I have had a longstanding problem with getting X to work on knoppmyth. I'm still using R5B7 because none of the more recent versions have worked. I also had the same problems with R5A30 but not R5A22.

Here's the problem: When I install any of the recent versions, after the first reboot, the boot-screen gets to the point where it says "checking nvidia video driver installation". after a couple seconds, the screen goes blank and the system is completely unresponsive. When I say completely unresponsive, I mean that nothing on the keyboard works (no ctrl-alt-del, ctrl-alt-bksp, ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-C, etc), and the network interface dies (i've actively pinged the machine during boot up and watched as the interface came up and then dies when it get to the crash point).

Troubleshooting: after the crash, I boot from the CD, mount hda1 and try to inspect the xorg log in /var/log. However, the system crashes before anything is written to the log so that is no help. dmesg has no error's either. If I change xorg.conf to use nv instead of nvidia, it will boot to the gui and all seems fine but when I try to watch live TV, it crashes again. If I have a secure shell running to another machine, I run top and see first that mythfrontend is taking 99% cpu, and then it goes away and xorg is running at 99% cpu. Trying to use kill or pkill has no effect on any processes.

I have tried hundreds of combinations of settings in the xorg.conf file. I've installed Ubuntu and it worked fine with an identical xorg.conf file. Also, I have always tested my CDs to make sure they burned without errors.


Will someone please help me fix this once and for all?

Here is a copy of my lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
0000:00:05.0 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0180 (rev 01)
0000:00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
0000:00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)


Thanks,
Jeremy

- Do a normal upgrade following the R5F1 hints up to the point where you would reboot for phase 2. If you've already gotten this far skip to the next step.

- Reboot using the CD in rescue mode, mount the root partition of your HD and disable the /etc/init.d/install-nvidia-debian script (for example by renaming it or adding an "exit 0" at the beginning).

- Reboot to the HD. You should come up to either a less capable X server (nv) or a text virtual console.

--> If you come up in X continue with the rest of install.

--> If you come up to a text only console (no pictures in the background) you can try manually installing the legacy nvidia server using:


This is mostly covered under "BlackScreenAfterInstall" in the troubleshooting guide.

Problem solved!

Thank you tjc for your helpful hints.

Here is what I had to do to get up and working:
1. install from scratch (I suppose a fresh upgrade would work too).

2. During first reboot, hold down shift and boot with the "linux init=/bin/sh" parameter

3) Add "exit 0" to the beginning of the /etc/init.d/install-nvidia-debian script. I found that if the /etc/init.d/install-nvidia-debian or /usr/local/bin/install-nvidia-debian.sh ran at all, there would be problems down the line.

4) Reboot and the nv driver is used. finish the setup.

5) When setup is finished, reboot, hold down shift and enter single user mode again (see step 2).

6) mv /usr/bin/startx /usr/bin/startx.save
then reboot

7) wget latest nvidia driver from nvidia.com and install it
check to make sure the xorg.conf file is acceptable

mv /usr/bin/startx.save /usr/bin/startx
then rboot

9) make final adjustments to xorg.conf file (such as overscan) and reboot.


For some reason, the install-nvidia-debian.sh just messes up my system. I hope this information helps someone else

--Jeremy