Last Kernel 3.4.24 update on EeePC = no more screen

[lucrecius]

Hi Everyone, and Best wishes for all contributors !
I promote mageia from the begining (as old user of Mandrake, etc)... but i could say, I'm not rewarded that for
As I'm teacher, I'm very troubled, since I had a course to prepare and to expose in two days. But mageia2 is down.
Shame, I'm using a window$ to get mageia team, and worse, using it for my next teaching.
Fortunatly, I'm shure some one will find what to fix on my pb.
OK stop crying.
I' using an ASUS EeePC 1012NL with NVIDIA card
precedent version was : desktop586 3.3.8-2.mga2
Well, last day I did relaxly a suggested upgrade, loading and installing ok.
3 packages wheres annonced and installed, viewable in GRUB 1.5 menu :
desktop586 3.4.24-3.mga2
netbook 3.4.24-3.mga2
tmb-laptop_3.4.24-2.mga2
But when I logically rebooted... it freezed systematicly at the same step :

Started LSB: Samba servers (nmdb and smdb) [OK]

Whatever the package I use, same result. Even with the old one.
i.e. no return !

I tried some options like deleting "quiet" and "resume....".... same result.

Thank you all for your help.

lucrecius

[filip]

I have a desktop but something similar happened to me too. PC didn't exactly freezed but it reloaded startup screen many times. It started after several minutes but didn't succeed to kdm login screen. So I tried to recreated initrd in virtual console by executing:

Code: Select all

dracut -f

For now it seems to work.

HTH,
Filip.

[lucrecius]

Thanks for this track... but I can't even acces to any virtual console, even grub.

Talking about "freeze" : I don't know exactly what's happening, (without sign of disk access) a process stop ? a wait ? a tide cpu loop ?
The only thing I can do, is Alt-Ctl-Del to reboot and come back in GRUB main menu.
...or to cut power

[filip]

I was assuming that you can boot old kernel and run dracut there instructing him to build initrd for the new kernel. Please check man pages or help for exact syntax. Or try to boot from Live Mageia if you can't boot the one on your EeePC and use chroot to the installed Mageia.

[lucrecius]

Thank you Philip for instructions.
Unfortunatly, it seems impossible to run dracut, even with the original Mageia2 rescue DVD.
Or, it's to tricky for me... "dracut" refuse to run, asking for missing files.
As you said, I was looking for the old boot, but it fails identicaly.
Are there other rescue issues ? ... a log file to examine ?
Can someone tel me what is missing to Mageia ?
Is there any rolback mean ?

[filip]

Did you succeed with chroot? Can you post dracut "fail" message here.

[lucrecius]

ok, Philip
This is what I've done, without any chroot (i must say, i don't understand what it have to do in this case)...
...and what I've got.

Code: Select all

[root@rescue /mnt]# dracut -l
/mnt/usr/bin/dracut: line 313: readlink: command not found
Cannot find /usr/lib/dracut/dracut-function.sh.
Are you running from a git checkout ?
Try passing -l as an argument to /mnt/usr/bin/dracut
[root@rescue /mnt]#

I'm shure there should be another way...

[lucrecius]

huh, I did the right command as you said :

Code: Select all

[root@rescue /mnt]# dracut -f

...but with the same result.

[filip]

You need to chroot in your installed Mageia to rescue it.

Here is the procedure (assuming whole file system in / partition e.g. no separate /boot or other partitions):

1. Boot with Live Mageia
2. Mount / from installed Mageia to /some/path
3. chroot /some/path
4. dracut desktop586 3.4.24-3.mga2 (don't use -f in chroot as you don't need it there)

Note that I'm no expert and that there might be an easier way with Mageia2 rescue DVD.

BTW, I'm Filip not Philip.

[lucrecius]

Hi FiliP...
Things begin to unfreeze !
Nothing succeed with external boot, but a single Alt+Ctl+3 ...and I found what was there "sleeping"... the virtual console #3.
so obvious.
Well, I did the "dracut -f" you told me
It seemed to work without pb, and then I rebooted.
....same result.

OK, I rebooted and then tried some basic root commands in the virtual console and saw that everything seemed ok, except the screen.

