• Dell Inspiron 17 3000 Series 3785 problem with X

    From Ernst Doubt@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 14 09:00:01 2019
    Greetings,


    i've been an avid debian user for more than 2 decades at this point and
    just

    bought myself my first laptop. It and buster are new enough that a quick
    web

    search didn't show me much. Apologies if questions of this sort have been

    asked before (i subscribed myself to the list instead of doing an extensive

    search (i did check for 'dell 3785' and none of the results seemed like
    they

    were particularly helpful)).


    So i managed to install successfully (the LVM level encryption option seems

    very excellent -- that's what i chose) but when i restarted, the machine
    hung.

    Gnome Display Manager tried to briefly start. No GUI appeared though --
    only a

    momentary flicker of the screen (with no mouse pointer, only a blinking

    underscore at the top left of the display) before reverting to command line

    output. After dropping back to the command line, no login prompt is
    available (nor am i able to access any other consoles via ctrl-alt-Fn nor alt-Fn key combinations. Fortunately i am able to get a root prompt in
    rescue mode, so i'm

    hopeful (that with the help of some of you kind people) that i will be able
    to

    succeed in getting my preferred KDE desktop environment to eventually load.


    I have several questions:


    How do i enable networking from the command line? i assume i can do this in

    rescue mode? i was able to connect to my wireless network during the
    install,

    but if it's easier to plug in an ethernet cable, i'm happy to try that
    instead

    (DHCP is enabled (both wireless and ethernet end up in the same network at
    my home), though i'm willing to set a static IP also).


    What log files should i be looking for on this newly installed buster
    machine?

    My guess is that i may have to install some proprietary non-free firmware

    packages (which i'm OK with). My quick web search indicated that ubuntu
    ought

    to work, but i'd rather stick with debian (though it's possible that at
    some

    point in the future i'll cry uncle). Would it be helpful for me to boot
    from a live DVD (either debian or ubuntu) in order to troubleshoot this problem?


    thanks so very much for any assistance/insight anyone is able to provide,

    ~e

    <div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">Greetings,</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">i&#39;ve been an avid debian user for more than 2 decades at this point and just </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">bought myself my first laptop. It and buster are new enough that a quick web </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">search didn&#39;t show me much. Apologies if questions of this sort have been </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">asked before (i subscribed myself to the list instead of doing an extensive </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">search (i did check for &#39;dell 3785&#39; and none of the results seemed like they </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">were particularly helpful)). </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">So i managed to install successfully (the LVM level encryption option seems </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">very excellent -- that&#39;s what i chose) but when i restarted, the machine hung. </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">Gnome Display Manager tried to briefly start. No GUI appeared though -- only a </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">momentary flicker of the screen (with no mouse pointer, only a blinking </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">underscore at the top left of the display) before reverting to command line </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">output. After dropping back to the command line, no login prompt is available (nor am i able to access any other consoles via ctrl-alt-Fn nor alt-Fn key combinations. Fortunately i am able to get a root prompt
    in rescue mode, so i&#39;m </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">hopeful (that with the help of some of you kind people) that i will be able to </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">succeed in getting my preferred KDE desktop environment to eventually load.</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">I have several questions:</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">How do i enable networking from the command line? i assume i can do this in </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">rescue mode? i was able to connect to my wireless network during the install, </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">but if it&#39;s easier to plug in an ethernet cable, i&#39;m happy to try that instead </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">(DHCP is enabled (both wireless and ethernet end up in the same network at my home), though i&#39;m willing to set a static IP also).</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">What log files should i be looking for on this newly installed buster machine? </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">My guess is that i may have to install some proprietary non-free firmware </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">packages (which i&#39;m OK with). My quick web search indicated that ubuntu ought </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">to work, but i&#39;d rather stick with debian (though it&#39;s possible that at some </p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap">point in the future i&#39;ll cry uncle). Would it be helpful for me to boot from a live DVD (either debian or ubuntu) in order to troubleshoot this problem?</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"> thanks so very much for any assistance/insight anyone is able to provide,</p>
    <p style="margin:0px;white-space:pre-wrap"> ~e</p></div>

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  • From ernst doubt@21:1/5 to Moshe Piekarski on Wed Aug 14 19:10:02 2019
    Thank you for the response Moshe. i was able to succeed this morning
    (using the ip command to get online via ethernet in recovery mode).
    After manually configuring my networking, i'm pretty sure the package
    that solved my issue (for the benefit of anyone else stumbling across
    this) was linux-firmware-nonfree -- after installing it, i rebooted and
    X works (and for the record, there is no /var/log/X directory on my
    laptop -- must be a change with buster (or farther back?)). The file /var/log/daemon.log seemed to have a fair amount of relevant
    information in it though.

    Now i'm off and running with KDE (and couldn't be happier :-])

    thanks again,
    ~c

    On Wed, 2019-08-14 at 12:47 -0400, Moshe Piekarski wrote:

    On 8/14/19 2:51 AM, Ernst Doubt wrote:
    Greetings,

    i've been an avid debian user for more than 2 decades at this point
    and just
    bought myself my first laptop. It and buster are new enough that a
    quick web
    search didn't show me much. Apologies if questions of this sort
    have been
    asked before (i subscribed myself to the list instead of doing an
    extensive
    search (i did check for 'dell 3785' and none of the results seemed
    like they
    were particularly helpful)).

