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Author Topic: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore  (Read 11420 times)

Offline Sashank999

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TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« on: July 10, 2020, 03:16:40 AM »
Hi !

I have 2 TCL versions on my BIOS laptop. x86 and x64. I use x64 frequently. I do not open x86 version too much.

But today, when I opened x86 TCL, it just shows black screen( after all those colorful "Loading kernel, Loading apps). I rebooted but the same happened. I tried booting it with the base command and loaded only 4 Xvesa, aterm, wbar, jwm and then did startx but the same black screen. I tried base with flwm too but the same thing happens. The x64 is loading perfectly without any errors.

In a forum, I saw that graphics module is needed. I downloaded it and loaded it but then, the black screen now has an underscore ( :-\ ). It is not blinking. What to do ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Sashank999 .

Offline Juanito

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2020, 03:27:54 AM »
Do you have two separate tce directories for 32-bit and 64-bit extensions - for example, tce and tce64?

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2020, 04:04:51 AM »
Hi Juanito,

I have two dirs: tce32 (for x86) and tce64 (for x64). I specify them via boot option as tce=sda5/tce32.

Offline Juanito

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2020, 04:16:22 AM »
The graphics-KERNEL extension is not required for Xvesa - you can check for errors in starting the gui by executing the first line of ~/.xsession from the console prompt.

Offline PDP-8

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2020, 06:47:10 AM »
I've had this happen to me before when swapping out different boot sticks - and it may not pertain to your hardware.

One one of my boxes, (a small cheap hockey-puck sized mini-pc), when I change boot sticks, it seems to need to be powered down, *and the power physically disconnected* and then reconnected with the stick I want to boot from before applying power.  A simple power-off is not sufficient - I need to physically pull the power from the back of the unit and plug back in with the new boot stick already in place.

Seems like the system is taking an inventory of what is attached to the usb ports, and then quickly powers off internally waiting for you to manually power up.  I can see an led glow for a few seconds and then it all goes dark.

Then it is no longer confused leaving me at a blank screen.

I'm not a big hardware guy, but I was tearing my hair out when I discovered this.

Could just be my specific hardware, but thought I'd throw that out.

Either that, or did you upgrade to 11.1 and possibly need the intel_iommu=off kernel cheatcode?

« Last Edit: July 10, 2020, 06:52:40 AM by PDP-8 »
That's a UNIX book! - cool  -- Garth

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2020, 08:19:07 AM »
Hi Juanito,

After executing first line of .xsession I got the error "/use/local/bin/Xorg line 8: /usr/local/lib/xorg/Xorg.wrap not found".

Hi PDP-8,

Mine is a laptop an I physically remove the power every time. Also tried adding intel_iommu=off to the bootcodes list but still no progress. My first TCL is 32 bit v11.1. It is the first version I got.

Online Rich

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2020, 08:47:06 AM »
Hi Sashank999
Do you have  Xvesa  and  Xorg  both listed in your  tce/onboot.lst  file? If so, remove one of them.

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2020, 10:03:58 PM »
Hi Rich,

I had Xvesa and Xprogs both on onboot. I removed Xprogs. But still the same error.

Online Rich

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2020, 10:14:23 PM »
Hi Sashank999
Not  Xprogs.  Read it again:
Do you have  Xvesa  and  Xorg  both listed in your  tce/onboot.lst  file? If so, remove one of them.

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2020, 11:42:54 PM »
Hi Rich,

I have only Xvesa on onboot.lst .

Online Rich

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #10 on: July 10, 2020, 11:55:29 PM »
Hi Sashank999
What happens if you do this:
Code: [Select]
tce-load -i Xvesa aterm wbar jwm
/usr/local/bin/Xvesa -shadow -mouse /dev/input/mice,5 -t 1 -nolisten tcp -I >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2020, 02:58:24 AM »
Hi Rich,

That gives a black screen. No underscore, no wbar.

Offline Juanito

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2020, 03:09:34 AM »
Did you check that graphics-KERNEL is not loaded?

Offline Sashank999

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2020, 05:00:34 AM »
Hi Juanito,

Yes. It is not loaded when I am executing commands said by you both.

Offline Juanito

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Re: TinyCore x86 with a black screen + underscore
« Reply #14 on: July 11, 2020, 05:34:41 AM »
It might be easier to use flwm for testing rather than jwm (less deps) - it might also be worth checking for something missing with:
Code: [Select]
$ ldd /usr/local/lib/lib*.so | grep found