Stuck with blinking cursor while booting

[ericdlr]

Hi there,

I installed Debian 7.2.0 (amd64) on a Toshiba Satellite C870D-121 with the graphic installer. It already has Windows 8.1 installed on another partition, and for Debian I'm not using the same partition of course. Actually, the Debian installation is replacing a Ubuntu 13.10 installation that was working fine.
After choosing Debian in the Grub menu, I can see the boot log entries adding and then the screen clears and all I get is a blinking cursor. After a while, some '^@^@^@' symbols appears. Of course I can Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a virtual Terminal in order to login and try to investigate the problem, but so far I haven't been able to reliably identify the problem.

Any idea about where to start?

--
Eric.

[bw123]

Any idea about where to start?

Well, most of the time I start in /var/log so that if I read a post after searching the forum, something might ring a bell.

[kiyop]

Graphics issue?
https://wiki.debian.org/GraphicsCard
How about pressing E key at Grub2 menu and adding "nomodeset" to kernel option (a line starting with "linux") and booting by pressing ctrl+x ?

[ericdlr]

Thanks to bw123 and kiyop.
Looking at the log files I could confirm it was a graphic issue. Installing the firmware-linux-non-free solved the problem.

[orendebian]

@kiyop

that worked for me!! much thanks for the tip!
-- Ren

[kiyop]

@kiyop

that worked for me!! much thanks for the tip!
-- Ren

Congratulations on your success! I am happy to know that my suggestion solved your problem
If you want to permanently add "nomodeset" to the menuentry used by grub2 menu, add "nomodeset" between the double quotations (") of a line starting with
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=
in /etc/default/grub by the following commands executed with root privilege

Code: Select all

nano /etc/default/grub

edit and type CTRL+x to save and quit the edition.
And finally

Code: Select all

update-grub

Reference: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

[arochester]

@Dorothy231

Have you done a search of this forum? http://forums.debian.net/search.php?key ... ing+cursor