Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 123953
Dell inspiron 5000 shows blank screen when Xorg-X11 starts
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:43 EST
Description of problem: Did an upgrade from FC1 to FC2 on a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop, 600/500Mhz / 384MB RAM / ATI Rage Mobility / 20GB hdd / Zoom 2975LA Modem card / Netgear FA510 Network card ... Installation went well, although could only do a text install, graphical would not work, then after reboot during the graphical boot, the screen goes blank... i took a guess and typed my login/password and the hdd starts spinning like it is loading the desktop, but is still blank. I CTRL+ALT+F2 to console, logged in as root, checked the logs and the Xorg.0.log shows the X11 started no problem no errors. I turned off the graphical boot, and changed init from 5 to 3 and system reboots into text mode, works fine... noticed there was no xorg.conf after upgrade so I copied the X86Config to xorg.conf and tried to play around and no amount of noodlin was able to make it work, but I was able to get it to fail by removing features etc. I tried booting with 'acpi=no' and 'nofb' and this did not change anything. I got the results from a fresh install. I downloaded the XFree86 binaries, installed them and they produced the exact same results... X starts, but screen remains blank. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora Core 2, shipping version of xorg-* files. How reproducible: With Upgrade and fresh install. Steps to Reproduce: 1. install/upgrade a dell inspiron 5000 laptop with FC2 2. 3. Actual results: Screen remains blank on successful X startup. Expected results: That I would see the joyous new Fedora Core 2 desktop in vivid 1400x1050 color as has always been the case with this laptop since I bought it 4 years ago and loaded RH6.2 on it. :) Additional info: I though it might be a hardware issue, but have now seen several reports of other Dell laptops doing the exact same thing on the fedora-list. I have not read any reported workarounds other than reinstalling FC1.
Created attachment 100440 [details] The xorg.conf file created during install Here is the xorg.conf from my Dell Inspiron 5000 install of FC2
I just took my wife's Dell Inspiron 8000 w/ ATI Rage 128 Mobility card and replaced the hhd with one of mine and tried to install FC2 and got the exact same results... when trying to do a graphical install the screen just blanks and that is is that. I tried booting with 'linux nofb' and same result. I am going to try a text install and then keep trying to play with the xorg.conf to see if I can get Xorg-X11 to work.
Created attachment 100467 [details] Dell 8000 install crash - anacdump.txt During my Dell 8000 install, it crashed and told me to post this file.
I finally got it working! I did a text install, and after the install and on first reboot, i changed the kernel line (in Grub) from 'rhgb quiet' to 'vga=791'. I also changed the HorizSync to 30-100 and VertRefresh to 50-100, choose "LCD 1400x1050" during the install. I was also able to get the graphical instll screen to come up by using the 'linux vga=791' when booting form the first install CD.
THanks. The linux vga=791 certainly seems to allow me to do a graphical install on my Inspiron 7500 PII 400MHz ATI Rage Mobility 64MB. I just need a bit of time to try and fix the same problem with my actual FC2 disk in the machine. The ATI drivers worked fine under RH 9. Don't know about FC 1, but are broken in FC 2, by the looks of things.
Yep, your fix to the grub.conf file works on the Inspiron 7500 too.
Created attachment 104088 [details] X.log from the FC3test2 installation process (found in /tmp/ramfs/X.log) Problem still exists with FC3test2. I attached X.log from installation process.
Anaconda now starts in graphical mode ok in Fedora Core 3. However, after the installation is complete, the first boot fails to come up in X because the vga=792 has not been appended to the end of the relevant line in /etc/grub.conf. Doing this manually and rebooting fixes the problem.
Since this bugzilla report was filed, there have been several major updates to the X Window System, which may resolve this issue. Users who have experienced this problem are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of Fedora Core, which can be obtained from: http://fedora.redhat.com/download If this issue turns out to still be reproduceable in the latest version of Fedora Core, please file a bug report in the X.Org bugzilla located at http://bugs.freedesktop.org in the "xorg" component. Once you've filed your bug report to X.Org, if you paste the new bug URL here, Red Hat will continue to track the issue in the centralized X.Org bug tracker, and will review any bug fixes that become available for consideration in future updates. Setting status to "CURRENTRELEASE".