Problems with boot and shutdown

[gillmaharik]

Now that Husse helped me get back to Mint after Mandriva's hostile taqkeover of the grub, I can continue trying to solve some problems. I've got two major problems, and I don't know if they're connected.
First thing is shutdown. when I quit>shut down i see the splash screen, the green bar is gradually disappearing, and then I get a black screen and the computer stays like this. Both Mandriva and XP managed to shut down this computer. Also, when I tried the "shutdown" command from the terminal on MInt (i don't remember exactly what I used but it was something like "shutdown -h now" , the computer turned-off completely. I tried to solve this problem by adding some lines to menu.lst according to some earlier threads, but everytime I got wierd results. I'd appreciate it if someone would guide me in understanding exactly what kind of hardware configuration I have on this machine, and what do I need to do in order to solve my problem.

The second problem is the very long time it takes between grub and the loggin screen - I don't get the splash screen on start-up. it takes about 5 minutes of black screen to get to the loggin screen.

Again, I don't know weather or not the two problems are connected. I'd appreciate a step-by-step help from someone in this wonderful community

[spike jones]

sounds like you might be using an on board graphics card. I get the same behaviour on boot up as you are describing (with my on board graphics). What you can do to at least get some idea of what it is doing is by going to the menu.lst file - located at /boot/grub/ and change the line of options after the kernel info. For me, default it says "ro quiet splash" I took out the "quiet" option so it tells me what it is doing.

Things like suspending the display and such are handled through the GPU. So the shutdown issue might also be GPU related, try to see if there is a better driver for your GPU.

[gillmaharik]

How do I find if there's a better driver for my GPU?
(and you were right, I am using an on-board grphic card, and as far as I know it's an "intel extreme graphics" chipset

[MagnusB]

Post the output of lspci here.
If you have an Intel card, you most likely need i810 or intel driver, depending of how old the card is.

[spike jones]

not my thread, but seeing as how I have the same issue:

Code: Select all

chris@Linux-Mint:~$ sudo lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:04.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1)
01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS
01:09.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)
chris@Linux-Mint:~$


I use the intel experimental modsetting driver for that intel chipset. no issue on powering down, just no splash screen on startup. I think I've tried the i810 driver but to no avail.

[MagnusB]

You have a nVidia card:

01:04.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1)

Use envy to install drivers.

[spike jones]

read This thread and you will see why I'm not using the nvidia card

don't know if posting links to my other issues is frowned upon here or not, but its a big forum... things can be overlooked, and I've got your attention here, so why not?

[MagnusB]

Sorry, hangover, did not notice that you had to VGA cards there. The Intel one should work with the intel driver, nVidia for the other one (I think). I am not sure if Mint gets confused with 2 cards, or something. I found on Ubuntu forums that the intel driver would even give desktop effects.

[spike jones]

yes, In Ubuntu the intel driver does let me use desktop cube and what not. no so in Mint. when I try to turn it on, it tells me I need to use the nVidia driver. And of course, me like many other Dell Dimension 2350 users, simply cannot get any linux distro to boot up while using the expansion card.

I've tried a few different options at boot time, but none seem to work. I wonder, is there an option that can be passed at boot time to tell the system not to probe the hardware - just trust the configuration files are correct?