Hello,
While installing a new debian stable squeezy on brand new dell latitude E6510 which has nvidia 3100, the xserver is broken and not working.
As soon as system boots, after grub, the screen becomes blank and you can only see
"_
_
_
_
" passing by. Trying to switch to different terminal does not display anything. ctrl + alt +F4.

For anybody installing debian on this laptop, without a fix to xserver-xorg, debian is unusable as you are not able to access the system.

Here is a description of how to blindly login without a screen, install openssh-server, connect from a different computer and fix xserver-xorg.


I'll provide instructions then will attach the files that show the state of xorg.conf

You have to do this blindly as screen is not displaying anything because of broken xserver.
1. Start the system
2. wait until you think system should have loaded.
3. press ctrl + alt +F4
4. typein your username [enter] password [enter]
5.dhclient
6. aptitude install openssh-server
6. type in yes [enter]
7. wait until it installs, you should see a hdd light blink indicating something is working.
8. look at your rounter log, to see if there is any activity trying to access web, from there you can find out what ip address your laptop got.
9. ssh into that ipaddress.

Solution:
1. add non-free and install nvida-xconfig
2. apt-get update
3. apt-get install nvidia-xconfig
4. nvidia-xconfig
You should get something like this:
"nvidia-xconfig

WARNING: Unable to locate/open X configuration file.

New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'
"
5. edit the file vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
6. change driver to vesa from nvidia
Driver         "vesa"


7.[optional][I think] add Modes        "1920x1080@60" right below depth 24:
Section "Screen"
	Identifier     "Screen0"
	Device         "Device0"
	Monitor        "Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth    24
	SubSection     "Display"
	Depth       24
	Modes        "1920x1080@60"
	EndSubSection
	EndSection

8. restart computer.

Now the X server is working and you can follow this article if you want to install nvidia driver.
http://www.robo47.net/blog/197-Setting-up-Linux-Debian-Squeeze-on-a-Dell-Latitude-E6510-with-Nvida-Quadro-NVS-3100M-and-1920x1080-Display


Bottom line is that xserver-xorg is not installing xorg.conf on this laptop for some reason. Either a default file needs to be there , or xorg detection of the graphic card needs to be fixed.

Let me know if I can provide any other information.
Thanks,
Lucas

tag 616604 - d-i
thanks

(Not related to d-i AFAICT.)

Hi,

Lukasz Szybalski <szybalski@gmail.com> (05/03/2011):

I guess that installing the system worked fine, so fbdev was doing the
job. And the initial issue only happened on the first boot of the
freshly-installed system, using the nouveau driver, correct?

What followed (installing nvidia to actually use vesa) is a bit
confusing, I'm putting Sven (maintainer of the nouveau — not nvidia —
driver) in copy since he might know better what failed after the
installation.

KiBi.

I'm not sure which driver was installed during original installation,
but it seems as during the installation the xorg.conf was not created
and therefore X not working. I assume that is also why text terminals
don't show up. ctrl +alt F4, etc.

I could probably do a dpkg-reconfigure style commands to see what
actually fails if you can't figure it out from the logs I've attached.
I've provided the xorg.0.log and xorg.0.log.old so hopefully that has
some info on it.

Thanks,
Lucas

Hi,

Lukasz Szybalski <szybalski@gmail.com> (05/03/2011):

if you picked the desktop task, you probably got the
xserver-xorg-{input,video}-all packages installed, pulling all
drivers. X works without any configuration in almost all cases now, so
having no xorg.conf is not an actual issue, and should not lead to
such issues.

That doesn't exactly tell us what happened before you tried the
nvidia/vesa dance. That vesa doesn't work is “normal”, since it
detects Kernel ModeSetting (KMS). Not sure how to disable it for
nouveau, but you could try replacing vesa with “fbdev” in your
xorg.conf for now (and make sure xserver-xorg-video-fbdev is
installed).

Please also note that installing nvidia stuff makes our life harder…
(it diverts some libraries/files).

KiBi.

Correct,
I've just renamed the xorg.conf to xorg.conf.org and restarted. The X
started and and with only 800x600 mode, I was able to see X and login,
etc...

i A xserver-xorg-video-fbdev

I restared the xorg.conf, and replaced the driver to "fbdev", restart,
I get the same issue. Right after grub, the whole screen has only:

 blinking:
_


If I keep pressing ctrl + alt + F4 I can see the login screen for
about 0.5sec and it goes back to "_"


So what now? Are you saying that fbdev is a default driver right after
installation?

Thanks,
Lucas

My knowledge is rather limited, but from the "Macintosh mouse button
emulation" lines in the original bug report I conclude that Lukasz has
an Intel Mac.  There have been some upstream bug reports that Nouveau
has trouble initializing the GPU on such machines, especially if BIOS
emulation is disabled.  See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/29171 for such
an example.

Note that Lukasz' graphics card (nVidia Corporation GT218 [NVS 3100M]
(rev a2)) also suffers from https://bugs.freedesktop.org/26980, so
sticking to nv (or nvidia) is probably his best option for now.

It seems this bug should be reassigned to the kernel.

Regards,
        Sven

I don't know where did you conclude that I have a mac intel, but I
assure you I have a Dell latitude e6510, as indicated on the subject
line.


 There have been some upstream bug reports that Nouveau

The 29171 bug talks about mac, I'm not familiar with mac hardware
configuration but this is no mac, so I'm not even sure how related
this could be.

26980 talks about  "graphic card hand ups" my problem is not that it
hands, but it doesn't work at all. I'm pretty sure that nobody is
experiencing hand ups or that the graphic card will hand after this
problem is resolved. First we would need to fix this bug before we
start bringing any other possibly not related issues.

Is there any other debug information I can provide to speed up the
resolution of this problem?


Thank you,
Lucas

I confirm that a fresh squeeze install on a Dell Latitude E6510 with Nvidia NVS 3100
leaves the user with a machine booting into a blank screen, which makes the system
pretty unusable.

This is due to the fact that
 - the default module used to handle the Nvidia card is 'nouveau'
 - nouveau is configured by the installer by default with modeswitch enabled
 - the version of nouveau shipped with squeeze has serious problems with this
   Nvidia card

The workaround is the following:

 - manually edit the boot line under grub to add the option

    nouveau.modeswitch=0

   this will allow you to boot into a workable machine with a decent Vesa support

 - once there, you can install the proprietary nvidia driver by

    apt-get install nvidia-glx

To be on the safe side, the Debian installer should configure machines with the NVS 3100M
with this option for the kernel by default.

I hope it helps