Hardware :: Video Display Goes Blank When Switching From X To Virtual Console / Sort It?
Nov 9, 2010
I am having a problem getting my virtual console back after starting XWindows. The display goes blank when I press Ctrl-Alt-F1. If I press Ctrl-Alt-F7 I get the X session back. I have tried setting vga=x31A on the linux boot up. Also tried rdev -v /vmlinuz -1, and rebooted. I have tried two different monitors, same problem. One is a an LCD (Philips 170S6Fb/27, the other a Samsung Sync Master 750s. Originally the Samsung worked fine. I could switch between X and VC no problem. Now that I have the LCD monitor working after changing the XF86Config, I have this problem.
My kernel is 2.2.15-5.0, Redhat 6.2. Here is the output of lspci for the video card:
00:0c.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage II+ 215GTB [Mach64 GTB] (rev 9a) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4755
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 0
Memory at e2000000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
I/O ports at b400
Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled]
Hopefully there is someway to control how linux sets the video mode when switching consoles.
If I am logged out of GNOME and switch to tty1 and back, I get a stream of errors (which I can't copy...) on a black console. If I am logged in I am fine. This is very annoying because I would like to be able to log out of GNOME while I am running particularly memory-intensive scripts (they approach the limit of my 3.8 GBs of RAM).
I boot into gnome just fine, but as soon as I switch to console 1 or 2 or N (insert number here) it distorts my video across all of them. It seems like it's changing the refresh rate either horizontal or vertical and I just don't know how to solve the problem. If it distorts I can't get it back to decent readable graphics without a reboot. Was doing the same thing in ubuntu, and that's part of the reason I installed suse. I am running 1600X1200 with 50 refresh rate in gnome and have swapped the console resolution around, trying different options but still have the same problem.
The video projector I have to use this week projects an image too large for its screen and spills over on every side.
Fixing the physical setup is not possible or at least unlikely for the moment: the only solution is to carefully resize and position windows so that they display in the visible part of the screen - using full-screen mode is out.
Is there a way around this via software, using xrandr for example?
# xrandr doesn't have a padding option...xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1360x768 --left-of LVDS1 --padding 200
I recently upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 and have been unable to switch to console mode (Ctrl+Alt+Fx key combo). The system just freezes on attempt (not even capslock on off works) and the only option is hard reset. I am on a SONY VAIO VGN-CR353, just in case.
I am logging into an Ubuntu 8.04 machine using ssh, so I use a console. The keyboard layout is US-standard, obvioulsy. However, I would like to use french-canadian keyboard layout. And I don't know at all how to switch it in console. Give me Gnome or KDE, and we're done. But this is console only. I guess it has to do with the loadkeys command. Ok. I retrieved from the web a file cf.map.gz. Maybe ubuntu requires a different kind of file? Using "locate cf.map" I get nothing, except the file I have downloaded. Any package I should demand to be installed? (if yes, what do I do once they are in?) I tried using both the .gz and uncompressed files.
Code:
loadkeys cf.map.gz Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
Code:
loadkeys -u cf.map.gz Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console Loading cf.map.gz
[code]....
They tell us about some program, console-data, using root privileges. Intriguing, but I am only a user, and do not have any root privileges. The system admin. has never used another keyboard layout, and knows even less than I on this matter. I tried similar stuff on my openSUSE at home, on a newly created experimental account, and I am equally unable to change within the console the keyboard layout (similar error messages).
I am using an external monitor on a laptop whose default screen is dead. This works fine with Gnome or KDE, but when i do a switch to console (ctrl-alt-fnX) my monitor loses it's signal, and i wind up with a black screen. Alt-fn7 gets me back fine, but i am really missing the console...
Ubuntu 8.04.4
Computer switch monitor key (fn-f does nothing, even tho it works fine when in Gnome.
I just installed some updates, one of which might have been kdebase-3.5.4-20.el5.centos.i386.rpm. Before I installed the updates, switching to a VT console using ALT+CTRL+Fn (n=1..6) worked, but after installing the updates it quit working within a KDE session. It does still work from the login screen (so it's not an X problem, or a /etc/inittab problem). After logging into a KDE session, I can get to a VT console if I first use ALT+CTRL+F12 Here's the keyboard section from xorg.conf:
There is no option DontVTSwitch line. I have the same problem on another computer. That one is more of a problem because its keyboard doesn't have an F12 key. What to do?
My Audio stops playing when switching to console from Xorg. When I switch back it continues playing. Is it supposed to be like this? Any way I can make it play continuously? I've already checked the Howtos and this forum for this problem but havent found anything similar.
How can I disable the virtual desktop switching when my mouse gets close to the edge of the current desktop. I prefer to switch desktops by using the virtual desktop module in the shelf, but I would like to be able drag windows another desktop.
resource website for e17? I'm having trouble finding answers to my questions from the lack of guides provided for e17.
Switching between text consoles in a Linux virtual machine When the CTRL + ALT + F1 key combination is used to switch to another text console (terminal) on a Linux virtual machine, the host switches to a text console instead of the guest. Resolution The CTRL + ALT combination is used by VMware to direct the keyboard input to the host. Press CTRL + ALT + Space , press the F1 key (or desired Function key) while still holding down CTRL + ALT .
I just did an update on an Ubuntu 10.4 LTS machine and it wanted to reboot so I did now I can't even get to the console. I think it's hanging up somewhere on the start up but thanks to the Microsoft like tell you nothing display I don't know for sure or what exactly is hanging up. The only thing the system responds too is ctrl alt del to reboot. Can't even ping it or log in via SSH. I already installed the same updates on this machine but luckily did not reboot it yet. I'm willing to bet whatever package broke the other one will break on this one and if I can figure out where it's breaking I can figure out how to fix it. That means seeing it start up not the blank screen I'm getting. Been meaning to find out about this anyway as the graphics thing annoys me to no end. I prefer to see what services error or fail rather than find out weeks later when I thought my back up service was running and it wasn't or that snort never did run or I'm looking through the logs and discover there's a problem that's been going on for weeks that I never noticed until I went through the logs about something else.
Lucid is not in testing but it's released.It seems it works now, with all desktop effects activated and switching users and closing sessions.The only thing I still don't know is which screensaver can I use if removing gnome-screensaver?
I have a dell poweredge server. In the bios, it has the option to redirect the screen to the serial port. There is also the check box "redirection after boot" which from what I understand will let me to continue to use the serial port attached to a terminal as if it was the main VGA monitor with a keyboard attached.
When I start the machine up, everything goes as expected, I see the output from the bios on my serial terminal, until debian actually starts booting. It all goes blank. If i attach a monitor i can see it is indeed booted and waiting at the debian login prompt. What should I do from here? I was under the impression that if i enabled "console redirection after boot" that the os would be none the wiser and i could continue using the serial console as the main screen as needed, but that does not seem to be the case.
I did an upgrade and now after grub starts I get nothing but a blank screen. I should have left the well working alone. Any suggestions on what to do? I have no terminal, nothing any longer.
Initially I was using my onboard 6150, but I bought the 9600 and used it for a week. The fan was too noisy, so I decided to switch back, but now when gdm is started the screen goes black, the LED on my monitor turns orange. First I tried switching to a virtual terminal, which didn't work.
I did a hard reboot and popped in a rescue disk. When I tried mounting my root file system to look at look at the log files, at least /bin and /lib became inaccessible. Finally I booted into the live cd I'm running now.
Recently I switched my kernel (to 2.6.32-5) via apt, with some irregularities, but the problem existed before I switched so I doubt that's the problem.
note: I have a working xserver now, so there shouldn't be anything wrong with the graphics chip itself.
