screen blanks on startup after compiling 6.2.12 from working 5.15
 

Pretty new to kernel compiling here, but I did this exact thing on another machine with success...

On Slackware 15.0, old Acer netbook, running 5.15 (huge and generic, for Slackware that means using initrd with generic). Downloaded 6.2.12, used make oldconfig and did all default options ( = held down return for like 5 min straight....any better way of doing that?). make bzImage modules, make modules_install, copied vmlinuz into /boot, got a lilo entry going, and restart.

No kernel panic, but screen goes black during startup when I select the new kernel, no error messages I can see. It does not look like the screen is off, but no text is displayed.

On my system there are two distinct startup processes...I guess I would say "large text" first, and then a flicker to "small text", before finishing at login screen (not GUI yet, run level 3 I guess). That's at least a Slackware thing, maybe not sure if it happens on my Ubuntu box. But that feels like the step at which the startup is failing.

Anyone have any thoughts, or techniques to debug something like this?

EDIT: Tried using initrd and it didn't work. I don't think is the issue, I'm very familiar with what that looks like, having caused that errors many times....

Text size switch during init occurs when switch is made from generic mode, typically 80x25 on pre-UEFI BIOS, to KMS mode, usually the display's native mode. Ubuntu employs plymouth to hide both, making init behavior emulate Windows. An arbitrary mode for the framebuffer in KMS mode can be specified with video= on cmdline. Does doing so change anything for you? How about if you append nosimplefb=1?

This could perhaps help? https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sl..._build_scripts

Well, I didn't think this helped directly, since the only kernels there are 5.15.X, and I want to get to 6.2. However, I grabbed the config files from here and recompiled using the same process I used before, and now I actually get past that graphical thing, so that's fixed. Thanks!

(I thought this was the same thing I did before, but perhaps the .config got rewritten or something)

Something else now - the mousepad does not work once I get into X. If anyone has immediate advice about that, that'd be awesome, but its a different problem now.

What's installed, xf86-input-synaptics? xf86-input-libinput? xf86-input-evdev?