[SOLVED] 2012.02 LiveCD or installed: random black screen

[Hootiegibbon]

I have not looked at this in any real detail as yet however..

try adding "vmalloc=256M" without the quotes to teh kernel boot options at the livecd boot menu (F6 iirc)

Your system is allocating 120megs to vmalloc which may not be enough for graphically heavy environments.

Will look further later

Jase

[Trio3b]

Will do. This last crash took several days to show up so it may happen immediately or next week. Will see.

Thanks

[Trio3b]

vmalloc=256M added to boot option did not prevent crash today. Read somewhere that adding in increments of 64mb may be the way to go. Sound plausible?

Am able to Ctrl+Alt+F8 to restore the desktop as if nothing happened but something keeps kicking the session into black screen and is quite annoying. In this case I got an I-beam cursor instead of the usual mouse pointer. I have not yet had a crash prior to login.

Guessing this is a plasma-desktop issue?

[kjpetrie]

What exactly do you mean? Ctrl+Alt+F8 returns you straight to the desktop, or you have to log in again?

[Just17]

What exactly do you mean? Ctrl+Alt+F8 returns you straight to the desktop, or you have to log in again?

+1

Is it possible that the equivalent of Ctrl+Alt+F9 (or other) is being issued somehow, and that is what the black screen is?

[Trio3b]

Yes, as mentioned a few posts back, I just discovered while trying to log into a new terminal to maybe read logs while crashed that if I Ctrl+Alt+F1-6, I could log in to those six terminals, but could not start x as it was "already running" so I continued with C+A +F7 which gives me what appears to be a verbose boot that is hung at "starting display manager" and C+A+F8 which brings the GUI session back intact with no login required.

C+A+F9-12 gives me black screen with blinking cursor up in upper left. Again, with the "crash" I get black screen but with a working mouse pointer.

All open apps are there and running as if nothing happened. This must be plasma / window manager crash. I was under the impression that GUI by default runs under F7 so curious about the verbose hang at "starting display manager".

[Just17]

All open apps are there and running as if nothing happened. This must be plasma / window manager crash. I was under the impression that GUI by default runs under F7 so curious about the verbose hang at "starting display manager".

The boot screens, as you have found are on F7, the desktop on F8 ......  since last year sometime I think.

To me what you are seeing is not so much a crash as a change of what is being displayed ..... to one of the other 'F' screens ...... presently I have no idea what might cause that to happen besides the obvious C+A+F..

[Trio3b]

The boot screens, as you have found are on F7, the desktop on F8 ......  since last year sometime I think.

To me what you are seeing is not so much a crash as a change of what is being displayed ..... to one of the other 'F' screens ...... presently I have no idea what might cause that to happen besides the obvious C+A+F..

Exactly. In the beginning  (last summer) I had no choice but to call it a "crash", but as time goes by it appears to be a desktop display change or "bump" off terminal F8. I have removed `~.kde4 and also tried desktop effects "off" and altering kdmrc.

However, I just had a "crash" BEFORE login. Is KDE controlling display before login or is plymouth? What is controlling the login screen? Again, I hit C+A F8 and there was the login screen. This is why it's so difficult to pin down as I cannot reproduce reliably and it happens both BEFORE login AND during sessions. I can go 5-15 boots and/or sessions between events.

Latest dmesg ( about 15 min ago) -->  http://pastebin.com/cwW7GRk3

[kjpetrie]

But this is enormous progress, because it stops us looking for the wrong problem. Something causing a switch of screens is very different from anything crashing, from a technical viewpoint. Now I will go back and read through your posts again with this new knowledge, and see if anything makes sense.

[Trio3b]

current .xsession-errors shown in terminal F4 as desktop is "bumped off" into blackscreen --> http://pastebin.com/ChMpWv4i


OK just had another event.. This time did not need to C+A + F8 . I just started mousing around black desktop clicking on where I thought desktop icons should be just to see if I could launch anything via GUI- nothing.

Then I right click where I thought empty desktop would be and poof....the desktop and FF reappear right where I left it ! Someone else having similar issues -->https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1000445#p1000445


What the ... is going on? I can only guess this is a windowing problem of some kind.

[kjpetrie]

Can't see anything in that link apart from adverts.

[Just17]

Can't see anything in that link apart from adverts.

You cannot get to this?

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1000445#p1000445

If not it can be copy/pasted to here ........

[Trio3b]

Sorry, here is the link to  the latest .xsession-errors --> http://pastebin.com/jMBGnuwB


After another event, I was again able to return to desktop by  mousing to what would be a blank area of the desktop just on either side of the bottom panel. then right click and I have my desktop and open apps back! very strange.

[UPDATE] Don't know what other logs I can post, but maybe this helps. First, since this CAN happen before bootlogin, it would seem some driver issue is possible if kdm is not called yet. Several of my /var/logs indicate "fbcon not found". Some threads say no problem, others indicate fbcon - i915 conflict as fbcon not loaded properly at boot.  --> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Intel_GMA#Blackscreen
or --> http://www.digipedia.pl/usenet/thread/18802/2447/#post2438
or --> http://www.mail-archive.com/kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org/msg00622.html

There are numerous threads about i915 black screen issue  with SEVERAL causes appearing/fixed/reappearing since 2009.

The only other relevant info I can provide is pclos 2010.12 kde  which uses X11-xserver 1.6.5-x  with no black screen issues on this laptop I can recall. Looking through my posts, it was after the  X11-server-xorg upgrade (currently at 1.10.4-1 ) that these black screen issues seemed to come up.

I could stay with pclos 2010 if not for FF 3.5.x being outdated. I could live with FF 3.5.x if the rest of the world didn't change.

[UPDATE2] As of 04/19/12 am going to run pclos 2010.12 for a few days and see what gives. Will post back


[UPDATE 3] As of 04/26  Have tried several other distros with x11-server > 1.6.x and having similar blackscreen issues so currently running pclos 2010.12 with no "bump off" into black screen. Since there appears to be no way to upgrade 2010 and no way to rollback 2012, I may be "frozen" at 2010 which seems to be all that I need ( with latest versions of LO and FF installed successfully outside of repos). Unfortunately have not found a true solution. If I could rest assured that this was merely a display problem with pclos-2012 and that my files would remain bulletproof, I could feel more comfortable, but the current 2010 install will be stable enough  as a backup machine alongside my desktop.

[UPDATE 4] As of 08/12/12 no bumps off into black screen with pclos 2010. This would seem to discount hardware issues that were suggested on another forum. I ran into this thread ( again on the Arch forums) -> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=145187 about someone else with issues regarding X running on tty8 instead of tty7 as was  happening on this Toshiba. Lots of stuff regarding policykit, kdmrc, /etc/inittab.

When running 2012.x I did ocassionally boot into KDE desktop with a " A monitor has been disconnected" warning. I don't know if this was related to the issue of X running on tty8 instead of tty7.

Have just decided to run this lappy as a general purpose unit and not for business. Too bad as it's got decent specs.

[UPDATE 5] As of Oct 1, 2012 all is fine on this laptop and it has been worked in as a backup business machine. Pretty sure the issue was a combination of funky hdwr and the xorg-server version issue. At this time have not found a way to easily run a newer pclos version with an old xorg-server so leaving it be.