Skip to main content

FrameBuffer in Backtrack

Recently I had BT5 R3 installed on a Dell Latitude laptop, and it was working fine.  Then I needed to clone the hard drive, so I used DiscCopy 2.3 to copy the drive--No issues. 

However, when I went to boot back into my BT install, the screen was all messed up immediately after it hit the splash screen.  I couldn't figure out how this happened, as I didn't mess with the OS at all (I copied the drives outside of the OS, booting to the DiscCopy CD).

Initially I was worried I had a hardware failure, so to test it I booted into the original Windows 7 Drive that came with the laptop (when I installed BT I set that drive aside, as I don't normally use Windows).   Windows 7 booted fine--no hardware failure.  

However, when I booted to a BT instance I had happened to have installed on that same Windows 7 hard drive, a drive that was cleanly working when I put it in storage, it had the same video problems!  

So my symptoms were that I had a video problem with BT only, that spanned across hard drives!  How the heck was that possible I wondered?  Turns out it was my FrameBuffer.   This is a hardware device that renders the graphics for the OS--thus it is hard drive independent, which explains why I had a problem that persisted across hard drives, and even with the BT bootable iso!  

So to fix this, I booted the BT bootable iso, but into "noDRM drivers" mode.  This allowed me to actually boot the previously unbootable BT iso, and mount the hard drive.   I then edited the /boot/grub/grub.conf file to say "vga=normal nomodeset"   The 'nomodeset' is key, as it told the OS not to load the framebuffer.   

I booted up, and Bob's your Uncle---BT is working again!  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HP c6180 Printer and Vista

Hp c6180 driver issues with Vista Home Premium My wife has a Vista Home Premium laptop, and the HP C6180 Photosmart printer keeps disappearing from her available printers.  The only way I've found to fix the problem is to reinstall all the HP software. When I do this, I have to download the (large..507M software from HP, or reinstall the printer (ONLY the printer, not the scanner) with the installation disk, as the drivers are not discovered with a "Windows Update" setting.  My guess is that is because HP doesn't like people to install only the printer driver, which would be easy, but they want folks to install all their crapware as well, so they are withholding the drivers from the on-line Microsoft printer database.  So keep your installation CD!  I've also found that unless I install everything on the CD or in the Full Version download (HP Customer Participation Program, HP Imaging Device functions, HP OCR SW, HP All-In-one SW, HP Photosm...
27 comments
Read more

2025 Tap And Map

 Tap And Map is back with new and improved installation instructions!   Here is an old video showing what TapAndMap is, for those who may not know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRfQzBjrhEE you'll notice that it's been a while since I've touched Tap And Map.   Because it's been so long since I built this, the old installation instructions would NEVER work to build it today (Feb 2025).   Plus, there was a Google Maps API bug that has troubled me all this time, as Google Maps would decide not to reload the page and I'd have to clear my history (lame).  Because my old code was built as an all-in-one method, so packets were sniffed, looked up, displayed, and logged, all in one large monolithic module, there was no easy means to troubleshoot.    So I've now decided to Sniff packets, lookup their IP information, and store the data in one script, and read that file, parse and publish html files in a separate module.  That allowed me to b...
Post a Comment
Read more

atftpd vs tftpd-hpa

Recently I was trying to tftp files from a Windows computer to a Kali box.   One version of Windows worked, but another didn't.    After much troubleshooting, here were my symptoms: I could tftp a file from-to any Kali box from-to another Kali box I could NOT tftp files to a specific Windows 7 box from any Kali box I could NOT tftp files to a Chrooted-Ubuntu-Chromebook box from a Kali box After MUCH troubleshooting, going through every setting in atftpd, it seemed like it literally was a client OS problem.  Different clients simply would not download files---unacceptable. Thus, I switched to tftpd-hpa.   To install: apt-get install tftpd-hpa files go to/come from /srv/tftp, but it needs to be a tftp user. Thus, I needed to: chroot -R /srv/tftp Also, if you want to be able to put files ON the tftp server (from a client), you need to modify /etc/default/tftpd-hpa: change "TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure"  to "TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure --create" ...
Post a Comment
Read more