Natty Alpha 1, i915 has blank screen after boot

Note that the attached BootDmesg.txt contains the result of booting with drm.debug=0x4

This appears to be a regression from 2.6.37-6.17 to 2.6.37-7.19. I'm suspecting these commits likely have something to do with it:

UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP_VIA
UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP_NVIDIA
UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP_AMD64
UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP_AMD
UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP_INTEL
UBUNTU: [Config] build in CONFIG_AGP

Well, that wasn't it. Rebasing against 2.6.37-rc4 and adding Dave Airlie's pull request from Tue, Nov 30, 2010 yielded similar results, i.e., zilch.

Hmm, 2.6.37-6.17 has the same issue. It just doesn't happen as often.

With 2.6.37-7.19 the display will correctly initialize about 1 in 5 times from a cold boot, and never AFAICT from a warm boot. However, the good news is that it recovers the display 100% of the time after a suspend/resume cycle. I've experimented with unplugging the battery and/or booting with power plugged/unplugged with no discernible effect.

Effecting a couple of people in the ubuntu forums to, marking as confirmed.

As Tim indicates there is an element of a race to this issue. On my test system and upgraded (Maverick -> Natty) system the issue was not reproducible in 20 reboots. I scratch installed from the same Natty image and the issue was instantly reproducible. In testing removing the ureadahead pack seems to render the machine bootable for the next boot. All of this tends to indicate that this is indeed a boot race.

It is reminicent of the framebuffer open races we experienced in Maverick. Cirtainly in boots where things work there is no sign of the vesafb being used, whereas it appears to be painted by plymouth in most of the failed boots.

Ok this seems to be fallout from grub2 handing off the display in graphics mode (gfxpayload=keep). Switching this back to text resolves the issue.

As a work-around we can turn this off by adding the line below to /etc/default/grub and running update-grub:

    GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text

Workround worked on a warm boot.

To me it seems to be more of a detection issue. I have an extra monitor cable sitting on my workbench, as soon as I connect it to my netbook and switch the kvm to the position the monitor cable is connected to I get the login screen displayed. I then disconnect the monitor cable and everything works as it should, as long as I don't reboot.

Upstream believes they understand the issue, the pipes are running when we try and reconfigure and our current initialisation can lead to combinations which would be deemed to produce 'undefined behaviour'. Testing with the V2 patch from the upstream bug seems to indicate that the fix there is sufficient for this machine.

Further tested this on a number of intel graphics based systems without issue. If those of you affected by this issue could test the kernels below and report back that would be great:

    http://people.canonical.com/~apw/blank-debug2-natty/

Andy, thanks for your work. Could you supply i386 image please.

As I'm effected by this bug on my i386 netbook.

Thanks

Ignore last comment, maybe it hadn't completed uploading!

Andy,

20/20 warm reboots, where before its was 3/20.

Thanks for your work.

Neil

Also works for me with a 945GM chipset.

Thanks a lot Andy.

Not working on cold boot, just taken me 15 attempts to boot.

This bug was fixed in the package linux - 2.6.37-8.20

---------------
linux (2.6.37-8.20) natty; urgency=low

  [ Andy Whitcroft ]

  * Revert "[Upstream] drivers/serial/mfd.c: Fix ARM compile error"
  * Revert "SAUCE: Nouveau: Disable acceleration on MacBook Pros"
  * Revert "SAUCE: Nouveau: Add quirk framework to disable acceleration"
  * Revert "SAUCE: i915 -- disable powersave by default"
  * SAUCE: enable Marvell 9128 PCIe SATA controller
    - LP: #658521
  * [Config] evtchn has been renamed
  * (no-up) add support for installed header files to ubuntu directory
    - LP: #684666
  * ubuntu: AUFS -- include the aufs_types.h file in linux-libc-headers
    - LP: #684666

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * [Config] MISS: evtchn, NEW : xen-evtchn
  * rebase to v2.6.37-rc4

  [ Upstream Kernel Changes ]

  * drm/i915: Clean conflicting modesetting registers upon init
    - LP: #683775
  * rebase to v2.6.37-rc4
 -- Andy Whitcroft <email address hidden> Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:42:07 +0000

Hasn't fixed the issue for me, Am able to boot up warm however cold boots seems to take about 10-15 attempts.

Not to sure if this is another issue, however when I hold shift to boot into grub menu, 9/10 it just goes to Grub loading and goes no further.

the provided test kernels correct the behavior on a lenovo S10

Thanks for your work!

Hi,

2.6.37-8.20 should appear in main repository as normal update? Or I need to use "proposed" branch?

