Blank screen after GRUB and before login page is displayed on T60 Thinkpad with Radeon graphics

What is the output of:

lsb_release -a; uname -a

Do you dual boot?

I used to dual-boot on the laptop but removed Windows a while ago so only Ubuntu is installed right now.

Output of lsb_release -a; uname -a follows:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 15.04
Release: 15.04
Codename: vivid
Linux brangs-laptop 3.19.0-25-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 24 21:17:31 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

So where is the issue? The system boots....

The issue is that I don't have screen output after GRUB and before the login page, e.g. during the main part of the booting process. When the system takes a long time to boot, I'd like to have screen output so I can detect whether a disk check is running or an error has occurred.

In the past, there was a splash screen between GRUB and the login page. When a disk check was running, this was displayed on the splash screen. Right now on my system, I have a blank screen during this time. I'd like to have this problem fixed for future versions of Ubuntu.

What is the output of:

sudo lshw -C display

Thanks

The output of "sudo lshw -C display" is:

  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: RV515/M54 [Mobility Radeon X1400]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:d8000000-dfffffff ioport:2000(size=256) memory:ee100000-ee10ffff memory:ee120000-ee13ffff

Is your system configured that it should show something (e.g. a splash screen) between grub menu and login?

What is the output of
cat /proc/cmdline

If you want to see something, you can allow to show all boot messages on screen, but most people prefer to have that suppressed.

If you run:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Change:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

Save the new file, close gedit and run:

sudo update-grub

Reboot to test

@actionparsnip: When rebooting after applying your changes, I see text messages during system start up, i.e. GRUB -> text messages -> login page.

@Manfred Hampl: Yes, the system is supposed to show the splash screen by default, i.e. it is supposed to do GRUB -> splash screen -> login page. Right now (without any changes), it's doing GRUB -> blank screen -> login page.

With the changes suggested by actionparsnip, the command line is: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-25-generic root=UUID=2a7cf7e8-4927-4e73-a6d3-e783efe97779 ro
Without the changes (i.e. the way it was before) the command line is: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-25-generic root=UUID=2a7cf7e8-4927-4e73-a6d3-e783efe97779 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7

I recognize that actionparsnip's last message provides me with a workaround, but I've set the Status to "I still need an answer" because I'd really like to get the problem of the blank screen fixed. IIRC it didn't work correctly on my system in 14.10 and it doesn't work correctly right now in 15.04. If this is a genuine bug and not a problem on my side, I'd like to have it working correctly in 15.10.

Thanks Manfred Hampl, that solved my question.

Thank you both for your help. I'll check if I need to file a bug report.