I've tried the latest 14.x Desktop and Server, and 15.x Desktop.
The hardware is a Mac Pro 2008 3,1. Quirk: The machine has two video cards, an AMD 7950 and an Nvidia GTX980. There are three monitors hooked-up to the AMD, and none on the Nvidia. The purpose of the Nvidia is for GPU-based computing for science.
I'm using the latest rEFInd. In terms of discs, tray 2 has an SDD where Mac OS is the first partition, and I want ubuntu's root on partition 4. An HDD in tray 4 has four partitions for /usr, /var, /home, and swap.
All the livecd's boot just fine. Install appears to go properly. No bootloader is installed, consistent with the rEFInd instructions.
On the first boot after install, the run appears find until it attempts to start X. I then get a dialog (all three monitors are mirrored) that it could not configure graphics and will go into low graphics mode, and I have some options. I'm able to get into the terminal at that point, at least for that boot.
On subsequent boots, I go straight from the BIOS screen to a situation where monitors 2 and 3 are getting no signal, while monitor one is a black screen with a small number of very thin verticle stripes. Nothing happens from there.
Most options added to the kernel command line from rEFInd have no effect. I've tried text, emergency, gfxpayload=text, nomodeset, and as I recall a few others. There is no noticeable effect. One that *does* have an effect is fbcon=map:1. With that set, I at least get some on-screen logging during boot. The boot appears to run fine and I get a CLI login prompt for a half a second. Then the monitors flash, and all three monitors go black except for a NON-blinking cursor in the upper left.
After booting into Mac OS and looking at the logs, I do see a crash file from the launch of X. Of interest: in the xorg log files, it shows that the system is trying to use the Nvidia card, which has no monitors, instead of the AMD card.
To try to fix that problem, I tried booting off the livecd, chrooting in, uninstalling the nouveau driver, and rebuilding initrd. At that point, it would boot and give me the "could not configure graphics" screen on every boot. But, when I would try to leave that screen to go to either low graphics or the terminal, I would instead get a screen that was grey with that xwindows-is-waiting-black-X-cursor in the middle, frozen.
I then tried chrooting in again, this time I tried to replace the default driver on the AMD with fglrx. The result was back to the black screen with thin purple stripes right after the BIOS screen.
Oh - one thing I tried, is that rEFInd has an option to tell the video cards they're booting in Mac OS even if they're booting into linux. This supposedly helps some systems with two video cards. It had no effect here.
Note that the issue may be limited to video not displaying. The logs, which I can inspect from Mac OS, don't show crashes, other than a crash starting X. syslog etc appear to show a normal boot -- when I shut the machine down to get out of the freeze, the logs record that I've pressed the power button, and the logs show services shutting down.
Interestingly, I was able to get into a CLI *once*: When the system found errors on the root disk, it booted properly into the emergency environment. However, subsequent boots were back to the same. And, as above, specifying emergency on the kernel command line has no effect.
I've tried discussing this with folks in the IRC chat (who were very helpful with a number of troubleshooting steps, including a bunch of what I've described above). But they and I have exhausted our range of ideas.
Help? :)
(Before anyone say anything -- the entire reason I'm trying to get ubuntu running is so that I can use one piece of software that depends on CUDA and only compiles on linux. So altering the video card configuration is not really an option; I need to try to find a way to get it to work with the existing hardware.)
The hardware is a Mac Pro 2008 3,1. Quirk: The machine has two video cards, an AMD 7950 and an Nvidia GTX980. There are three monitors hooked-up to the AMD, and none on the Nvidia. The purpose of the Nvidia is for GPU-based computing for science.
I'm using the latest rEFInd. In terms of discs, tray 2 has an SDD where Mac OS is the first partition, and I want ubuntu's root on partition 4. An HDD in tray 4 has four partitions for /usr, /var, /home, and swap.
All the livecd's boot just fine. Install appears to go properly. No bootloader is installed, consistent with the rEFInd instructions.
On the first boot after install, the run appears find until it attempts to start X. I then get a dialog (all three monitors are mirrored) that it could not configure graphics and will go into low graphics mode, and I have some options. I'm able to get into the terminal at that point, at least for that boot.
On subsequent boots, I go straight from the BIOS screen to a situation where monitors 2 and 3 are getting no signal, while monitor one is a black screen with a small number of very thin verticle stripes. Nothing happens from there.
Most options added to the kernel command line from rEFInd have no effect. I've tried text, emergency, gfxpayload=text, nomodeset, and as I recall a few others. There is no noticeable effect. One that *does* have an effect is fbcon=map:1. With that set, I at least get some on-screen logging during boot. The boot appears to run fine and I get a CLI login prompt for a half a second. Then the monitors flash, and all three monitors go black except for a NON-blinking cursor in the upper left.
After booting into Mac OS and looking at the logs, I do see a crash file from the launch of X. Of interest: in the xorg log files, it shows that the system is trying to use the Nvidia card, which has no monitors, instead of the AMD card.
To try to fix that problem, I tried booting off the livecd, chrooting in, uninstalling the nouveau driver, and rebuilding initrd. At that point, it would boot and give me the "could not configure graphics" screen on every boot. But, when I would try to leave that screen to go to either low graphics or the terminal, I would instead get a screen that was grey with that xwindows-is-waiting-black-X-cursor in the middle, frozen.
I then tried chrooting in again, this time I tried to replace the default driver on the AMD with fglrx. The result was back to the black screen with thin purple stripes right after the BIOS screen.
Oh - one thing I tried, is that rEFInd has an option to tell the video cards they're booting in Mac OS even if they're booting into linux. This supposedly helps some systems with two video cards. It had no effect here.
Note that the issue may be limited to video not displaying. The logs, which I can inspect from Mac OS, don't show crashes, other than a crash starting X. syslog etc appear to show a normal boot -- when I shut the machine down to get out of the freeze, the logs record that I've pressed the power button, and the logs show services shutting down.
Interestingly, I was able to get into a CLI *once*: When the system found errors on the root disk, it booted properly into the emergency environment. However, subsequent boots were back to the same. And, as above, specifying emergency on the kernel command line has no effect.
I've tried discussing this with folks in the IRC chat (who were very helpful with a number of troubleshooting steps, including a bunch of what I've described above). But they and I have exhausted our range of ideas.
Help? :)
(Before anyone say anything -- the entire reason I'm trying to get ubuntu running is so that I can use one piece of software that depends on CUDA and only compiles on linux. So altering the video card configuration is not really an option; I need to try to find a way to get it to work with the existing hardware.)