[Xen-users] No video display, SuSE kernel-xen-2.6.11.4-21.7

[Robbie Dinn <robbie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

This is a strange one. On upgraging to SuSE kernel-2.6.11.4-21.7, I have
suddenly found that I loose the video on boot up! The video disappears
very early in boot, possibly while Xen hypervisor is starting, printing
out the physical memory map.

If you are patient and wait for the machine to reach run level 5,
the X server starts up and you get a picture back. You can then
switch back and forth between virtual terminal 7 (X server) and
virtual terminals 1 to 6 (which remain black).

I put an osciloscope on the VGA sync to see what they were doing.
They look fine, HSync 31.5KHz, 3.6uS high 27.9uS low,
VSync 62.5Hz, 2 lines low, ~448 line high
(This is with virtual terminal 1 selected ).

I have seen this on two different machines.

First is a Mitac laptop, Athlon64 process (running 32 bit mode),
Via chip set, ATI Radeon 9600 M10 video

Second is a Pentium III board, BX chip set, Chips & Technologies
69000 video.

Software in use...

Xen:
From 'xm dmesg'
Xen version 2.0.6a-0.1 (abuild@xxxxxxx) (gcc version 3.3.5 20050117 
(prerelease
) (SUSE Linux)) Fri Jun 10 19:30:50 UTC 2005

This is the xen-2.0.6a-0.1.i586.rpm from Kurt Garloff's page.

I have also tried a xen-2.0-testing that I compiled myself
(with the rev 1.1899 "Ensure we only handle writable pagetable faults 
taken in guest kernel")
Same outcome

kernel on domO:

paradox:~ # rpm -q kernel-xen
kernel-xen-2.6.11.4-21.7
paradox:~ #

This is a kernel down loaded from Kurt Garloff's Page

I also tried a kernel that I compiled myself with the
SuSE kernel sources that were release last week. I got the
same misbehaviour. I thought that this was due to my error
in configuring the kernel. I tried recompiling with
CONFIG_FB turned off, but that did not help.

My grub config:

title XEN
    kernel (hd0,0)/xen.gz dom0_mem=204800
    module (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-xen root=/dev/system/dom0_root_hdc 
selinux=0  splash
=silent showopts
    module (hd0,0)/initrd-xen

(hd0,0 is my /boot partition
these symbolic links are in place

paradox:~ # ls -l /boot/xen.gz
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 17 Jun 13 13:11 /boot/xen.gz -> xen-2.0.6a-0.1.gz
paradox:~ # ls -l /boot/vmlinuz-xen
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 25 Jun 13 13:11 /boot/vmlinuz-xen -> 
vmlinuz-2.6.11.4-21.7-xen
paradox:~ # ls -l /boot/initrd-xen
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 24 Jun 13 13:11 /boot/initrd-xen -> 
initrd-2.6.11.4-21.7-xen
My initrd has these modules in it:

paradox:~ # zcat /boot/initrd-2.6.11.4-21.7-xen | cpio -i -t | grep -E 
'^lib/modules'
7161 blocks
lib/modules
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-core.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide/pci
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide/pci/piix.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-disk.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-cd.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/md
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/md/raid1.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/md/dm-mod.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/md/dm-snapshot.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/cdrom
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/drivers/cdrom/cdrom.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/fs
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/fs/jbd
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/fs/jbd/jbd.ko
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/fs/ext3
lib/modules/2.6.11.4-21.7-xen/kernel/fs/ext3/ext3.ko
paradox:~ #

None of this is causing me any great problem because
the machine is sitting in a server rack in another
room. I can ssh to it or use the serial console.

It will confuse the hell out of a new user though!

Does anyone have any suggests as to what to try to debug/fix this?

Robbie Dinn

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