[arch-general] Linux-3.7.3-1-i686 blank screen

[Whiskers]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:20:47 -0600 Leonid Isaev <lisaev at umail.iu.edu>
wrote:

>On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:07:56 +0000
>Whiskers <catwheezel at operamail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:25:45 +0100 Karol Babioch <karol at babioch.de>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> >Hi,
>> >
>> >Am 22.01.2013 18:34, schrieb Whiskers:

[...]

>> I'm using the Nouveau video driver with an old laptop.  As
>> Linux-3.6.11-1 seems to be stable for me, I'll wait for the next kernel
>> version to reach the core repository.  
>
>If you're talking about 3.7.4, then it's unlikely to fix your issue,
>because there are only radeon fixes in the changelog
>http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.7.4.
>
>> 
>> I'll also try to work out how to have the previous kernel still
>> available to Grub-legacy after the next kernel upgrade.
>> 
>> For the record, this is what my video hardware says it is:
>> 
>> $ lspci | grep VGA
>> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV31M [GeForce FX
>> Go5600] (rev a1)

I'm now up to Linux 3.7.6-1, and still the video card is going blank when
booting.  It happens reliably whenever I boot with a kernel later than 
linux-3.6.11-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz and happens at the point in the boot
sequence where the print on the screen shrinks to a small size - I think
that's when the 'frame buffer' is started.

I can log in 'blind' and issue console commands (eg shutdown -r now) but
startx does nothing.  

If I edit the 3.7.* boot entry in Grub-legacy to include nomodeset then I
do get to a visible login prompt, but of course no X.

For now, I'm booting into linux-lts-3.0.60-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz which works
fine, but may not be a long-term solution.

I don't know enough to interpret all the log entries, but I have found
that when booting from a kernel that successfully starts the
graphics, /var/log/kernel.log has a line such as this:

Feb  9 18:29:00 tavy kernel: [   18.124619] [drm] Initialized nouveau
0.0.16 20090420 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0

whereas using a kernel that doesn't get the graphics working, the
corresponding log entry is like this:

Feb  9 18:23:33 tavy kernel: [   16.068483] [drm] Initialized nouveau
1.1.0 20120801 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0

Both entries are confusing, given that the current nouveau packages
installed are nouveau-dri 9.0.2-1 and xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.6-1.  Would I
be right in guessing that xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.6-1 can handle the kernel
initialising nouveau 0.0.16 but not 1.1.0?

-- 
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
--  Whiskers 
-- ~~~~~~~~~~