On 2013-02-05 13:39 (GMT-0800) Linda Walsh composed:
I wasn't able to get any bootup display booting from grub+initrd -- I couldn't figure out how to make it boot in a VGA text mode and it refused to display a bootup log on my VGA-compat, on-board display card (MGA200 on board -- only enough memory to display 1024x768 in 32bit or 1280x1024 in 16bit color (on a 1920x1200 flat panel that came w/system -- it's meant to be a text console, not a GUI).
I was only able to keep VGA text mode boot by using lilo.
Of course initrd ignores all those settings and tries to do it's own thing, which meant I got no output UNTIL I saw a login prompt (in runlevel 3).
Not very comforting -- didn't know if it was booting up or was hung...
Forced me back to lilo and no initrd, ever since -- which is proving to be a major problem now with recent ill-thought-out changes that serve no purpose.
That must be one seriously wonderful old antique server. Doesn't it have a slot you could put a less antique video card in? Did you ever investigate doing a VBIOS upgrade? I used to have Matrox cards that had the same limited compatibility with VESA and framebuffer as older Matrox cards. They were AGP G400s. I solved the problem with VBIOS upgrades, making them as framebuffer compatible as anything else I've ever used. Now since KMS, they still need vga= to produce a text boot mode compatible with my needs, and I still need to use xorg.conf to get X the way I want, but I've never needed anything but Grub to feed the kernel an appropriate cmdline to get desired boot message and tty results, which excludes quiet, and includes "vga=###" "splash=verbose" "3" among others. I've only ever used whatever initrd config the distro choose to install. Whatever an initrd or not could have to do with boot and tty text I cannot imagine. Even with *buntu's Grub 1.98, vga=791 in spite of Grub's warning message gives me the same framebuffer boot message and tty text on G400 as pre-KMS kernels did, and as video=1024x768 does now with KMS kernels on video chips supported by KMS. My first ever Linux installs all used Lilo. Once I discovered Grub, Lilo's been dead to me, and I fervently hope it stays that way. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org