When I tried a screen test in the drakx11 menu, the result is : no screen found

oops, what does it means ? ... my screen is in front of me !
But the system doesn't know it.... or doesn't know it anymore (as before the Mageia Update)

Is it a Nvidia pb ? a EeePC pb ? ....a X11 trap ?

I'm still hoping some one can find the issue

lucrecius.. .

P.S. I'm also looking for screen known pb.

[filip]

I would try to add drivers for Nvidia but this is beyond my knowledge.

Code: Select all

# dracut -f --add-drivers "module1 module2"

[lucrecius]

Thanks again FiliP...
I tried your suggestion wit dracut, but got the same bad result.

Well, i really think that it's an Xorg and/or Nvidia problem.
I had to fix it times ago with the first mageia, but can't remember how I fixed it.

No one as got this weird situation ?

I'm thinking of rebuild Xorg, but don't know how...

Thanks for help,
lucrecius.. .

[bertaerts]

I don't have an EeePC, but a Dell Inspiron 17R SE 7720 instead.
I also have an nVIDIA graphics card: GeForce GT 650M.
I use kernel 3.4.24-3 without problems (and even compiled my own kernel to get Alps Touchpad support).

In case you use the nVIDIA proprietary drivers, these are just a few hints:
[1] you should install the kernel-devel rpm
I have following rpm's installed:

kernel-firmware-nonfree-20121030-1.mga2.nonfree
kernel-desktop-devel-latest-3.4.24-3.mga2
kernel-desktop-3.4.24-3.mga2-1-1.mga2
kernel-source-3.4.24-3.mga2-1-1.mga2
kernel-userspace-headers-3.4.24-3.mga2
kernel-desktop-devel-3.4.24-3.mga2-1-1.mga2
kernel-firmware-20120219-1.mga2
kernel-desktop-latest-3.4.24-3.mga2

If the devel packages are not installed, the nVIDIA kernel modules matching your kernel can not be compiled.
Now I speak of upgrading the nVIDIA from http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html.
You should follow the instructions on
http://onse.fi/nvidia-mgabuild/
to create rpm's from the nVIDIA executable file

[2] If you enable the non-free repo, you can use the precompiled rpm's like
nvidia-current-kernel-3.4.24-desktop-3.mga2-295.71-10.mga2.nonfree.x86_64.rpm

Normally if your system does not boot up graphically due to errors, you can go to a terminal with CTRL-ALT-F2.
Try startx and see what error message comes out.

[lucrecius]

Xorg.0.log

The last Xorg log ...with failure.

(9.91 KiB) Downloaded 163 times

OK Happy Mageia People !
I'm back with some new data.... but the pb still remains .
Thank you bertaerts for your suggestions... but I don't remember how to get all the devel stuff.

I seriously believe that it's a Nvidia/Xorg pb.
Finding NVIDIA linux driver, I tried to install the "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-310.32.run", without success.

Nevertheless, I tried startx... to see the Xorg error/log messages.

The whole story is in the attached log file.

I suspect that Xorg is adressing a wrong kernel level (3.3.8)... but not shure.
If so, how to let have the good version (3.4.24) ?

[jaywalker]

Sorry to butt-in on the thread, but I have recently installed the nvidia driver for my machine and it has given me a lot of work to avoid the problems it introduced for me. I wonder if you have addressed the question why you want to use the proprietary driver? I am asking myself the same question and I have decided to revert to the nouveau free (xorg) driver for a while.

If you have no particular reason which forces you to use the nvidia driver then switching to the nouveau driver will eliminate any possibility that there is a problem with the installation of the nvidia driver. You would not need to worry about having the necessary devel pre-requisites to build the nvidia driver wrapper.

You would then have a working desktop to complete your lesson preparations and come back to the nvidia driver problem later, if you feel the need.

The simplest way to achieve this would be to boot to a console and execute XFdrake to pick the nouveau Xorg driver and decline the suggestion to use the proprietary driver. On re-boot, if the nvidia driver installation was really the cause of the problem, you should now have a successful boot to the graphical desktop login prompt, thanks to nouveau.

Richard