On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 12:03:09 -0400 (EDT) "Brian Jackson" wrote:

...

I just recently installed Suse 7.1 Pro onto a Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop.

...

If I choose any of the 3 kernels listed: linux, linux_2.4 or suse, it goes through the normal startup procedures

...

"all report back with green 'done'". Then : A big fat blank screen!

I can hear the harddrive spin up and it blinks on occasion, but all I get is a blinking '_' in the upper left hand corner. No response from the keyboard, and no output is displayed.

Any thoughts? Besides: a different computer, newer OS(I have the 7.1 disks and I don't need much on these systems) ;-))

Thoughts? Yeah. Someone a little while back had some trouble with a monitor, and he fixed it by setting vga = normal instead of the framebuffer, in lilo.conf. Maybe your laptop can't switch from framebuffer to X? Maybe that, and make sure you are using an ascii login instead of the graphical one. Maybe your laptop isn't setup for X properly, and you have a graphical login set, then it just hangs.

To be extra safe, edit your /boot/@boot.b to point to boot-text.b instead of boot-menu.b.

Try to boot in the most basic way possible to a console prompt, then work on why X is fussy.

Thanks. Yea, I'm not even worried about X at this point. I know I will have to configure that later. I can't even boot in text mode. lilo.conf has 'vga = normal' (retriece from /dev/hda1 mounted on the rescue system) When I try to boot any of the 3 kernels listed in 'text mode', I get the problem. When the initial LILO screen comes up, I hit 'ESC' to bring up the ASCII LILO screen, then choose the kernel. It attempts to go through a normal startup procedure: fsck, timezone. loopbakc, serial ports, pcmcia, then goes to a blank screen. I think there's some sort of mess up with the PCMCIA initialization. The boot process signifies that the PCMCIA card manager is running reports 'done'. There are no errors reported on the console and I can't get to atl-f10 to see if there are any additional errors. I've tried this with and without a PCMCIA card in the slot. I also get it if I try in GUI mode, but that's to be expected and I don't care about GUI/X mode right now. I just want a "login: " prompt. I've installed linux several times and not had problems like this. Slackware, redhat & suse, but this is the first time trying to get it to run on a laptop. thanks, brian -- Brian Jackson Photography Action Athletics http://www.brianjacksonphoto.com "Excellence in Sports Imagery" 650-218-5082 http://www.actionathletics.com