Hello,
I've been using Mandrake Linux for some time, but wanted to get out of the rpm dependency problems and switch to Debian's apt-get system. I'm not all that fluent on the command line yet, so that may be the problem here...

I installed Debian from the Beta Installer, everything seemed to go okay except when I tried to startx. I can't figure out why it's not working, so I booted into knoppix to try to copy the XF86Config-4 file onto my hard drive.
Doing it through the GUI gave me a read/write error, so I typed the following in a terminal window:

knoppix@ttyp1[knoppix]$ su
root@ttyp1[/]# cp /etc/X11/XF86Config /mnt/hda1/etc/X11/XF86Config-4

and I got the following error:

cp: overwrite `/mnt/hda1/etc/X11/XF86Config-4', overriding mode 0644? y
cp: cannot create regular file `/mnt/hda1/etc/X11/XF86Config-4': Read-only file

I'd appreciate any help that can be offered,
Thank you.

Well some information on the card and monitor used would help us to help you and a look at the /var/log/XFree86.0.log file would be invaluable. That being said to copy the file from knoppix to the install use these commands in a konsole window.

You will want to open up the Knoppix file you copied and either comment out or remove the FontPath lines that will not be installed in Debian and you may want to remove the custom ModLines that are in the file as well X does not need them, you will also want to change the Horizontal and Vertical refresh rates being used for the monitor Knoppix uses some very conservative numbers for these.

what kernel are you using?

what errors do you get?

You must mount the partition with rw (read-write). To do that, edit your /etc/fstab and change ro for rw
If your problem isnt that try this
I have some problems with X in sarge beta4, ande the magic solution is edit manually the XF8config file... go to /etc/X11 and change the resolution, HR, VR. X should be up

Tell me I this steps doesnt work and I try to find another solution

byez