after replacing motherboard, Debian gets blank screen while booting

Question

I have Debian installed on one computer. I just replaced its motherboard and CPU. And graphics card, because I use onboard one. I kept my old hard disk. Now machine boots well, grub starts well, initrd starts well and asks me for a password (because my disk is LUKS encrypted), but then about when it usually changes to framebuffer, monitor goes black and that's all. I guess the hardware is not faulty - I boot knoppix on it and it works well. I guess the problem may be that my initrd does not contain drivers for my new graphics card - can it be the problem? If so, what should I do? The last things which I see on screen before it goes blank is:

INIT: version 2.88 booting
[info] using makefile-style concurrent (...)
[ ok ] Starting the hotplug events (...)
[ ok ] Synthesizing th initial (...)
[....] Waiting for /dev/to be fully (...)
 mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use

Somebody advised me to pass these parameters to kernel:

nofb vga=normal

So while in grub I chose the entry I use to boot, I pressed "e" to edit it, I found a line starting with linux vmlinuz-3.2.0-3-686-pae root=(...) and at its end I put "nofb vga=normal". Then I pressed F10 to boot, bu it did not help.

Output of hwinfo --gfxcard command is:

29: PCI 105.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.318]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1002_9616
Unique ID: ul7N.IXqEFkX9ypD
Parent ID: vSkL.2yY_xudKZ6E
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:05.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:05.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: "ATI VGA compatible controller"
Vendor: pci 0x1002 "ATI Technologies Inc"
Device: pci 0x9616.
SubVendor: pci 0x1462 "Micro-Star International Co., Ltd."
SubDevice: pci 0x7641.
Driver: "radeon"
Driver Modules: "drm"
Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xd000-0xdfff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xfebe0000-0xfebeffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xfea00000-0xfeafffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 18 (16597 events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: "pci:v00001002d00009616sv00001462sd00007641bc03sc00i00"
Driver Info #0:
  Driver Status: radeon is active
  Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe radeon"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #9 (PCI bridge)
Primary display adapter: #29

Output of hwinfo --framebuffer command is:

02: None 00.0: 11001 VESA Framebuffer
[Created at bios.464]
Unique ID: rdCR.NSbTZunW9ID
Hardware Class: framebuffer
Model: "(C) 1988-2005, ATI Technologies Inc.  RS880"
Vendor: "(C) 1988-2005, ATI Technologies Inc. "
Device: "RS880"
SubVendor: "ATI ATOMBIOS"
SubDevice:.
Revision: "01.00"
Memory Size: 16 MB
Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xd0ffffff (rw)
Mode 0x0300: 640x400 (+640), 8 bits
(...)
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Answer 1

You can try to boot passing the kernel option in grub

"vga=normal" 

or

"nofb"

This will disable the use of frambuffer.

To identify you graphic card you can use hwinfo

hwinfo --gfxcard

maybe this can be helpful as well:

hwinfo --framebuffer

Answer 2

Seem that you initrd dont hold the right modules for driving your new motherboard.

Maybe could you

• boot with rescue debian (on installer disk/key) and ask for a shell terminal in your root partition. If this work, skip following until Rebuild initrd and grub

Else:

• Boot with a live USB Key (or CDRom)
• Run a root terminal
• mount your real / (and /boot) at /mnt

(This sample assume / is on sda5 and /boot on sda1 )

# mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

bind pseudo fs to /mnt

# for bnd in proc sys dev{,/pts};do mount --bind /$bnd /mnt/$bnd;done

• run a shell into your system level:

with:

# chroot /mnt

• Rebuild initrd and grub:

By:

# update-initramfs -k all -u

Maybe following is useless, but

# update-grub

than,

# exit

• stop bind mounts

simply:

# umount /mnt/{proc,sys,dev{/pts,},boot,}

• and reboot.

In the hope this will do the job.

# reboot

Answer 3

I tried doing update-initramfs, but it did not help. Then I booted debian rescue live cd on my hard disk and installed newest version of kernel (using apt-get install). It helped - now my computer boots well.

Thanks everybody for advices!