The Ubuntu Stories

Ever since I’ve downloaded and compiled 2.6.24-17, I’ve been having trouble with it. Every time I start up, I constantly get a white screen, and nothing more. After a lot of Googling, I’ve figured out that it probably has something to do with the X-server – I was suspecting this, since I could boot up in the -16 kernel perfectly, while every attempt with a more recent kernel seems to fail (I had the same problem with the -18 kernel, as well as the most recent kernel, the -19), and everything compiled just fine with every install.

Now, I’ve figured out a way to get it working again – to be honest, I stumbled upon it by accident Anyway, this is how I got it working again:

Step 1: make sure you have Envy (Envy is a tool to automaticly install and configure the ATi and Nvidia-driver). I know I stated in a previous post that you best started from the ATi-installer, but Envy has been updated, and it seems to work fine now.

First, make sure you remove all previous versions by typing in a terminal:

sudo apt-get remove envy

sudo apt-get remove envyng

sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy

Then, update your apt-get resources:

sudo apt-get update

Install Envy using this command:

sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk

If you’re using Kubuntu (if you’re not sure, use the GTK-version!!), this would be:

sudo apt-get install envyng-qt

For more information on installing Envy: http://albertomilone.com/envyngfaq.html#A

Step 2: boot into the “non-working” kernel, by choosing it via Grub (or Lilo, or whatever bootmanager you’re using).

Step 3: when on the white screen, use the key-combination Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get a command-line interface. Log in using your login and password.

Step 4: use the following command to get out again:

sudo shutdown now

Now, Ubuntu will popup a menu with 4 options, among which are ‘resume’ and ‘xfix’. Choose the option ‘xfix’ here. This will set your X-server to a default configuration again (Note: this also applies to your keyboard! For me, Ubuntu set my keyboard to a QWERTY-configuration all of a sudden, so do think of that when logging in afterwards!).

When the xfix is done, you can just boot into your ‘white-screen-kernel’, and see that everything works again!

Step 5: everything works, however, we don’t have fglrx anymore. That’s why we downloaded Envy to start with. Boot it up, by finding it in your menu (Applications -> System Tools -> Envy).

Just choose the automatic installation of the driver (for me, this was the ATi-driver). Afterwards, just reboot, and voilà: the most recent kernel is working perfectly, with fglrx!

Notes afterwards:

- If you do not have a ATi or Nvidia card, you can probably reïnstall your driver, and skip Step 1 and Step 5. You can also reconfigure the X-server with the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg