Quote Originally Posted by Joe999
Just for fun I decided to try upgrading to the current test release of the new kernel on my hdd install of knoppix 3.2 on a reiser partition, dist-upgraded to Debian Unstable. My first try came from just apt-getting the new kernel. But that one just gave me a blank display instead of the normal text that appears as the kernel loads. There's no disk activity afterwards, so I'm assuming something just dies in the process.

So my next try was just compiling it myself. I followed the advice given in this http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4662#21583 thread, and things are mostly working. My main problem right now is that I'm not getting any displayed text before X starts. It's just a black screen untill the window manager selection screen appears. I'm using a geforce 4, and as per the suggestion, I have vga 16-color graphics support unselected, and vesa vga graphics support selected to be built in, as well as nvidia riva support. In vga text console I've been selecting and unselecting things in hopes of hitting on the problem, and my latest attempt was just to check everything as built in for that catagory. Still no luck. Any suggestions? Well, aside from a suggestion to just wait for 2.6 to make it into knoppix...I'm already tempted by that one. But I think I'd just wind up annoyed with myself if I gave up this quickly.
You can try with my working config it is setup for an athlon on a via motherboard with support for ext2, ext3 and reiserfs built in no need for an initrd, you would most likely have to change quite a few things you can find it here. I believe I tracked it down to the console fonts not being compiled in but not quite sure there was more than a few re-compiles and the first few blind logins and reboots were quite fun so I was not exactly taking notes. BTW you do not need the riva I have it compiled as a module and never load it the framebuffer still works.