Blank screen - booting from usb stick

[robert]

Hello

I'm an (intending) new user, but at present can't even get into Mageia.

I ought to make it clear that by habit if not conviction I'm a Windows user who - despite repeated attempts - has not yet succeeded in making the transition to Linux - any distro of Linux. I thought I'd like to take Megeia for a run to see how I got on with it but fell at the second hurdle. The first was to instal the live CD (KDE-4) to a usb drive which I managed to do from within Windows XP using Mandriva-seed.

Mageia boots successfully up to the point where either a text screen with login prompt or an X-window should appear - at which point I just get a totally blank screen. And that's as far as I can get.

I may be wrong but I suspect that the problem may lie with NVidia and/or my monitor. Monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster BX2350 with native res 1920 x 1080, 60 Hz. Mepis (which I have on my hard drive) runs it at that res. Clearly Megeia recognises it because it displays during all the preceding stages of boot-up, although not at that res.

My graphics card is an Asus EN210 with GeForce 210 GPU and the connection is from the card's DVI-I outlet to the monitor's HDMI input (because that's the cable that Samsung supplied).

Is anyone able to suggest, please, what I might do in order to be able to progress further?

[barjac]

There is a known problem with the Live CD booting on certain hardware which applies to both CDs and USB sticks.
There is an ongoing bug report.
There is no issue with the full DVD or the minimal Dual Arch CD installation media.
I would recommend the full DVD if you can afford the download bandwidth which is ~ 4GB and best done using bittorrent (uTorrent works well in Windows). This will give you the choice of KDE, Gnome or LXDE.
The DVD iso will also work on a USB stick and can be transferred using dd in any Linux distro.

Code: Select all

dd if=filename.iso of=/dev/sdx

EDIT Be sure about the sdx drive as dd will overwrite everything on the destination without asking.
I hope that helps,
Barry

[robert]

Hi Barry

Thanks for that helpful advice.

I shall do my best to follow it; wish me luck!

Robert

[doktor5000]

What you can try with the live cd:
In the bootloader, select Boot Mageia, press F4, select Default and enter the following in the appearing input line:
init 3
That should take you to a command line login, where you can login as root and launch drakx11 to select
another graphics driver, for example vesa. Then run startx to start the X-server. Does this help you?

[robert]

doktor5000

The proffered help is much appreciated but alas I can't make use of it at the moment because I've now overwritten the live-CD .iso that was on my usb drive with a Dual Arch one. But should that not work I can always go back to the live-CD and try your approach.

Right now I'm embroiled with trying to work-around a glitch in my Mepis installation which is preventing me from using dd.

[doktor5000]

Glitch preventing you to use dd? What could that be, out of interest?

[barjac]

@robert Be aware that the dual arch does not contain KDE or Gnome even though it offers them as options. These options are for use when using supplementary media for the install only.
It will install a lightweight LXDE by default from the iso. Once the online mirrors have been set up then KDE or Gnome may be installed by installing the meta packages task-kde4 or task-gnome.

You need to be root to run dd, but I guess you knew that

[robert]

@doktor5000

Since you ask...

I attach a copy of the terminal app in Mepis, which I was intending to use for invoking dd. As you'll see it's flooded with a persisting message from syslog, which intervenes each time I try to input to the terminal. Hence I'm stymied.

The version I'm running is ver. 11 (the latest) 64-bit, which I upgraded-to within the last few days - and from the start began getting this message. Meanwhile when I've run Mepis 11 from a usb drive (the one from which I installed it), I get no such message. I'm afraid that my knowledge of Linux is too slight to enable me to cope with trying to cure this problem. My immediate response has been to download the 32-bit image, with a view to switching to that, but I do realise that that's just a pot-shot and might well prove a waste of time.

Meanwhile...

@ barjac

Having read your comment (thanks!) I now begin to doubt if I should anyway persevere with Dual Arch. The reason I picked it in preference to the full DVD was that there's insufficient room on the only usb drive I currently have available to accommodate more than 900 KB.

So, the best way forward would appear to me now to be to revert to using the live-CD (hoping to God I can repeat my success in downloading it to the aforementioned usb drive!) and to try to follow the directions in doktor 5000's post above.

However...

@doktor5000

What do you mean. please, by "in the bootloader, select Boot Megeia..."? I don't recollect seeing any bootloader on the previous occasion. When my PC boots from the usb drive it launches straight into Megeia's splash-screen (the one with the progress-dots on it).

I'm confused...

EDIT
I've realised the uploaded attachment is not readable.

What the persisting message says is:-
"Message from syslog@mepis1 ....... -kernel:[ 171.265378] do_IRQ: 0.67 No irq handler for vector (irq-1)"

[barjac]

I suppose it's a silly question to ask if you have a CD/DVD writer ?
Also there is no real drawback with using the Dual Arch, in fact it has the advantage of installing a lot less to be updated at the end of install. Also all of KDE for example when you do install it online will be bang up to date. Using the DVD you would find that you would have a lot more to update after the install as we are now 3 months down the line since launch.

[robert]

I suppose it's a silly question to ask if you have a CD/DVD writer ?

Yes, I've had at the back of my mind that I could use that"old-fashioned" method.

Going back to the start, what I originally planned was to put the live-CD version onto my 1 MB usb stick so as to able to run Megeia from memory, not (at this stage) with a view to installing it on my hard drive. That plan fell foul of the "known problem" to which you referred above, which (you say) afflicts CD's and usb sticks alike.

(doktor5000 has meanwhile suggested that that problem is able to be worked-around, and I await further information as to how I might do that).

The trouble is that without being able to get Mepis 11 to run dd I can't install either Dual Arch or the full version on a usb stick. So it's that that I'm focusing on first of all - without regard to version. But I've noted your pertinent advice regarding the merits of Dual Arch, thanks.