Debian Sid startup problems

James Miller
2004-06-11T21:01:52Z

I've somehow managed to foul up my Debian system such that it won't "go graphical" and then somehow freezes up. Since I can't see any screen output, I can't tell very well what's going on. I'm sort of mystified as to how and why this happened: I recently installed some USB stuff (apt-get install usbitem), and I just can't understand how that would foul up my display. I haven't installed any X related programs lately, nor have I fiddled with any display settings. What happens is that I boot the system as normal (let lilo start the default kernel), the machine goes through its bootup routine, displaying messages and then, at the stage where I expect the XDM login window to appear, my monitor goes blank with a "no signal" message. Any keyboard input I've tried has no effect on the machine: ctrl-alt-Fx won't get me any virtual terminals, ctrl-alt-bkspc does not kill X (is it even starte
d?) and dump me at a command prompt, and ctrl-alt-del won't reboot the system. I looked at /var/log/messages after booting the system from a Knoppix disk (thank God for Klaus and co.!), and the KDE it boots into looks prfectly normal (except not as fine a resolution as I'd like). Some /var/log/messages output that looks significant is as follows:

Jun 11 13:58:38 debian kernel: mtrr: 0xd0000000,0x2000000 overlaps existing 0xd0000000,0x1000000
Jun 11 13:58:38 debian kernel: [drm] Initialized radeon 1.9.0 20020828 on minor 0
Jun 11 13:58:38 debian kernel: mtrr: 0xd0000000,0x2000000 overlaps existing 0xd0000000,0x1000000
Jun 11 13:58:38 debian kernel: agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
Jun 11 13:58:38 debian kernel: agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
Jun 11 13:58:39 debian kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x7a on isa0060/serio0).
Jun 11 13:58:39 debian kernel: atkbd.c: This is an XFree86 bug. It shouldn't access hardware directly.
Jun 11 13:58:39 debian kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x7a on isa0060/serio0).
Jun 11 13:58:39 debian kernel: atkbd.c: This is an XFree86 bug. It shouldn't access hardware directly.

Not sure why this problem suddenly crops up, or what to do about it. I've thought of upgrading the X server as one possible solution, but don't want to just take wild stabs like that. So, I ask for input here. Does this output mean anything to anyone here? Any suggestions on what to do about it? I can provide more output from /var/log/messages if this is not the relevant part. Any help will be appreciated. For now, when I get stuck at this point in the boot process I can only power the machine off with the power switch.

Thanks, James