This is a real head scratcher. I've been using Linux for a
long time now and I've
never seen this weird happen before.
I ran zypper this afternoon and pulled down and installed the available patches. No problems seen during the process. Leap 15.2 is now up-to-date. Packages patched were:
Code:
bind-doc bind-utils libbind9-1600 libdns1605 libgnome-autoar-0-0
libgnome-autoar-gtk-0-0 libirs1601 libisc1606 libisccc1600 libisccfg1600
libns1604 libprotobuf20 libprotobuf-lite20 MozillaThunderbird
python2-six python3-bind python3-six yast2-network
Nothing in that list leaps out at ya (pun sort of intended) as having something to do with consoles.
But... when I rebooted the system I could not see any output on the console. Normally, I'll see the usual startup messages (with all the "OK"s) but what's happening now is that my Asus monitor thinks that nothing is connected and switches to a video port where it detects a video signal (normally the VGA port connected to a KVM; I'm not a big fan of this design choice by Asus, BTW). Eventually, after waiting a minute or so -- so that X will have had enough time to get started -- I can issue Ctrl-Alt-F7 and manually switch the monitor back to port connecting to my desktop system. By then, the appearance of the mouse pointer (or the rest of the desktop) is enough to keep my monitor from flipping back to another port where it sees a video signal.
Even once the system is up and usable via VT7, if I try to drop down to any of VT1 through VT6, I get nothing. No prompt or anything. There is apparently no video signal being generated by those consoles. I've tried issuing "cat big-text.file > /dev/tty1" and see nothing on that console or on any other console I test.
In the olden days, I would start by looking for something odd in /etc/inittab but that's a quick `file not found' dead end nowadays.
If anyone can point me in a direction that leads to a solution, virtual beers are on me.
Got a good lead on where to begin trying to fix this?
TIA...
Problem identified, solution found: While poking around in the motherboard BIOS settings, I apparently had a stray click change a setting for the boot-time video device. It got changed from the onboard Intel chip from the Nvidia card. Setting if back to the PCIe device solved everything. (Except, alas, for a couple of dead case fans I noticed. :^( )
