Sabayon 6.0 dies during installation [Solved]

[HolgiB]

Hi all,

I just wanted to (re)install my test PC yesterday either using Sabayon 6.0 KDE or GNOME in 386 flavor.
Unfortunately both versions died during the graphical installation process. The screen went black in Gnome (or white in KDE) and nothing happened. I couldn't even switch back to the text console. I tried several times and once I did see some error message related to the Nvidia Kernel module.

My PC looks like this:
P4 3GHz
2x1 GB DDR DDR400 RAM
GeForce 6600GT AGP (passive cooling)
2x120GB WD IDE HDD

Funnily enough every Debian-based distribution (Debian 6.0 / Ubuntu 10.04.3 / Ultimate Gamer Edition) install fine on this box. I was using U10.4.3 for nearly a month without any hickup.
I do not suspect any hardware issues.

Edit: While I think about this...it seems to me that Sabayon is detecting my NVidia card, tries to install the corresponding kernel module during installation and fails...

Has anyone experienced similar problems ?

TIA,
Holger

[roelof]

Hello,

I looks like my problem when I want to install KDE.
See this topic :
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=25228

Roelof

[HolgiB]

Hi there,

yes, indeed...

Your problem looks pretty similar to mine and your card is also quite old as well.


I will try to blacklist nv as well. Let's see what happens.

Regards,
Holger

[roelof]

Hello,

Any luck till now ??

Roelof

[HolgiB]

Hello Roelof,

thanks for the hint !

I tried to boot Sabayon 6.0 Gnome i386 with nomodeset enabled and got a working graphical desktop.

Keep your fingers crossed...Installation is working right now.... I keep you updated !

I can darkly remember that I had similar issues with Ubuntu 10.04 (in the first version).

Edit: Interestingly enough the NVidia binary blob now seems to be initialized correctly since I get the corresponding renderer string when running glxinfo | grep OpenGL.

Possibly it is really the combination of nouveau and the binary nvidia driver ?

-Holger

[Fitzcarraldo]

You can tell for sure which of the three drivers (nvidia-drivers, nv or nouveau) you are running by looking at the output of the following commands entered as root user:

Code: Select all

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
lsmod

If you disabled KMS then the cause of the problem is likely to be the nouveau driver (module).

[HolgiB]

Woha, things are strange here....

One of the two 120GB HDD had tremendous errors reported by SMART (which I didn't see during POST as the BIOS reported both HDDs as healthy). Well, anyway: I removed the HDD now and trashed it.

Afterwards I reinstalled Sabayon 6.0 in GNOME flavor. This time I tried the graphical installer instead of launching Live mode first and *BOOM*...white screen again, no option to switch back. In general I am not shure anymore if there are any other issues with either the mobo, CPU, RAM or GPU.

This is the bad thing if you build PCs from scrap parts

I keep you posted...

-Holger

[joost]

Can somebody collect some logs and open a bug for this?

[HolgiB]

I would be willing to collect logs if Sabayon would let me access Xorg.0.log and dmesg output.
Unfortunately the screen goes white and no access to text console anymore

[HolgiB]

This might not be directly related but I experimented a bit with my main PC (Athlon X2 5200+ with GeForce 9800GT) with Sabayon 6.0 x64 as well as dyne:bolic. Booting Sabayon 6.0 GNOME in live mode works like a charm. Perfect 3D acceleration out off the box.

Since I have no spare HDD available, I can not test if the installation fails the same way as it did on my P4.

dyne:boolic (latest 3.0 beta version) on the other hand showed a similar behaviour as Sabayon during graphical installation. The screen gets completely "scrambled" once X is started. Since the graphic adapter is NVidia also I suspect Nouveau being the root cause for this issues.

The question is though why Ubuntu (with Nouveau enabled per default) does NOT show such a behaviour