black screen after booting aao

[chrisk]

Hi,

i have a big problem. My aao was running perfect more than a week. But this Monday after booting my aao there was only a black screen with an X as Mousecursor witch was able to move. :x Ok, i recoverd the system and everything was fine. But the next day i had the same problem as before. This happened again yesterday. since then my aao is still running perfect. But i'm afraid this problem is not yet solved... is there anyone who has the same problem?

thx

chris

 

[chrisk]

Ok, i'm alone with this problem.... :cry:

 

[LennertXL]

I had the same problem when my aao was 3 days old. I returned the aao to the shop

regards, lennertxl (the netherlands)

 

[retsaw]

I've just got this problem after installing the latest updates last night. So for now, I suggest not installing the updates. I suppose, in my case it is possible it is a result of some modification I've made, but I don't think so. The cause of my problem is the filesystem not being remounted read-write and XFCE can't work if the filesystem is read-only, though I'm not really sure why this is happening as I can't remount the filesystem read-write manually either from within Linpus.

For anybody who wishes to test the latest-updates, the update notifier software is set to only check every 2 weeks, to get around this delete the /var/cache/online-updater/lock file run "killall update-notifier" and restart it again with "update-notifier" and it should check and get the latest-updates. Conversely, if you want to stop it checking for updates you can run "sudo touch /var/cache/online-updater/lock" to reset the counter, so it'll wait 2 weeks before checking.

 

[chrisk]

thanks for your answer.
but i don't think that the updates caused the problem because after my 2nd recover i didn't install any update, nevertheless... it happened again :cry:
Maybe its possible that the problem is caused by using "EZMove" (Filemanager)
Do you have an idea to leave the "blackscreen-mode" and enter a terminal in case this happens again?

chris

 

[retsaw]

If you edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and comment out (using a #) the

Option "DontZap" "yes"

line, then you will be able to kill the X server with the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace combination and drop to a command line console, you just have to be careful not to press those keys accidentally.

I doubt it would be caused by a filemanager, unless it altered XFCE's files in a way to stop it starting. It is possible the cause of your problem is separate from mine, and I didn't find out the root cause of my problem in the end, I gave up and restored from a previous backup.

 

[chrisk]

thank you very much...

I gave up and restored from a previous backup.

how did you made your backup? and what's the way to restore it?... by a live-system via usb-stick?

(sorry for my english, i hope it's not to bad... )

chris

 

[brenin]

Alright, I'm glad I wasn't alone! Same thing happened to me - black screen with mouse cursor. Thought it was my installation of zsh that caused it :-/ I re-installed from rescue usb stick, don't know what caused it.

 

[Ferbikes]

Hi
Also I happened in the last updates the screen black .... I restore the system but not the updates and did everything ok this ...... think that you should do the updates?

 

[brenin]

I managed to do it again... and this time, it seems all I did was to edit /etc/passwd (changing the 'user' entry to /etc/zsh instead of /etc/bash). However, I was able to undo the damage by hitting ctrl-alt-f1 (only possible if you edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and comment the "DontVTSwitch" line), changing /etc/passwd back to bash, and then restarting.

 

[retsaw]

thank you very much...

I gave up and restored from a previous backup.

how did you made your backup? and what's the way to restore it?... by a live-system via usb-stick?

(sorry for my english, i hope it's not to bad... )

Yes, I used Puppy Linux (v4 doesn't boot, so I used the 4.05 alpha version, which works well enough for this task) to boot, mounted the Linpus partition and an external drive, opened a terminal and changed to the root of the Linpus partition ("cd /mnt/sda1") and from there I created a tar.gz file of the filesystem ("tar czpf /mnt/sdb1/A1backup.tar.gz ./"), and to restore I mounted the Linpus partition, deleted everything except the boot folder then I extracted the tar.gz I created to the Linpus partition. If when creating the tar archive you create a tar.bz2 rather than a tar.gz you might be able to replace the tar.bz2 of the filesystem on a recovery USB stick and use that for recovery, but I haven't tested that option as yet, I decided to use a tar.gz for this purpose since though it may create a larger file it is less processor intensive so should be quicker.