Can't seem to use tcsh as my login shell under CentOS 5 as I used to (if I specify /bin/tcsh as my start-up shell, the windowing system doesn't come up), so am logging in under bash then switching to tcsh on top of that, but it won't allow display access from tcsh for my programs. Gives the "cannot connect to display" error that usually xhost + is the solution for, but xhost doesn't help in this case (won't even run under tcsh, says unable to open display "0.0"). $DISPLAY is set in .cshrc. Must be something simple, but can't seem to find a direction to head?
The only thing I remember being updated is xserver, but I know there were other packages updated.
After the splash screen, a text login is shown. If I do nothing, it goes right to a black screen, but first there are weird red pixels randomly strewn about the screen. If I quickly login via the text screen, it then goes to the same black screen. Either way, there are the weird red pixels and a few flashes of the screen before going black.
This happens 100% of the time.
I have tried: booting with recovery mode and selecting repair packages (no packages are broken, missing, etc.) booting with recovery mode and selecting startx with failsafe (same black screen) booting with older kernels (same thing)
I'm always getting a blank console screen after booting a 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 kernel in squeeze. I still can read the line "Loading, please wait ..." in the display for a second - then it's completely black until X windows is starting. When I try switching from the X console to another virtual console (by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 e. g.), the complete system freezes. I have to hard reboot then.When I boot the previous 2.6.32-3-amd64 kernel instead, everything is fine as expected, though.There's a line "GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768x16@60" in /etc/default/grub as well as a line "set gfxpayload=keep" in /etc/grub.d/00_header. So the problem might be framebuffer related in any way. Any ideas what could be tried?The system is a Latitude E6500 with a Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
I am installing Fedora 15 as a guest machine on virtual box. the installation completes fine, but it gets hanged on the date and time screen during first boot. Even on clicking "Forward" button it doesn't work and just gets stuck there. I am using windows 7 as the host machine and I have given 1 GB ram and 8 GB hard disk to guest fedora OS. Before the installation, I checked the media also it was shown to be correct. The media I am using is virtual clone drive for DVD ISO image. VirtualBox version 4.1.2 was used.
How can I change the colour for each virtual console seperately?I.e. blue for console 1, green for console 2, etc. I'm using SuSE 11.4.It worked under SuSE 11.1 like a charm
I would like to be able to scroll (with shift up/down) in virtual console (ctr+alt+f1/f2) but I can't find how to do it with google :-( I have OpenSUSE 11.4, with nvidia ion, mingetty on virtual console. I have vga=0x362 on grub boot option.
Something I find myself doing every once in a while is using Ctrl-Alt-F[x] to switch out to a virtual terminal, and the Alt-F7-ing back to X without logging out.
While I don't anticipate that too many people that might have access to my computer would know how to switch consoles, there is still some degree of security risk provided by a logged-in console session. I've found vlock, but that seems to lock the console immediately when called, rather than running as a daemon that locks inactive consoles. (Even it's -t option just gives a timeout before an optional (and separate) text-mode screensaver package activates, rather than an inactivity timeout).
Is there any vlock-like package out there that provides the timed locking services for text consoles that XScreenSaver provides for X? Either a lock on timeout or a lock on switchaway setup would be adequate.
ve read some stuff regarding problems with virtual consoles not appearing for some graphics settings, but I think this problem is different.Just a few days ago I had no problem using ctrl-alt-f6 (for example) to get to a virtual console outside of the normal X environment. That no longer works. Nothing happens, no distorted screen, I'm just stuck in the normal X session that comes up as if I did nothing. I didn't make any configuration changes, though I suppose some update could have caused it?I may have read that this is some problem in grub2? If so, is there a way I can get around it without trying to switch back to grub1? I'd rather not mess too much with the bootloaders if I don't have to
I want to cycle between three directories, always in the same virtual console (VT). Just the case of 'cd -' but with three dirs instead of two dirs. Can this be done by simple means?
