The scene:

My office, lunchtime.

The props:

My old Dell Inspiron 8300, with a hot new copy of Ubuntu 11.04 still 
warm in its CD reader.  It's got an ACER x223w LCD display.

The player:

Me, frustrated.

I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 onto my machine, using the usual Ubuntu 
"We'll do everything for you" install.  Everything went nicely until the 
last part, where I actually tried to _use_ Ubuntu.  The log in screen 
came up just fine, I selected me and entered my password, then it went 
to the 'real' screen, but never got far beyond painting the background.  
I get little rectangles that randomly flash on the screen, as if the 
computer is trying to do something but failing.  When I push the power 
button some of these rectangles become the shut-down screen, and if I'm 
quick I can push the "power off" button and the computer will power down 
normally.

Thankfully, I did not blow away my 10.04 installation -- that's what I'm 
writing this missive on.

I get various messages in various log files.  The pertinent ones seem to 
be this set, from both syslog and kern.log:

Jul 18 12:05:22 servo kernel: [  443.158652] compiz[1325]: segfault at 
34 ip 0137dd75 sp bfcc8110 error 4 in 
libnux-graphics-0.9.so.0.942.4[12e4000+cd000]
Jul 18 12:05:28 servo kernel: [  448.911420] compiz[1473]: segfault at 
34 ip 05e7bd75 sp bfdecd70 error 4 in 
libnux-graphics-0.9.so.0.942.4[5de2000+cd000]
Jul 18 12:05:33 servo kernel: [  453.326184] compiz[1534]: segfault at 
34 ip 0544ed75 sp bfa16e40 error 4 in 
libnux-graphics-0.9.so.0.942.4[53b5000+cd000]
Jul 18 12:05:37 servo kernel: [  457.442759] compiz[1550]: segfault at 
34 ip 0732ed75 sp bff463b0 error 4 in 
libnux-graphics-0.9.so.0.942.4[7295000+cd000]

Accompanied by this set, from Xorg.0.log:

[   431.479] Warning: Xalloc: requesting unpleasantly large amount of 
memory: 0 bytes.
[   443.246] Warning: Xalloc: requesting unpleasantly large amount of 
memory: 0 bytes.
[   444.234] Warning: Xalloc: requesting unpleasantly large amount of 
memory: 0 bytes.
[   449.064] Warning: Xalloc: requesting unpleasantly large amount of 
memory: 0 bytes.

I've done just a bit of web searching, and I did run into complaints (on 
a Fedora forum) that this may have something to do with the monitor not 
properly communicating its size.

I assume that what's happening is that the install CD and the login 
screen both use some sort of safe graphics mode, but that the real 
screen tries to switch to some nifty cool-o 'way-best' mode and causes 
the hemi-hang.

So:

Anyone know what's going on?  Failing that, does anyone know how I can 
configure 11.04 to come up in safe mode when I log on?  They've worked 
so hard to make it safe for grandma to use that when something they 
didn't expect happens, it don't work at all!

TIA

-- 
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
Voice: 503-631-7815
Cell:  503-349-8432
http://www.wescottdesign.com


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