Black screen hinders the client build on the target host

[George VerDuin]

On 12/04/2013 11:39 AM, Thomas Lange wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 13:09:16 +0200, Toomas Tamm <tt-fai at kky.ttu.ee> 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