Linux Black Screen with immobile cursor in center

@InsaneFool

Im going to go out on a limb here and say you need to install a proper video driver.

uNi

I'm not sure where to get a a proper video driver for this board.

I ran the lspci command and found that it was an "Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller" but no other noticeably useful information is present. Any ideas on what I should do next? Feel free to reply in my other thread that I made regarding this issue.

I have two Intel NUCs ("Next Unit of Computing") powered by a Celeron 847 CPU (official model: "DCCP847DYE"). With one of them, I was able to press ESC during boot up, which would give me a Ubuntu command prompt, at which point I modified GRUB as detailed at the end of this post. However, on my other NUC (which is identical model), pressing ESC does not get me a command prompt. It always boots to a black screen with a mouse cursor in the middle.

I decided to try to install XBMCbuntu Eden as described by Discmeister in this thread. However, I still get the dark screen.

Is there another way to get a command prompt during boot up?

Is there a way to modify the installation USB so that Grub is modified at the time of installation?

Is there a way to modify the installation USB so that SSH is enabled automatically?

My router shows that it is live and attached to the network, but I can't ping it and I can't connect by SSH or WinSCP.

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How I fixed ONE of my NUCs (with the excellent guidance of XBMC user Fersken)

This guide assumes that you have already installed XBMCbuntu onto your NUC (either onto a USB flash drive or internal mSATA drive), but found that after installation it does not seem to boot up for you. You either get a black screen with only a mouse cursor in the middle (assuming you have a mouse installed) or only a black screen (if you have no mouse). This guide explains how to fix your problem.

1. Unplug your NUC, count to 5, plug it back in and turn it on.

2. As soon as you turn it on, start pressing ESC every few seconds. One press of ESC should be enough, but it’s hard to tell exactly when to press ESC to get a command prompt, so just do it several times until you see a command prompt.

3. After you do this, you will be presented with two choices that will resemble these:

Ubuntu, with Linux 3.5.0-22-generic
Ubuntu, with Linux 3.5.0-22-generic (recovery mode)

4. Select the first option from the above choices.

5. Press “E” to edit your bootloader setup.

6. After you do this, you’ll see a screen which resembles these two screenshots (my apologies for the poor quality of the screenshots.




7. Look for a line that begins something like, “linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-22-generic…” and then move your cursor to the end of that line.

8. At the end of the “linux…../boot/vmlinuz…” line, add a space and then “i915.i915_enable_rc6=0”.

9. Press F10 after you have done the above. This will reboot your NUC. When it reboots, you should see a regular XBMC home screen.

10. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 in XBMC. This will take you back to a Ubuntu command prompt.

11. Type “sudo nano /etc/default/grub”. This will open the Grub file for editing.

12. Look for a line in this file which reads:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

and change it to read:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.i915_enable_rc6=0".

13. Press Ctrl-X (then confirm “Y” for yes) to save your edits to the Grub file.

14. Type the command, “sudo update-grub” and press enter.

15. Type the command, “sudo shutdown -r now” and press enter. This will shutdown your NUC.

16. After rebooting your NUC again, it should go straight to XBMCbuntu. Now you need to change the video settings.

17. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 in XBMC to go to a Ubuntu command prompt.

18. Type this command, “sudo apt-get install intel-gpu-tools libva-intel-vaapi-driver” and press enter.

19. Press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to XBMC.

20. Reboot your NUC.


A FEW COMMANDS TO REMEMBER

CTRL-ALT-F1 – when in XBMCbuntu, pressing ctrl-alt-f1 will take you to a Ubuntu command prompt.

SUDO APT-GET UPDATE – typing sudo apt-get update (and pressing enter) at a Ubuntu command prompt will download all available updates for your installation.

SUDO APT-GET UPGRADE – typing sudo apt-get upgrade (and pressing enter) at a Ubuntu command prompt will install the available updates for your installation. Run this command after you run sudo apt-get update.

CTRL-ALT-F7 – Returns you to XBMC from the Ubuntu command prompt.

I have a Sandy Bridge i5 and I get the same problem with Frodo 12.2. Boots up, changes to 60hz, the mouse freezes and no hdd activity at all. Complete lock up.

I can confirm the bug has not been fixed. All installed with defaults. I have a NVIDIA graphics card I can install as a test to see if it makes a difference as I think the Intel driver is what is causing the problems.

@richsmif

Welcome.

If the instructions on this thread dont help thers not much else to tell you except this http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=164274

uNi