After doing the recovery and posting about it, I remembered a change I made to the fstab that would have caused my problem, so I don't think it was caused by the updates.

 

[annafil]

You guys, I had the same problem ,and in fact I remember posting a fairly painless solution to this.

What happens to me (a lot) is that if something doesn't get shut down correctly or written correctly to the disk then I get this effect.

The easy thing to try before having to restore backups and such is to run a simple disk check.

I used sysresccd (it's a live cd with a bunch of system rescue utilities), though all you need is Gparted. In fact, if you have a CD with Ubuntu Hardy or other distro released this year that works. Boot it up and look for an app called "Gparted" or "Partition Editor".

Find your internal hard disk in the drop down on the top (should be /dev/sda1) and then right click on the bigger partition and click "Check"

Don't have to do much else, when it's done checking reboot and it SHOULD solve the problem.

If this actually works for anyone else (helped me on many occasions) it may be good to post some instructions in the top of this thread so people can see it and not panic too early

 

[anoicipiace]

You guys, I had the same problem ,and in fact I remember posting a fairly painless solution to this.

What happens to me (a lot) is that if something doesn't get shut down correctly or written correctly to the disk then I get this effect.

The easy thing to try before having to restore backups and such is to run a simple disk check.

I used sysresccd (it's a live cd with a bunch of system rescue utilities), though all you need is Gparted. In fact, if you have a CD with Ubuntu Hardy or other distro released this year that works. Boot it up and look for an app called "Gparted" or "Partition Editor".

Find your internal hard disk in the drop down on the top (should be /dev/sda1) and then right click on the bigger partition and click "Check"

Don't have to do much else, when it's done checking reboot and it SHOULD solve the problem.

If this actually works for anyone else (helped me on many occasions) it may be good to post some instructions in the top of this thread so people can see it and not panic too early

the solution for the "black screen" is check the disk with "Gparted"... ??

 

[annafil]

Yes

 

[anoicipiace]

Yes

i have a little problem .....I don't have external CD?

 

[annafil]

I think I wrote in my original comment on this thread that it's possible to quite easily boot system rescue cd off a thumbdrive.

Here's the full instructions:

http://sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-e ... _USB-stick

 

[anoicipiace]

I think I wrote in my original comment on this thread that it's possible to quite easily boot system rescue cd off a thumbdrive.

Here's the full instructions:

http://sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-e ... _USB-stick

i create a sysresccd from a usb but my aspire don't read the USB CDROM..... it read only dvd reader USB... ?

my bios version is 3109.....

 

[annafil]

you should be pressing f12 during the BIOS screen, and then you will be able to select the correct device to boot from

if it fails to boot after doing that, try burning again at a slower speed, or using a different USB cdrom

 

[anoicipiace]

you should be pressing f12 during the BIOS screen, and then you will be able to select the correct device to boot from

if it fails to boot after doing that, try burning again at a slower speed, or using a different USB cdrom

so simple ............ i select the order in bios menu and wait for boot while i must press f12 and select...... ......

thanks......... bye

 

[Guest]

thanks for your answer.
but i don't think that the updates caused the problem because after my 2nd recover i didn't install any update, nevertheless... it happened again :cry:
Maybe its possible that the problem is caused by using "EZMove" (Filemanager)
Do you have an idea to leave the "blackscreen-mode" and enter a terminal in case this happens again?

chris

I just had this same issue and for me it WAS caused by "EZMove." Within EZMove, I clicked the checkbox beside "user's home" on
"built-in storage" and copied it all over to "SSD card in Expansion Slot."

After doing this I noticed I did not have any command history when using bash. So I rebooted the AA1. After that I got the blank screen with X mouse cursor. I had not edited "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" and comment the "DontVTSwitch" line so I could not get to the shell. After a couple of hours of messing around, I got my AA1 booted from "Damn Small Linux" on a USB drive created with "UNetbootin." I mounted both the internal storage and the SD card and did a "cp .*" from the root of the SD card back to "/usr/home/" on the internal storage. I rebooted and I was back up and running!

It would have been easier to do a system recovery, but I have applied a lot of *macles hacks so it would have taken a long time to get the AA1 back to how I like it.


VVarwick