Code: Select all
00:02.0 Display controller: Intel Corporation Device 3e98 (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1f08 (rev a1)
Since I now have a lot of disk space, I decided to try several different flavors of Linux. I had a little trouble getting the graphical desktops to work properly under Debian and also under openSUSE, but eventually I got the kinks worked out (I had to install the proprietary NVIDIA driver), and for a while I was as happy as a clam. Until about a month ago, when DELL pushed some new video firmware onto my machine. Now my Ubuntu-based systems work just fine, but I can't get the gui desktop to work on Debian (I've tried several different things, but nothing seems to work), and the SUSE installation .isos won't even start in graphics mode ... they get as far as "Starting UDEV", and then they die.
This morning I started with a clean install of debian-live-10.4.0-amd64-kde+nonfree.iso. The only installation errors I ran into involved two missing firmware files called ath10k/pre-cal-pci_0000.03:00.0.bin and ath10k/cal-pci_0000.03:00.0.bin. I'm pretty sure these are for wi-fi; since I have a direct ethernet connection to the internet, I don't much care about wi-fi on this machine.
So I ran the install and let it boot from /SDA14. Nothing. Totally blank screen. I booted it up again in recovery mode -- I should note that I have to add "nomodeset" to the "linux" command to get recovery mode to boot properly (by properly, I mean so I can see the messages on my monitor). Everything looked pretty normal, so I logged in as root when prompted and saved some files on a USB stick, then told the system to continue. It tried, then came right back to the command prompt. So I issued the command "startx", to see if I could start the display manager. The X server failed. Here are the relevant portions of the Xorg.0.log:
Code: Select all
[ 640.256] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so
[ 640.263] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 640.263] compiled for 1.20.4, module version = 0.0.2
[ 640.263] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0
[ 640.263] (EE) Unable to find a valid framebuffer device
[ 640.263] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
[ 640.263] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw"
[ 640.263] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
[ 640.263] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so
[ 640.264] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 640.264] compiled for 1.20.4, module version = 0.0.2
[ 640.264] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0
[ 640.264] (II) FBDEV(2): using default device
[ 640.264] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[ 640.264] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[ 640.264] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[ 640.264] (II) UnloadModule: "fbdev"
[ 640.264] (II) UnloadSubModule: "fbdevhw"
[ 640.264] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[ 640.264] (EE) Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices
[ 640.264] (EE)
[ 640.264] (EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at http://wiki.x.org
for help.
[ 640.264] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[ 640.264] (EE)
[ 640.268] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
I really don't know very much about the X server, except that it usually works. Will somebody please give me a hint? I suppose I need to fix a configuration file somewhere, but I'm not sure where to start. Thanks!