Comment # 19 on bug 964429 from Ulrich Windl

(In reply to Egbert Eich from comment #18)
> Without knowledge of your DM we cannot find out where it logs to, though.

GNOME, so I guess gdm.

> The screen usually goes into power save mode when it's idle for so long.

I know.

> Moreover, this log file is for the fbdev driver which is unlikely to show a
> black screen if your console was working at all. Also it is even more
> unlikely that the screen is loosing the video signal when using this driver.

I was worried about the message: "Use of other console drivers including, but
not limited to, vesafb, may result in corruption and stability problems, and is
not supported."

> 
> This is not the prime purpose if this bugzilla. We are trying to determine
> if there is a bug in the software or the installation procedure.

YOU complained about the correct log files being missing, so I asked how to
test the situation correctly.

> Currently, I see two issues:
> 1. the G03 driver you've used reads a defective EDID extension block which
> is supplied by your monitor. So either the read procedure is wrong or the
> block sent by the monitor - in which case the NVIDIA driver should simply
> ignore it.

I suspected my KVM switch to need a reset (which I did in the meantime).

> This is something for NVIDIA to fix.
> 2. when you deinstall the G03 driver you will get the G04 driver (according
> to your comment #2). Not sure why this happened. This is something for us to
> determine. If the G04 packages support your hardware (PCI ID: 10de:0640) as
> well, it should have worked. 
> Have you rebooted in between?

AFAIR: No (it takes too much time)

> 
> This ticket has seen attempts with too many drivers: NVIDIA G03, G04, fbdev
> and nouveau.
> All this is confusing and obfuscating the goal.

I had simply installed the kernel update, and I had no video anymore. The rest
are just attempts to be able to use the computer again (to be able to report
the problem at all, for example).

> Please 
> 1. disable the NVIDIA repo, 
> 2. deinstall whatever NVIDIA driver you've installed, 
> 3. update the system to the current maintenance level doing 'zypper dup',
> 4. re-enable the NVIDIA repo and run 'zypper inr; zypper dup'
> This should give you the NVIDIA driver back - please let us know which
> ones...
> If it works now, 1. is fixed for this driver.
> 
> BTW: The surest thing to determine if X is basically working and lighting up
> your screen, is by logging in to the text console as root and do:
> '/usr/bin/Xorg -retro & sleep 3; xterm -display :0'. You should get an X
> screen with the old fashioned root weave and an xterm. To determine if there
> are issues with the openGL libraries (ie you have installed unsuitable ones)
> you do 'gxlinfo' in this xterm and observe the output and any messages.

OK, eventually I've got instructions (thanks!); I'll print them in case I have
no video while testing...