[Solved] Black screen - Installation issues on Dell Inspiron 1720

Question

Hi,
I'm new to Archlinux, and i want to post my experience/issues of my first installation:
I performance the core installation (base + devel packages and wireless tools as extra package)
relevant hardware/drivers used:
b44 for broadcom nic (wired)
iwl3945 for my wireless nic
intel g965 graphics card (intel GM965 express chipset - xf86-video-intel driver)
Installation went ok till i had to upgrade the system:
pacman -Suy (after package synchronization)
glibc: /usr/bin/tzselect exists in filesystem
glibc: /usr/sbin/zdump exists in filesystem
glibc: /usr/sbin/zic exists in filesystem
After some research on the wiki i found that i had to query the packages to know if those files are owned by a program or not (if no pakcage owns those i could remove them, but it was not the case)
pacman -Qo tzselect
pacman -Qo zdump
pacman -Qo zic
All were owned by the package tzdata:
so i reinstalled the package tzdata:
pacman -S tzdata
Has this to be filed as a bug or is this a stupid newbie error? (did the installation on a virtual machine, on a laptop (twice) and always got this error)
After that i was able to upgrade the system.
Following that i installed the video card drivers:
pacman -S xf86-video-intel and i rebooted the system.
After reboot i got the grub screen, booted the system and got a black screen (last thing i saw as something like loading udevevents..)
Googling again and looking the forums here, i read that i had to chroot my environment and update the system again (pacman -Suy -> which did not help).
Soo after some more searching i found 2 things:
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KM … odesetting  : i added this in menu.lst: nomodeset
- i blacklisted the intel driver
Rebooted and i my graphics were working again.
So later on i'll test if the parameter solved my problem, or blacklisting the driver.
- i'll unblacklist the driver and reboot -> if it works then i know it's that parameter
- if not ok, i'll blacklist the driver and remove the parameter from the menu.lst
I hope to find what's causing the issue.
Anyone having issues with the intel driver?
Thanks for sharing your experience/info.
Last edited by Manuuz (2012-05-12 13:12:54)

Answer 1

Getting a little bit further, it requires a lot of configuration to get what you want..
- I just installed fluxbox
- added my user to the sudo group (allowing to reboot)
- installed Slim
What's i've noticed also is that when you select an interface in etc/rc.conf, for example, eth0, and it's not connected at bootup, you lose like 10 seconds before the boot process proceeds.
If you out-comment that line, you get a red line (error) saying that no interface is definded.
I guess i'll just have to disable the network daemon at startup and install some kind of network connection manager for my wireless at logon.