Thanks you

In my experience some package mirrors need a few days to update all packets. http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com started to include the new kernel yesterday. Since then every time the kernel was loaded 12 seconds later I got the login screen as I am used to. And this with a slow intel atom processor. Thanks a lot!

Ok, thanks for information. I have finally got the new kernel also.
But, it seems, I have still black screen after boot. Dell Mini 10v.

Fixed for me.

I still can not load Alpha 1 noramlly. With new kernel splashscreen appears, but then .... black screen.

On my system since the kernel update if I get a black screen it is prior to loading the kernel. Filed Bug #685445 for this.

The problem is also resolved for me. I reinstalled the system. Perharps, Karmic->Lucid->Maverick->Natty update was too much.

Is the fix released for the CD/USB image? My screen goes blank after I choose "Try without installing," and I have updated to today's daily image.

workaround fixed it for me on a dell latitude E4310

I think this is probably the same bug? After clean install from the iso - 64bit desktop downloaded yesterday, it booted into the Unity desktop which seemed to run very slowly and finally stopped responding. On re-boot, the panels had disappeared, and I couldn't make anything happen. I got the startup sound, and the background with an active mouse cursor, but that was all.

The only way I got into it again was to boot in recovery mode, and switch to low definition. Once in, I changed the boot to the gnome desktop and it works just fine. I tried putting a root terminal and Nautilus on the desktop and switching back to Unity. The icons failed to appear, so I couldn't find a way of looking around.

I have done the full update before testing again.

Hardware: AMD ATHLON II X4 640 (3.00GHz/2MB CACHE/AM3), Motherboard ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s RAM 2GB. Installed on hdb 500 GiB (my hda has 10.04 installed).

Don't like unity. I rather use compiz. Or even the classical gnome session with metacity that is more fit for a user that uses more than a handful applications regularily.

...anyway... If you can see anything on the screen (and you told you did at least get a mouse cursor) you have most likely found a separate bug. On my computer I got a perfectly black screen when I turned on my computer - and the screen stayed perfectly black all the time.

---

Another question: Seems like the fix for this bug has been released now. Is anybody in here against closing it?

This issue was fixed for me for a while but it has come back. I'm using daily ISOs. Has anyone else had this problem crop back up?

I have an ACER ASPIRE 4736Z and Ubuntu Natty boots to a blank screen. I did not have problems with Ubuntu Maverick. I have tried lots of boot parameters with no success. Sometimes Natty boots ok... it seems totally random.

I was tryng 11.04 alfa and beta 2months ago and month ago with Multisystem multiple isos. Older versions are fine 11.04 ubuntu and Xubuntu gave black screen. On cold shutdown for 1/5th second i saw screen before power went away. Problem is monitor not showing anything. Its not even making Black Color its just low energy in Laptop monitor.
Ah yes this is like that on Emachines e525 but on Dell D610 with CdbootingUsb all works.
Also i was able to start on Emachines e525 with external monitor and External Works but internal Not.
Its been like that for at least 2months in 11.04 and still on finalized version still exist downloaded Ubuntu and Xubuntu today.

Having similar Black screen issue when try boot with ubuntu after installation completion of 11.04 version on HP Pavilion dm4 CTO-1100 laptop. But 10.04 works fine. Is there possiblity that Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit tries to install restricted graphics driver (AMD ATI Radeon HD 5xxx graphics driver), cause the same think happens if I try to install the restricted driver.

Kindly let me know if there is any fix available.

The bug seems to me not to have been fixed. It takes me up to 6 to 8 tries before any successfull cold boot.

I made the modification suggested by Andy in comment #10. Maybe 1 success for every 8 to 10 tries.

I don't know whether it still makes sense to test the kernel linked at in comment #14. If it makes sense, can somebody explain me how to do ?

I have 3 distros : 1 Natty and 1 Maverick on my internal disk and 1 Natty on an external Usb disk, all 64 bits. Andy's modification helped to boot both Natty, however with better results for my internal Natty (roughly 50% success for warm boots, and 25% for cold ones) than for my external one (maybe 20% for warm boots, and 10% for cold one). Each Natyy has its own swap.

A few days ago, I had to boot Maverick (no problem booting), and this then both Natties refuse to boot (I may have since run up to 20 tries on each one).

Internal Natty's kernel : Linux 2.6.38-11-generic
USB Natty's kernel : Linux 2.6.38-8-generic
Maverik's kernel : Linux 2.6.35-22-generic

The situation is getting very frustrating, as my Maverik is not complete : does not run WIfi and has no sound.