Thanks for your input, Ray. I was a bit imprecise (as usual on my first try) in describing the problem. I think maybe it's not a framebuffer problem, for the following reason: during initial bootup, I do see all the boot messages (I seem to have given a misimpression about that). There is no small color penguin - which I've seen in other instances, like booting from a Knoppix CD. It's just plain text output. The screen going blank occurs at the point, at the end of the boot messages, where xdm starts. After the "starting xdm" message appears is when the screen goes blank.
OK. First thing to wonder is if this is some sort of xdm problem. Test this by removing the symlink /etc/rc2.d/S99xdm and rebooting. This change should leave you with a standard login: prompt on VT1.
Log in and run "startx", and see if you have the same problem.
At first, there's some illumination there - not cross-hatching, like you sometimes see - but some noticeable degree of phosphor excitement. After about 1 second it goes black. At that point, the power light on the monitor begins to blink - like when it's getting no video input (e.g., when the computer gets powered off).
This detail actually is important. It is an indicator of a problem with an hsync or vsync signal to the monitor. Make sure your X setup is set to use default size of 640x480 and color depth of 8 (not great settings, but very vanilla ones, likely to find a workable modeline).
[...]
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Generic Mouse" (type: MOUSE) (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Configured Mouse" (type: MOUSE) (WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such file or directory) --------------------------------------------------------------
That last entry seems like maybe it's trying to access some sort of devfs thing as well, doesn't it?
No. devfs entries are all of the general form /dev/*/* . This is just trying to access an ordinary device, probably one related to power management. I'm unsure of the details here, except that my Debian-Sid workstation does not have that device either, and X survives its absence quite well. It **may** mean that your X setup is trying to use power-management in some way that your system does not support, though.
But note that it is only a warning, not an error (the deleted portions are only information and warning messages too, no errors).
So, maybe getting the newer kernel is the answer to this problem: maybe the newer XFree86 presumes a devfs-enabled kernel (guessing here, since I have a vague impression that 2.2.20 doesn't support devfs)? This is what my rather limited understanding indicates at this point. Any further input?
I don't have a 2.2.20 source tree handy to examine, and I don't otherwise recall if it supports devfs. Based on my system here, current (or at least recent) X doesn't assume devfs is in use.
Thanks, James
PS > 4. I'm not sure what is putting a "pointer to /dev/mice/???" in your Actually, I think it was /dev/input/mice (trying to recall something I saw briefly late last night).
If you see it again, try again. But I can't suggest anything based on this description.
As a general matter, if we are looking at the possibility of hardware problems, you might want to report the details of how you consifured X (in the dpkg-mediated dialog) and what the relevant sections (Modules, Device, Monitor, Screen, and ServerLayout) of XF86Config look like. Also tell us what monitor you are using and what you know about its multisync capabilities (this last item is an RTFM exercise).
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