On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 at 01:23, Michael Hennebry <hennebry@web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 29 May 2020, George N. White III wrote:

> Have you tried the vga= kernel boot parameter?   For Xwindows it would be
> good to get something other than VESA running, either i915 or by adding a
> graphics card.

I have now.
No go.

> I had a look at the dmesg log on an old system with Nvidia card.   It was
> set to display
> the startup messages, which were initially at low res then switched to the
> resolution of
> the monitor.  The switch appears to occur when dmesg reports that nouveau
> has started.
> Have you looked in dmesg for any indication of why it doesn't load the i915
> driver?

It does load the i915 driver.
[   60.044675] pci 0000:00:00.0: detected 8192K stolen memory
[   60.054985] checking generic (e0000000 7f0000) vs hw (f0100000 80000)
[   60.054987] checking generic (e0000000 7f0000) vs hw (e0000000 10000000)
[   60.054988] fb0: switching to inteldrmfb from VESA VGA
[   60.065317] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x25
[   60.065381] i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: deactivate vga console
[   60.066924] [drm] ACPI BIOS requests an excessive sleep of 4022337523 ms, using 1500 ms instead
[   60.066933] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 2 (21.10.2013).
[   60.066936] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[   60.067241] i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
[   60.084775] [drm] Initialized overlay support.
[   60.086225] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20200114 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[   60.086456] ACPI: Video Device [GFX0] (multi-head: no  rom: yes  post: no)
[   60.086568] input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input12
[   60.118670] fbcon: i915drmfb (fb0) is primary device

But the snippet from Xorg.0.log had:  

[   109.570] (EE) Unable to find a valid framebuffer device
[   109.571] (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
[   109.571] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
 
[   60.163409] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 180x56
[   60.183707] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: i915drmfb frame buffer device

If you edit the options in the boot command line to remove what ever "rhgb quiet" has morphed to you should see the first few lines in low res. and then the 180x56 text output.   Have a look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen 
 
Is this bit from dmesg relevant?
[    0.676375] PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug
[    0.677023] ACPI: Enabled 11 GPEs in block 00 to 3F
[    0.685546] ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (domain 0000 [bus 00-ff])
[    0.685555] acpi PNP0A08:00: _OSC: OS supports [ExtendedConfig ASPM ClockPM Segments MSI HPX-Type3]
[    0.685562] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): \_SB.PCI0._OSC: Excess arguments - ASL declared 5, ACPI requires 4 (20200110/nsarguments-160)
[    0.685616] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.PCI0._OSC.CAPD], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20200110/dsfield-181)
[    0.685625] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.PCI0._OSC due to previous error (AE_ALREADY_EXISTS) (20200110/psparse-529)

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198003  I've seen this before, probably on boxes similar to yours.
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/58790 explains workarounds and their consequences, also useful is

I'm calling it a night.
Frustration is exhausting.

I was lucky that I didn't really need X11 to work on the similar boxes (they ran lightweight batch processing
in a machine room and also managed the UPS's via serial ports).   Some people actually repair the buggy BIOS:


--  
George N. White III