Solved Cannot switch to virtual terminals from KDE

P

Pipeline79

Right, I've installed FreeBSD 9.3, I've managed to finally start the KDE desktop after login with the startx prompt, rather than loading the KDM - as I wanted.

This was all good so far, however as I was logging in as a user, the KDE only provided me with a logout button in the shutdown menu. Fine, I thought after I managed to put myself in the operator group - I could then use the shutdown(8) command from a terminal window.

What puzzled me then was why I couldn't log out from K, go back to the first terminal and shutdown there, or get anything but a blank screen. Similarly, whilst still using K, I couldn't switch to any of the other terminals. Im sure it did 'switch', but the display didn't. After looking around I thought this might be a configuration problem, related to me having a Radeon graphics card. So I tried altering /boot/loader.conf to load the KMS driver, I think it was, plus three other variables which kldload(8) reported as necessary. I wish I hadn't because now I cant see anything after the machine starts booting past the options menu!

I'm writing this on a tablet now, how am I supposed to undo this so I can actually find a solution? !

I'm sorry if what I've written is not that precise, or wrong in places, but obviously it's written from memory.

Putting the machine in safe mode or verbose makes no difference, I would assume single user wouldn't either.
 
If you have Intel or Radeon graphics, boot to single-user mode, use mount -a, then set kern.vty=vt in /boot/loader.conf. Save and reboot.

I don't know how or if Nvidia is affected by KMS.
 
wblock@ said:
If you have Intel or Radeon graphics, boot to single-user mode, use mount -a, then set kern.vty=vt in /boot/loader.conf. Save and reboot.

I don't know how or if Nvidia is affected by KMS.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I have no display to see what im doing. I tried choosing single user mode, then typing in the kern.vty=vt option, with ee (blind), which was in there already I think, because I found that in another post. It still boots to a blank screen as it loads the kernel.
 
We still do not know which video hardware you have. Why did you choose an older release of FreeBSD rather than 10.1?
 
wblock@ said:
We still do not know which video hardware you have. Why did you choose an older release of FreeBSD rather than 10.1?
Click to expand...

I have an Intel pc x64, with a Radeon HD 4650 graphics card.
My first post said I have a Radeon Graphics card, that was why I altered /boot/loader.conf to begin with.

I didn't choose 9.3 for any particular reason. It was on a disk already, from when I last tried to get FreeBSD to work as I wanted. (And failed). In fact, when I tried to boot up my previous installation on the same PC recently, I was surprised to find it booted to a blank screen, which I didn't remember as happening before. That's why I started again last week with a new install.
 
To clarify,
The problem - with no display - started after I added 3 extra lines to /boot/loader.conf specific to my Radeon graphics card. I had tried setting kern.vty to vt first, then when this made no difference I tried something else.

Looking at another thread, from 2013, it says switching back to text terminals once KMS had loaded, was not supported. This must be the problem I'm having. I enabled this driver, or module in my /boot/loader.conf file, along with 2 preceding variables.

Would FreeBSD 10.1 now support this feature?
 
Pipeline79 said:
The problem - with no display - started after I added 3 extra lines to /boot/loader.conf specific to my Radeon graphics card.
Click to expand...
Why add those lines? We often see people having problems when they try to force a certain configuration rather than letting the drivers autoload their own modules. The easy solution is just removing those extra lines.
 
@OP, don't forget that you can always log in with SSH from another computer.
 
wblock@ said:
Why add those lines? We often see people having problems when they try to force a certain configuration rather than letting the drivers autoload their own modules. The easy solution is just removing those extra lines.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was the problem, I've got rid of them now with the fixit mode on the FreeBSD 8.4 DVD.

I still have 9.3 for now. If I run Xorg -configure at the text prompt, I get the error "Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices."
This I assume is because my PC has an integrated graphics adapter with a VGA socket as well as the ATI PCI express card. I've tried fiddling with the BIOS 'north bridge' options but Xorg still won't auto-configure fully.
I only have one monitor, it has VGA, DVI and HDMI sockets.

junovitch said:
According to https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.1R/relnotes.html, the vt(4) driver was merged in for that release. So yes, setting kern.vty=vt would be a no-op on FreeBSD 9.3 and you will need to update to FreeBSD 10.1 or one of the 10.2-BETA# snapshots if you are looking to use that feature.
Click to expand...

Would Xorg self configure fully if I have this detection error message now, with 10.1?
 
Please stop using Xorg -configure. To select just one card, it should be possible to manually enter a single Device section in xorg.conf, letting X autoconfigure the rest. In other words, enter only that section, and nothing else in that file.
Code: 
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Card0"
  Driver  "radeon"
EndSection
 
wblock@ said:
Please stop using Xorg -configure. To select just one card, it should be possible to manually enter a single Device section in xorg.conf, letting X autoconfigure the rest. In other words, enter only that section, and nothing else in that file.
Code: 
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Card0"
  Driver  "radeon"
EndSection
Click to expand...

I've removed everything from the xorg.conf.new file apart from the section relating to the radeon device.

Code: 
Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
        ### <percent>: "<f>%"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "Accel"                  # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "EnablePageFlip"         # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorTiling"            # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorTiling2D"          # [<bool>]
        #Option     "RenderAccel"            # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SubPixelOrder"          # [<str>]
        #Option     "EXAVSync"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "EXAPixmaps"             # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ZaphodHeads"            # <str>
        #Option     "EnablePageFlip"         # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SwapbuffersWait"        # [<bool>]
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "radeon"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Copied it as per the handbook section 6.10.

# cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This doesn't give me virtual terminal switching though.
My /boot/loader.conf file is now:-

Code: 
fuse_load="YES"
kern.vty=vt

Should I remove the second line if as junovitch says it won't work on 9.3?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top