My TTY's are Invisible

enigma9o7 · 03-04-2020, 12:22 PM

When I ctrl+alt+f1 thru f6, I get a black screen.

There is a tty there, as if I type blind, I can login and do stuff. I just don't see anything on the screen.

This used to work right for me, but at some point it stopped working, I assumed I'd done something to mess it up.

But I just did a completely clean install (5.1RC-hwe) on a new hard drive and it's happening.

This is on a 10-year old Sony laptop. During install I selected the proprietary stuff, so it installed nvidia drivers automatically. Perhaps this could be related?

teckk · 03-04-2020, 01:18 PM

When it is booting do you get a grub prompt, or a bootloader message?
At what point does the screen blank? What video hardware do you have?

Can you blacklist the nvidia module and boot with kernel modesetting? Or can you boot with nouveau? Can you still boot and use your install media? If so blacklist the nvidia module and boot with just the kernel.

You'll need to find when the blank screen occurs. Or is it blanking after X or wayland starts?

enigma9o7 · 03-04-2020, 01:42 PM

After completely booting, the screen blanks as soon as I press ctrl+alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+f6 to bring up the tty. I get back to desktop environment with ctrl+alt+f7.

I verified this does not happen in the live iso.

teckk · 03-04-2020, 03:45 PM

Interesting. Your machine works fine, you can't change to another tty.

Does Bodhi have 6 or 7 tty's available?

Can you change ttys with chvt?

Does ls /dev have tty's in it?

Got the correct keyboard language? dumpkeys -h

enigma9o7 · 03-04-2020, 07:55 PM

The ttys are there, because I can blind type in them. I can, for example, login (username, password) then run speaker-test and hear stuff. Or reboot.

One of the bodhi devs pointed me to perhaps a grub issue not setting for a supported resolution or font or something. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1625...a-blank-screen
But no luck with that angle yet either, going to go thru it again right now, tried a few of the suggested solutions already, gunna see if I missed any...

Never used chvt, but when I tried, it tells me "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console". Not sure how keyboard language is related? But running dumpkeys (without the -h) tells me the same thing as chvt.

Lotsa ttys in /dev

Code:

$ ls /dev/tty*
/dev/tty    /dev/tty23  /dev/tty39  /dev/tty54      /dev/ttyS10  /dev/ttyS26
/dev/tty0   /dev/tty24  /dev/tty4   /dev/tty55      /dev/ttyS11  /dev/ttyS27
/dev/tty1   /dev/tty25  /dev/tty40  /dev/tty56      /dev/ttyS12  /dev/ttyS28
/dev/tty10  /dev/tty26  /dev/tty41  /dev/tty57      /dev/ttyS13  /dev/ttyS29
/dev/tty11  /dev/tty27  /dev/tty42  /dev/tty58      /dev/ttyS14  /dev/ttyS3
/dev/tty12  /dev/tty28  /dev/tty43  /dev/tty59      /dev/ttyS15  /dev/ttyS30
/dev/tty13  /dev/tty29  /dev/tty44  /dev/tty6       /dev/ttyS16  /dev/ttyS31
/dev/tty14  /dev/tty3   /dev/tty45  /dev/tty60      /dev/ttyS17  /dev/ttyS4
/dev/tty15  /dev/tty30  /dev/tty46  /dev/tty61      /dev/ttyS18  /dev/ttyS5
/dev/tty16  /dev/tty31  /dev/tty47  /dev/tty62      /dev/ttyS19  /dev/ttyS6
/dev/tty17  /dev/tty32  /dev/tty48  /dev/tty63      /dev/ttyS2   /dev/ttyS7
/dev/tty18  /dev/tty33  /dev/tty49  /dev/tty7       /dev/ttyS20  /dev/ttyS8
/dev/tty19  /dev/tty34  /dev/tty5   /dev/tty8       /dev/ttyS21  /dev/ttyS9
/dev/tty2   /dev/tty35  /dev/tty50  /dev/tty9       /dev/ttyS22
/dev/tty20  /dev/tty36  /dev/tty51  /dev/ttyprintk  /dev/ttyS23
/dev/tty21  /dev/tty37  /dev/tty52  /dev/ttyS0      /dev/ttyS24
/dev/tty22  /dev/tty38  /dev/tty53  /dev/ttyS1      /dev/ttyS25

enigma9o7 · 03-04-2020, 11:06 PM

enigma9o7 · 03-04-2020, 11:12 PM

So far I've tried the following unsuccessfully:
nomodeset
nosplash
noplymouth
vga=0x0361 <--- same result as text below

