Hi,

Whenever I have X running, the text terminals tty 1 to 6 cannot be
displayed. When I switch to one with Ctl-Alt-Fn, my monitor displays a
"no signal" message. The text terminal itself is running properly
though; I can do a blind login and execute commands at will.

When I kill X (or don't start it at boot) the terminals display just
fine, so I guess it has something to do with the resolution X is
running at (which is 1440x900).

I tried to play a bit with the vga=xxx kernel option in grub's
menu.lst, but to no avail. The best I got was a totally scrambled text
terminal display.

Anyone an idea?

Tommy

--
Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul
~ They Might Be Giants

I demand that TomB may or may not have written...

> Whenever I have X running, the text terminals tty 1 to 6 cannot be
> displayed. When I switch to one with Ctl-Alt-Fn, my monitor displays a "no
> signal" message. The text terminal itself is running properly though; I can
> do a blind login and execute commands at will.

> When I kill X (or don't start it at boot) the terminals display just fine,
> so I guess it has something to do with the resolution X is running at
> (which is 1440x900).

> I tried to play a bit with the vga=xxx kernel option in grub's menu.lst,
> but to no avail. The best I got was a totally scrambled text terminal
> display.

> Anyone an idea?

You've provided insufficient information; so no, I expect not.

This is dependent on which X video driver you're using, and which version,
and possibly also on the kernel version and which text console driver you're
using. And maybe the video chipset.

--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + At least 4000 million too many people. POPULATION LEVEL IS UNSUSTAINABLE.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

On 06/20/2008 09:25 AM, TomB wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Whenever I have X running, the text terminals tty 1 to 6 cannot be
> displayed. When I switch to one with Ctl-Alt-Fn, my monitor displays a
> "no signal" message. The text terminal itself is running properly
> though; I can do a blind login and execute commands at will.
>
> When I kill X (or don't start it at boot) the terminals display just
> fine, so I guess it has something to do with the resolution X is
> running at (which is 1440x900).
>
> I tried to play a bit with the vga=xxx kernel option in grub's
> menu.lst, but to no avail. The best I got was a totally scrambled text
> terminal display.
>
> Anyone an idea?
>
> Tommy
>

Tell us more about your display setup. Show us /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

What happens when you select "vga=0x0F00"?

Are you using framebuffers?

What display adapter are you using?

What platform and O/S is this?

On 2008-06-20, Darren Salt wrote:
> I demand that TomB may or may not have written...
>
>> Whenever I have X running, the text terminals tty 1 to 6 cannot be
>> displayed. When I switch to one with Ctl-Alt-Fn, my monitor displays a "no
>> signal" message. The text terminal itself is running properly though; I can
>> do a blind login and execute commands at will.
>
>> When I kill X (or don't start it at boot) the terminals display just fine,
>> so I guess it has something to do with the resolution X is running at
>> (which is 1440x900).
>
>> I tried to play a bit with the vga=xxx kernel option in grub's menu.lst,
>> but to no avail. The best I got was a totally scrambled text terminal
>> display.
>
>> Anyone an idea?
>
> You've provided insufficient information; so no, I expect not.
>
> This is dependent on which X video driver you're using, and which version,

X.Org X Server 1.4.0.90

> and possibly also on the kernel version

Problem exists with all my installed kernels, including the stock
lenny one, and one realtime SMP kernel I built myself (using the stock
kernel config as base).

> and which text console driver you're
> using.

I *think* I'm using just VGA. No framebuffer or something.

> And maybe the video chipset.

ATI X1200 (AMD 690 chipset).
I'm still trying to figure out how I can see which driver I'm using. I
used to check xorg.conf for that, but it isn't in there anymore...

Mvg,
Tommy
--
In this life, it's not what you hope for, it's not what
you deserve -- it's what you take.
~ Frank T.J. Mackie

On 2008-06-20, TomB wrote:

> I'm still trying to figure out how I can see which driver I'm using. I
> used to check xorg.conf for that, but it isn't in there anymore...

Seems to be part of the new xorg design I just learned...

