[Intel-gfx] Screen unusable for console until X starts (945GM)

[Daniel Vetter]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Rolf Eike Beer <eike-kernel at sf-tec.de> wrote:
> I have an older Laptop with this card in it:
>
> [    0.813208] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel 945GM Chipset
> [    0.813284] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected gtt size: 262144K total,
> 262144K mappable
> [    0.814188] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 8192K stolen memory
> [    0.814377] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xc0000000
>
> I observe the following strange behavior: if I start up the system (grub2,
> openSUSE 12.1) I see the splash screen appearing shortly. In most cases it
> will then disappear and the screen will become just black. This is not the
> delay "X is loading but has not put anything on the screen", but it is much
> earlier. I'm asked for a crypt password during bootup, which in most cases now
> happens totally in the dark, i.e. no console messages at all, no prompt.
> Booting just to runlevel 3 leaves me with a black screen but a functional
> system.
>
> The strange thing is: sometimes (like 10%) things are just working, i.e. I
> have console output. I've tested with 3.1.10 as well as 3.6.2 and both have
> the problem. I've run a number of 2.6 kernels before on this system, but I do
> not recall when the problem occured or which is one that definitely worked.
>
> Starting X will always get the screen back into working state, i.e. the system
> is normally usable after startup, but it is just annoying to see nothing
> during startup.
>
> Any hints, patches, whatever?

Please attach drm.debug=0xe to your kernel cmdline, boot 3.6 and
attach complete dmesg (up to the point where X makes something appear
on the screen).
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch