On 12/04/2013 11:39 AM, Thomas Lange wrote:
On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 13:09:16 +0200, Toomas Tamm <[email protected]> said:
     > # wheezy does not have -m and modules.pcimap
     > depmod -m 2>/dev/null
     > if [ -f "/lib/modules/`uname -r`/modules.pcimap" ]; then
I guess for wheezy and later we could try to remove this code for
loading pci kernel modules entirely. Loading a kernel module for some
pci device shouldn't be needed theese days, since the kernel should do
that.
Any opinions on removing this part of code?
At the moment -- no opinion. I'm sad no other opinions seem to have shown up...

I'm back to this black screen issue. It is both interesting to me and it is stressing my kernel knowledge perhaps beyond the point of well informed opinion. A couple things stand out, and I may stop prior to any success.

Important issue for the black screen hardware -- a live VGA monitor is not needed at this moment. The particular PC I am building now will be placed outside human intervention to do security video screening and automation. SSH access is the only plan. It would be "nice" to have the multi-console while I'm provisioning the machine, but over the long run it is only nice and not important. The same result on other hosts will likely be a problem.

The black screen for fai-client happens prior to fai. About 52 seconds after power-on the VGA interface shuts down. At the moment of shutdown, PXE has loaded nfsroot and has turned control over to the kernel built for the client. It happens a few seconds after initscripts begin. Some seconds after dark-screen the fai-monitor begins reporting FAI progress. After FAI has provisioned the target host, the black-screen happens about 5 seconds after grub.

On the target host, lsmod tells me the i915 module is loaded and six others depend upon it. The host has intel graphics so the choice of module might just be correct. FAI-sysinfo tells me the graphics card is Intel i845 but I've not validated the i915 module supports it yet.

SO -- for the moment, I have the following concern: FAI client is built prior to any knowledge about the target host hardware. Therefore the client in nfsroot must have extensive access to many video driver modules for wheezy to mount at boot time in order for the client to support video on the target host. Likewise, the client could supply only those modules needed for the host hardware while provisioning the target host. Where might I find documents to discuss this detail topic for FAI & wheezy?

My second concern is for Fai-client: Both BIOS and PXE display load time comments successfully. To me this proves that the hardware is capable of VGA text display. Is some other driver important enough to FAI-client that whatever BIOS and PXE used needs to be replaced while FAI-client is provisioning the target host?

I will continue without a monitor to adjust provisioning until it seems correct. This may take a while... If I resolve the dark screen, I will pass the info along. I am beginning to suspect FAI is not the root cause of dark screen.

Cheers
George

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