[SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

Choven · 2017-08-02 22:54:47

I ran into a problem today and I need some advice on how to troubleshoot it. I already have a USB of the new version of bunsenlabs ready to reinstall (that's what I'm using now), but before I did that, I'd like to see if I can fix the problem myself.

Last night, I updated my system (apt-get update). Everything worked or so I thought. I powered down and rebootted today. Instead of booting into bunsenlabs, my screen is black with a cursor in the top left corner. Unlike other posts reported by google, this cursor is NOT blinking. I've had the black screen without a cursor before, and I had to switch to tty so that I could use the command line to install video drivers. Today, I can't do that. None of the virtual consoles seem to work. That is, Ctl-Alt-F# doesn't do anything. Key-presses do work. Thus, I blindly used 'SUPER-T' to open a terminal, typed 'sudo reboot' enter, then my password and enter. This reboots my machine. This is what I've tried:

1. Other OS work on the machine. Win8 works, and I used my Fedora install to make the USB. With both Crunchbang 32-bit and Fedora installed and working, I can chroot into the bunsenlabs distro if I need to do that.

2. Booted into recovery at runlevel 1. I have network access, but not sure what I could do at this level.

3. Booted into recovery at runlevel 1 and changed to runlevel 2 and runlevel3. Both of these allow me to use tty. When I tried 'startx' as root, my screen goes black with the non-blinking cursor and I lose the ability to move between tty. Alt-PrtSc-K seemed to give me back the ability to access the tty.

4. Checked Xorg.log and didn't see any errors, but I was only looking for lines with EE.

5. If I try to elevate to runlevel 5, the system goes black with the non-blinking cursor. I assume this is because it's trying to start X. At this point, I lose all tty, and Alt-PrtSc-K doesn't seem to work. I can use Alt-PrtSc-R -E -I -S -U -B to get a clean reboot, so the keyboard is working.

As I said, I'm going to be OK with reinstalling bunsenlabs but I'd like to troubleshoot things first. I think troubleshooting is a good way to really learn linux. What advice can you offer? I'm thinking I have to first boot to a runlevel that has everything but X running, trying 'startx', and then viewing a log. However, I'm not sure how to boot without X starting and which log to view. Thanks for any help or advice.

Last edited by Choven (2017-08-03 16:21:55)

damo · 2017-08-02 23:50:24

Choven wrote:

.... However, I'm not sure how to boot without X starting and which log to view. Thanks for any help or advice.

Add this to the boot parameters, ie the line starting with "linux...."

systemd.unit=multi-user.target

View the last log with

journalctl -b

Choven · 2017-08-03 05:22:11

Thanks for the info. I've been using the system.unit=... part to get to the cli to view logs and try some things. I went ahead and reinstalled the fglrx drivers and xorg. I also installed the 4.9 kernel from jessie-backports. This has helped my situation some. 'startx' still freezes (or so it seems), but I can use Ctrl-C to get out of it and back to the CLI. If I reboot normally, though, my system goes into a screen loop: a few seconds of the black screen with a cursor, the tty login screen for a second, back to the black screen, and so forth until it eventually stops at the black screen. At this point, the system is basically frozen and the REISUB keys may or may not work.

The xorg logs suggest that my display device is not being detected. I'm working on a laptop, so I'm not sure how to view the monitor info and confirm that my xorg.conf is setup correctly. Perhaps I'll have better luck tomorrow...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-08-03 06:25:20

Choven wrote:

reinstalled the fglrx drivers

Go back to the open drivers, they work better

ohnonot · 2017-08-03 06:29:13

Choven wrote:

None of the virtual consoles seem to work. That is, Ctl-Alt-F# doesn't do anything. Key-presses do work. Thus, I blindly used 'SUPER-T' to open a terminal, typed 'sudo reboot' enter, then my password and enter. This reboots my machine.

interesting & important.
i daresay the vts work, too, and you could use them blindly.

but you already seem to have partly troubleshot the problem.

ati graphics tends to raise some red flags with linux.

how old is the laptop?
does it use an external monitor?
more system specs, please.

we will need the output of commands like

lspci -k | grep -iEA5 'vga|3d|display'
dmesg 
journalctl

dmesg and journalctl should be filtered, but i'm not exactly sure how.
maybe grep for the name of the driver in use, found with the first command.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-08-03 06:31:11

^ The OP's problems will magically disappear if they switch back to the default AMD drivers supplied with BunsenLabs; this is confirmed by the fact that the OP has posted here using the live ISO image.

The proprietary (fglrx) drivers are crap and should not be used.

For Helium we will have amdgpu and we can forget all about fglrx...

ohnonot · 2017-08-03 06:32:35

^ i guess you're right.

Choven · 2017-08-03 16:21:22

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

^ For Helium we will have amdgpu and we can forget all about fglrx...

This fixed it. I'm not sure how it happened but the nouveau driver may have replaced whatever driver had been installed (either fglrx or amdgpu) because nouveau was installed but fglrx or amdgpu were not. That started me down the path of installing the fglrx driver, which was an improvement, but purging that driver and using the amdgpu driver got me working again. Thanks for the help...

DeepDayze · 2017-08-03 19:29:13

I believe fglrx has been long deprecated anyway.

#1 2017-08-02 22:54:47

[SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#2 2017-08-02 23:50:24

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#3 2017-08-03 05:22:11

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#4 2017-08-03 06:25:20

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#5 2017-08-03 06:29:13

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#6 2017-08-03 06:31:11

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#7 2017-08-03 06:32:35

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#8 2017-08-03 16:21:22

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

#9 2017-08-03 19:29:13

Re: [SOLVED] Boot to Black Screen - No TTY available

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