Subject: Odd issues with Stretch installation

From: Chris Angelico <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 12:43:23 +1000

Hi! Not sure how best to report this, as I have no idea what Debian
package (if any?) handles the installer.

In trying to test an Xfce patch, I spun up a virtual machine (using
VirtualBox under my main Debian Stretch installation, though I doubt
that makes any difference). The virtual hard disk I assigned it is 8GB
total in size, and I gave it 4GB of RAM.

Two problems:

1) The default settings gave 4GB to the root partition and 4GB to the
swapper. Probably a poor choice, but not overly serious except for...
2) ... the installer running out of disk space is not, apparently, an
error. I had no idea whatsoever that there had been any installation
difficulties.

The first sign of failure was that, after installation, the GUI didn't
load properly - just a black screen with a mouse cursor. In trying to
track down the failure, I found the disk to be full, so I didn't
bother analyzing it any further.

Unfortunately, I'm still having trouble after reallocating it (6GB
root, rest to swap) - so it's some other problem. How should I go
about tracking it down?

Chris Angelico

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From: Ric Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 03:54:43 -0400

> bother analyzing it any further.

Same problem. Only my tower has plenty of memory and disk space. I just 
get a black screen, lonely mouse cursor in the upper left of my display. 
Yes, the mouse cursor does move around. So, I open a terminal and startx 
gives me the XFCE desktop. Ric

-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

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From: Chris Angelico <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:13:44 +1000

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Ric Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Same problem. Only my tower has plenty of memory and disk space. I just get
> a black screen, lonely mouse cursor in the upper left of my display. Yes,
> the mouse cursor does move around. So, I open a terminal and startx gives me
> the XFCE desktop. Ric

How did you open a terminal? From that screen, or by booting in a
different mode? When I tried that, I got a "no screens found" error,
which has led me to a solution, of sorts (and which I've literally
only just finished testing while writing this email):

1) Install Debian as normal
2) Boot, and at the grub screen, edit - on the 'linux' line, add
"systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
3) Install VirtualBox Guest Additions via build-essential,
module-assistant, and the provided .iso
4) Reboot normally.

In previous Debians, guest additions have come along automatically, so
I'm hoping that this issue is only because I'm running Testing and
stuff hasn't settled down. Installing Debian Stable, installing
VirtualBox from the standard repos (albeit the contrib section), and
then installing Debian Stable inside that, should be an easy
operation.

In any case, the "disk full is not an error" error is still an error.
It just doesn't happen to have been the cause of the video issues.

ChrisA

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From: Ric Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:49:37 -0400

> only just finished testing while writing this email):

By "terminal" I meant logging into a text-only terminal with ctrl-alt-F1
I'm not running a virtual instance, but the problem is the same with my 
primary XFCE4 desktop. I've google's but am not coming up with anything 
recent. Ric

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From: Felix Miata <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:33:59 -0400

Ric Moore composed on 2016-09-16 03:49 (UTC+1000):

> Chris Angelico wrote:

I don't see that either of you have mentioned your hardware in this thread. 
If non-working Xorg is your root problem, maybe you're up against a broken 
driver and a switch is called for:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Debian-Abandon-Intel-DDX
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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From: Chris Angelico <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 05:08:29 +1000

> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Debian-Abandon-Intel-DDX

Hmm, interesting.

Do you want to know about my real hardware, or what the machine in
question was running on, which is VirtualBox's simulated hardware? I
have a physical computer with an nVidia GTX 960 [which my fingers keep
wanting to type as GTK 960], running Debian Stretch, and inside that
is VirtualBox 5.1.4-dfsg-1+b1 (from the main Debian repos), in which I
created a VM to mess around with Debian Stretch (and ultimately to
patch xfwm4, although at time of writing the above posts, I was
building the control, with the standard repo-provided window manager).

Real machine:
rosuav@sikorsky:~$ lspci|grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce
GTX 960] (rev a1)
Virtual machine:
rosuav@debian:~$ lspci|grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH
VirtualBox Graphics Adapter

>  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Go Team OS/2!

ChrisA

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From: Chris Angelico <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 03:56:19 +1000

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 3:49 AM, Ric Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> get

Ah okay. I was actually unable to use Ctrl-Alt-F1 as it just switched
my _main_ system to console.

Since startx is working for you, it's probably unrelated to my issues.

ChrisA