GRUB_TERMINAL=console
GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text <--- this one changed my consoles to what looks like overexposed photo... or closeup out of focus microscope image... and its changing... very cool to stare at

echo "echo FRAMEBUFFER=y" | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

Stella456 · 03-05-2020, 06:04 AM

I have latest iso on very old hardware but don't have nvidia drivers. With my old hardware, any ubuntu based distro boots up slightly - erm differently! I get black screen for 30 seconds - white flash with Doctor Who type effects, black screen for a few seconds, then Bodhi login swirly circle and leaf and then the desktop opens (I have automatic login set). As long as I can boot I just treat it as a quirk!

This is the same with most distros on this laptop (although xubuntu is the worst and gets stuck booting up altogether) and none of the grub editing fixes make a difference. I am no techy expert and put it down to old hardware graphics compatibility! But I do know that Sony Pc's can be pernickety especially if they have nvidia. I had one old sony vaio that wouldn't boot anything if the new hard drive wasn't a sata 1 or 2 or exactly the same size as the original hard drive and wouldn't run anything but Windows 7 without running too hot - it was something built into the firmware.

Sorry if I've missed the point here. Just think Sony's can be pernickety. Noticed you said it was a new hard drive. See if the same thing happens if you install on the old hard drive? If the old hard drive is still working.

Seriously my old sony vaio would not install properly onto anything other than a sata ii drive. If yours is 10 years old it might have had a sata iii drive originally which gives more choice of new hard drives. My old one would just overheat and shut down if I tried to install an ssd or a different size drive. In the end I bought a reconditioned sata ii drive the same size (320gb) and could install anything - weird.

Might be the nvidia driver as well.

enigma9o7 · 03-05-2020, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by serendipity7000

Sorry if I've missed the point here. Just think Sony's can be pernickety. Noticed you said it was a new hard drive. See if the same thing happens if you install on the old hard drive? If the old hard drive is still working.

The point is,when I ctrl+alt+f2 I don't get a usable tty, and haven't found a way to fix it, other than disabling the nvidia drivers completely:
sudo echo "blacklist nvidia" >/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-disable.conf

Yes, my old hard drive is still working, I can still boot my previous install. It has the same issue. I had before thought I'd done something wrong and starting clean install would resolve it; I've now learned that's not the case, so looking for a real fix.

It has GT330M video chip, using nvidia-340 driver package.

uteck · 03-05-2020, 05:27 PM

I had similar issues working with old hardware. Problem was with the new Linux kernel had changes to the driver it was using (some Intel graphics chip) that broke older versions of the chipset. May need to specify some driver settings or find a different driver to use.

Stella456 · 03-05-2020, 06:44 PM

That's the same nvidia video chip my old sony had. I know Windows 10 didn't have a graphics driver for it! I seem to remember having Xubuntu on it though, and Bodhi. Sorry can't help more.

enigma9o7 · 03-05-2020, 10:29 PM

I just installed a slightly newer version of the Nvidia driver than I had. The one automatically installed during installation from ubuntu repos was 340.107; I grabbed 340.108 which has updated a month ago for Linux 5.4, but doesn't seem to behave any differently for me. (Note I'm using Linux 5.3 from hwe release, but had this behavior on 4.15 kernel too with old install)

cordx · 03-06-2020, 04:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enigma9o7

Never used chvt, but when I tried, it tells me "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console".

i had to run that with sudo. anything interesting if you run journalctl | grep tty?

enigma9o7 · 03-06-2020, 10:22 AM

I had never used journalctl, but it seems to shows that Getty starts on ttyx when I try to open them with Ctrl+alt+Fx automatically. And closes them at shutdown.

with sudo, using chvt # seems to switch me to a tty; I get the blank screen same as if I pressed ctrl+alt+Fx, and just like that method, ctrl+alt+f7 restores to gui.

enigma9o7 · 03-06-2020, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by serendipity7000

That's the same nvidia video chip my old sony had. I know Windows 10 didn't have a graphics driver for it!

Re-reading thru everything, just a comment; win10 is also on my old hard drive, although rarely used, and no problems with the graphics driver for me.