I am running "Jessie" 8.11 on an old (as in "old") Core2Duo//2 GB RAM//Geforce 6700XL//1 TB HD computer since 2015 or so. It has always worked quite well, but now I am having a serious problem that I cannot solve myself.
Debian is connected to the VGA port of a flatscreen (which is being used with another, newer computer via DVI) over a VGA cable that is connected with a VGA-to-DVI adapter in the DVI port of the Geforce. (As for the VGA-to-DVI connector: if I connect the VGA cable to the Geforce's VGA port, then the USB mouse cursor is "vibrating" on the screen.)
Installed alongside Debian is LMDE3 (formerly LMDE2) and Xubuntu (since a few weeks, as I had an extra partition on this 1 TB HD).
LMDE3 and Xubuntu both boot and run fine (albeit not super-duper fast on this old machine), but since earlier this week Debian no longer (fully) boots. It stays stuck at:
Code: Select all
Loading, please wait...
/dev/sda2: recovering journal
/devs/sda2: clean, 868114/12214272 files, 16008741/48827904 blocks
Code: Select all
Loading, please wait...
/dev/sda2: recovering journal
/devs/sda2: clean, 870825/12214272 files, 16004030/48827904 blocks
Just for fun ( ), a few days ago I replaced the Geforce 6700XL by an "8400GS", which has passive cooling, but is a slower card, so I put the "6700XL" back in.
Since then (conincidentally or not), Debian stops at the aforementioned "Loading, please wait" message.
-oo-
Interestingly, this morning I booted Debian with SysVInit (in the GRUB menu) instead of systemd - and to my surprise Debian booted and works just fine. I am typing this in Debian w/ sysVinit.
I have no idea how to fix this, or not even where the problem is. Google does not (really) help me any further with the "Loading, please wait..." information.
Following https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... ew-install I can boot Debian by changing "ro quiet " to "ro nomodeset quiet", but despite the update-grub, that setting seems to disappear after reboot and I end up at that "Loading, please wait..." text on the screen.
Since operating systems are female, I have learned from experience not to mess or meddle with OS's, so my Debian install is about as clean as you can get.
-oo-
It was thinking that the graphics card switch had caused Debian not to boot, but I am now suspecting it might have been a Xubuntu update of GRUB (which Xubuntu did update, I think, if I recall correctly).
Has Xubuntu somehow messed up the Debian boot-thing thang?
Why does Debian boot fine with SysVinit, but not with systemd?
Has anyone ever heard of something like this?