Anyway, lsmod tells me I'm using the radeon driver. So I tried
switching to vesa (which I used succesfully before) by adding

Driver "vesa"

to the device section of xorg.conf. This produced a video signal that was
out of range for my monitor, so I did a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg,
which fixed X *and* the text console issue. Weird, because I tried
dpkg-reconfigure before to no avail...

Ah well, it works now.

Mvg,
Tommy
--
Nice party, Hapsburg... I see a lot of familiar face lifts.
~ Frank Drebin

On 2008-06-20, TomB wrote:

> Anyway, lsmod tells me I'm using the radeon driver. So I tried
> switching to vesa (which I used succesfully before) by adding
>
> Driver "vesa"
>
> to the device section of xorg.conf. This produced a video signal that was
> out of range for my monitor, so I did a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg,
> which fixed X *and* the text console issue. Weird, because I tried
> dpkg-reconfigure before to no avail...
>
> Ah well, it works now.

Cried victory too soon: on reboot the problem was back... Looks as if
the radeon driver is the evildoer in some way, since the text console
displayed fine with the vesa driver enabled.

Mvg,
Tommy
--
In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And
there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole
lot better.
~ Ellen DeGeneres

I demand that TomB may or may not have written...

> On 2008-06-20, TomB wrote:
>> I'm still trying to figure out how I can see which driver I'm using. I
>> used to check xorg.conf for that, but it isn't in there anymore...

> Seems to be part of the new xorg design I just learned...

> Anyway, lsmod tells me I'm using the radeon driver.

That's the DRM side of things. You need to look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, since
evidently the X 2D graphics driver is being determined by PCI ID; it's likely
to be either radeon or radeonhd, though.

> So I tried switching to vesa (which I used succesfully before) by adding

> Driver "vesa"

> to the device section of xorg.conf. This produced a video signal that was
> out of range for my monitor, so I did a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg,
> which fixed X *and* the text console issue. Weird, because I tried
> dpkg-reconfigure before to no avail...

Hopefully, it kept backups of the previous configurations. Maybe you can see
what it's got right this time...?

FWIW, the only out-of-range problem that I've had was due to a framebuffer
driver bug (affecting at least R3xx). Also, I'm using radeonfb with
acceleration disabled – if anybody's using it with acceleration enabled and
without causing X's radeon driver to blow up, I'd like to know...

--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + Output *more* particulate pollutants. BUFFER AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING.

Is knowledge knowable, and how do we know?

On 2008-06-20, TomB wrote:
> On 2008-06-20, TomB wrote:
>
>> Anyway, lsmod tells me I'm using the radeon driver. So I tried
>> switching to vesa (which I used succesfully before) by adding
>>
>> Driver "vesa"
>>
>> to the device section of xorg.conf. This produced a video signal that was
>> out of range for my monitor, so I did a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg,
>> which fixed X *and* the text console issue. Weird, because I tried
>> dpkg-reconfigure before to no avail...
>>
>> Ah well, it works now.
>
> Cried victory too soon: on reboot the problem was back... Looks as if
> the radeon driver is the evildoer in some way, since the text console
> displayed fine with the vesa driver enabled.

I managed to fix the issue by using the closed fglrx ati driver, for
which I had to rebuild my custom rt kernel because of some GPL symbols conflict.

I still'd like to know why the radeon driver screwed up my tty display
though.

Mvg,
Tommy
--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
~ Albert Einstein

TomB <tommy.bongaerts@gmail.com> wrote:

> I still'd like to know why the radeon driver screwed up my tty display
> though.

I encountered this problem on a previous occasion, following an system
upgrade from sarge to etch. I'm not sure how exactly this was resolved.
The problem somehow disappeared, I guess during subsequent package
installations before I managed to trace the cause.

I am using both the radeon driver on all of my desktop machines, and on
some machines I do not have a framebuffer enabled kernel, but the text
display and console switching via the ctrl-alt-fn keys works fine in all
instances, so I don't think the radeon driver or the lack of a framebuffer
are the cause of this.

You could try removing the keyboard variant option ("XkbVariant") from
xorg.conf, then running dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg leaving the
keyboard variant field empty. However, this didn't work for me.

Regards,

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.