain't right here, folks, and it sounds like a kernel problem of some sort.

FYI - we are having a bad storm here in NW Washington, and I may lose power and be gone for a while. If someone else has ideas on this, please chime in.