[SOLVED] Mint 9 (amd64) [drm] nouveau drops to shell

[Old Ruler]

My new installation of Mint 9 (amd64) drops to a shell just after:

[ 3.216159 Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240 x 67
[ 3.216175 [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0 0xB6C8: parsing output script 1
[ 3.216185 [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0 0xB6C9: parsing output script 2
[ 3.216196 [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0 0xB60F: parsing clock script 0

Alert! does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

It's an Asus M2N32 WS Pro. Motherboard with nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX on which Mint 8 (amd64) installed and runs perfectly. The Live DVD ran and installed without problem.

I do use a previously installed legacy Grub and, therefore, the advanced install option to not install a boot manager, but I think the boot is running far enough for the problem to be elsewhere. Mounting the new root partition from Mint 8 (which is on the same SSD) doesn't help much as the failure is (apparently) before anything is written to dmesg etc.

Any suggestions? Output of lspci (from the Mint 8 install) follows:

[root@asus john]# lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:08.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:09.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:09.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a1)
00:0a.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0c.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 IDE (rev a1)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.2 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI bridge (rev a2)
00:0e.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:10.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)
00:12.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:16.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:17.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce 9800 GTX] (rev a2)
03:00.0 PCI bridge: NEC Corporation uPD720400 PCI Express - PCI/PCI-X Bridge (rev 06)
03:00.1 PCI bridge: NEC Corporation uPD720400 PCI Express - PCI/PCI-X Bridge (rev 06)

[curmudgeon]

Try installing the proprietary drivers.

[Old Ruler]

Thanks, but how would I do that from the Ash prompt?

(It doesn't boot to the desktop.)

[curmudgeon]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=606905

[Old Ruler]

Thanks again.

Actually I found the problem. Some idiot had forgotten the 'root=/dev/sda2' bit on the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Sorry to have wasted your time.