SliTaz Forum

Maximus559

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 10

SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

I'm having some trouble getting SliTaz 4.0 to boot on my Gateway G6-350. Specs are:

* 350 MHz Pentium II

* 256 MB RAM

* Nvidia GeForce2 MX400

* Creative Sound Blaster PCI 128

* Trendnet TEW-443PI wireless adapter

With default boot options, SliTaz gets as far as the language and keyboard map selection dialogues. After the second dialog box, some more text flashes by, then the screen blinks and goes black. At this point, all CD-ROM activity ceases, and the system has to be hard reset.

This happens with the "SliTaz Live" and "SliTaz core Live" options - the other three options boot successfully, but aren't particularly useful. Any one would allow me to install, however, which leads me to my question: should I install and see if I can fix this problem using the tazx utility? I'm thinking the black screen might have something to do with the Nvidia drivers, but that's just a hunch. Could be any number of things.

If version 4.0 is a no-go, I'll just install SliTaz 3.0, which *does* work on this system.

mojo

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-29

Posts: 2,174

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Give this a try:

http://doc.slitaz.org/en:releases:4.0:errata

Xorg fails to start at the end of boot.

Solution: Preselect your language at boot menu or from the command line with: slitaz lang= kmap=

bellard

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-28

Posts: 657

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Try: http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/4.0/flavors/slitaz-4.0-loram.iso

Looks like some computers work with 192Mb and others don't with 256Mb...

Maximus559

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 10

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, I'm still not having any luck. The language and keyboard map boot options don't seem to make any difference, and the loram flavor hangs in exactly the same way as the standard image.

I've also discovered that command line installation is not as simple with 4.0 as it was with 3.0. How would I go about installing SliTaz after booting the "Slitaz base Live" option?

rerivero

Member

Registered: 2012-06-18

Posts: 235

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Hello Maximus559:

I really felt the same way that you, and selecting language and keyboard to the screen was black and I left there, and I solved it this way .. of (not sure if your system will work)

Boot: Slitaz core Live

     Language Configuration

       (not select anything) and give "OK"

     Keyboard Configuration

       (not select anything) and give "OK"

     Slitaz Keymap Configuration

        es     Spain/Mexico (in my case use this selection) "Enter"

...and here and load the entire system, and is ready to install on your hard disk

In top Panel select "Slitaz Panel" (username: root)-(password:root)  and then "Install Slitaz"

and starts the installation process where you select the partitions, if they must format or not etc ...

I hope that works for you ..

Regards

Maximus559

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 10

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Thanks for the detailed guide, rerivero. I still can't get SliTaz to boot, but I think I'm getting closer. When I click "Okay" on the first two dialog boxes without selecting anything, I get to a third non-graphical keyboard map selection dialog that I haven't seen before. After this stage, however, I get the same black screen as before.

Odd that SliTaz 3.0 works flawlessly on this system... I'm tempted to just install that version, but I'd really like to have access to the newer repositories.

rerivero

Member

Registered: 2012-06-18

Posts: 235

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

Ok Maximus .. the third dialog box (keyboard map) is non-graphical. Here I select keymap.

Then black screen: prompt or not prompt..??

blurple

Member

Registered: 2011-04-30

Posts: 16

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

I can boot up to the tazbox (locale etc) window (it's on runlevel 2)

and then I can ctrl-alt-F1 to get to runlevel 1, and then ctrl-c to stop tazbox, now I can login root:root and run #tazx  >> at this point I've set up xorg with "my" video card drivers (you need the internet to do this all) and then I just #startx to get a working desktop (and then run #tazbox for the locale, keyboard etc)

Lets hope that it'll work for you like it did for me

Maximus559

Member

Registered: 2011-06-21

Posts: 10

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

That's actually what I was hoping to do once I got SliTaz installed. I tried it in a live session, though, and I'm still not getting anywhere. I followed your instructions, used tazx to install the nv drivers, and... nothing. Same black screen. I also tried installing vesa and fbdev - no change.

blurple

Member

Registered: 2011-04-30

Posts: 16

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

bummer , well we'll all need some info on your graphics card then?

renstyle

Member

Registered: 2012-07-13

Posts: 7

Re: SliTaz 4.0 boots to black screen

"Odd that SliTaz 3.0 works flawlessly on this system... I'm tempted to just install that version, but I'd really like to have access to the newer repositories. "

Since you have a known-good install that will load the appropriate xorg server, there may be some nugget of info in the xorg.conf file on the 3.0 install that you could use as a guide to getting the 4.0 install to work correctly.

I've run into similar where 4.0 is "too new" to correctly detect/load the drivers needed for the display (a real PITA when using an older laptop).  So far my solution is not to update, more for lack of time to research than anything else (the video driver is more obscure than your MX400...)

Between dmesg, xorg.conf we should be able to find *something* that's loaded in 3.0 that is not by default in 4.0.