    So i managed to install successfully (the LVM level encryption
    option seems
    very excellent -- that's what i chose) but when i restarted, the
    machine hung.
    Gnome Display Manager tried to briefly start. No GUI appeared
    though -- only a
    momentary flicker of the screen (with no mouse pointer, only a
    blinking
    underscore at the top left of the display) before reverting to
    command line
    output. After dropping back to the command line, no login prompt is available (nor am i able to access any other consoles via ctrl-alt-
    Fn nor alt-Fn key combinations. Fortunately i am able to get a root
    prompt in rescue mode, so i'm
    hopeful (that with the help of some of you kind people) that i will
    be able to
    succeed in getting my preferred KDE desktop environment to
    eventually load.

    This sounds a lot like a graphics card bug. (see https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156341 for a possibly
    related bug in nvidia cards)
    I have several questions:

    How do i enable networking from the command line?
    Try ifconfig and dhclient. Alternatively wicd network manager has a
    curses interface.
    i assume i can do this in
    rescue mode?
    I think so but you may want to try booting into multi-user mode
    instead
    i was able to connect to my wireless network during the install,
    but if it's easier to plug in an ethernet cable, i'm happy to try
    that instead
    (DHCP is enabled (both wireless and ethernet end up in the same
    network at my home), though i'm willing to set a static IP also).

    What log files should i be looking for on this newly installed
    buster machine?
    Two good places to start would probably be /var/log/X* and
    journalctl, after setting storage to persistent (if you are using
    systemd).

    My guess is that i may have to install some proprietary non-free
    firmware
    packages (which i'm OK with).
    firmware-amd-graphics (from non-free) may help.
    My quick web search indicated that ubuntu ought
    to work, but i'd rather stick with debian (though it's possible
    that at some
    point in the future i'll cry uncle). Would it be helpful for me to
    boot from a live DVD (either debian or ubuntu) in order to
    troubleshoot this problem?

    thanks so very much for any assistance/insight anyone is able
    to provide,
    ~e

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From ernst doubt@21:1/5 to Moshe Piekarski on Wed Aug 14 19:30:01 2019
    On Wed, 2019-08-14 at 13:11 -0400, Moshe Piekarski wrote:
    On 8/14/19 1:06 PM, ernst doubt wrote:
    Thank you for the response Moshe. i was able to succeed this
    morning
    (using the ip command to get online via ethernet in recovery mode).
    Glad to know you got it working.
    After manually configuring my networking, i'm pretty sure the
    package
    that solved my issue (for the benefit of anyone else stumbling
    across
    this) was linux-firmware-nonfree -- after installing it, i rebooted
    and
    X works

    linux-firmware-nonfree is a metapackage. it just pulls in several of
    the non-free firmware packages.

    Thanks for clarifying. In my haste i noticed several packages being
    installed, but assumed they were dependencies. Should have looked
    closer.


    (and for the record, there is no /var/log/X directory on my
    laptop -- must be a change with buster (or farther back?)). The
    file
    I'm sorry I wasn't clear I was referring to
    /var/log/Xorg.(0).log(.old)
    /var/log/daemon.log seemed to have a fair amount of relevant
    information in it though.

    No worries. i was actually the one who was being unclear. But in any
    case, there's no file(s) named Xorg* either:

    root@deletion:/var/log# ls -latr

    total 4692

    drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 8 2019
    firebird

    drwx--x--x 2 root Debian-gdm 4096 Feb 9 2019 gdm3

    drwx------ 2 speech-dispatcher root 4096 Feb 20 07:22 speech- dispatcher

    drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Aug 12 21:32 ..

    drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 13 06:52 hp

    -rw-r--r-- 1 sddm sddm 0 Aug 13 07:37
    sddm.log

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5432 Aug 13 07:46
    fontconfig.log

    drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 13 17:36
    installer

    drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Aug 13 17:37 private

    drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 13 17:37 cups

    drwxr-x--- 2 root adm 4096 Aug 13 17:37 unattended-upgrades

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32032 Aug 14 07:42 faillog

    drwxr-s--- 2 Debian-exim adm 4096 Aug 14 07:43 exim4

    -rw-rw---- 1 root utmp 1152 Aug 14 07:48 btmp

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 14 08:33 popularity-contest.0

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 113004 Aug 14 08:34 popularity-contest.new

    drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Aug 14 08:34 .

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34036 Aug 14 08:34 popularity-contest.new.gpg

    -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 292292 Aug 14 08:41 lastlog

    -rw------- 1 root root 47830 Aug 14 09:00
    boot.log

    drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 14 09:15 apt

    -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 13056 Aug 14 09:16 wtmp

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 62839 Aug 14 09:16 alternatives.log

    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1278336 Aug 14 09:18
    dpkg.log

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 73515 Aug 14 09:23 debug

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 495727 Aug 14 13:19
    kern.log

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 395060 Aug 14 13:19
    user.log

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 753781 Aug 14 13:19
    messages

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 14022 Aug 14 13:19
    auth.log

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 1141357 Aug 14 13:19 syslog

    -rw-r----- 1 root adm 243277 Aug 14 13:19
    daemon.log





    Now i'm off and running with KDE (and couldn't be happier :-])

    thanks again,
    ~c

    Sincerely,

    Moshe Piekarski

    --

    There's no such thing as a stupid question,

    But there are plenty of inquisitive idiots.



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