I just installed Fedora 2 on my separate 30GB hdd (Maxtor) and X wont start. I know its not something i've done, because I have never even gotten into GNOME, and I know almost no Linux syntax.(Total NewB) Thats why, if you respond, please include exact command line information.

the error started right after i finished installing, after it exited the first time setup it started its error, where the screen went from command to black 5 times before it said it couldn't start x server. Here is the error message.

(==) Log file:"/var/log/Xorg.o.log", Time: Tue Jun 29 18:54:36 2004
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"

(EE) VESA(0): vm86() syscall generated signal 4.
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

XIO: fatal error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.


This makes no sense to me at all, sense it was a default install with perfect discs, and the settings are default as well (1024 x 768). Also, I didn't do a thing. My monitor isn't that old (Hitachi CM615), and I'm running the same display settings in windows. My motherboard is nForce2 NF7, video card is Radeon 9600 Pro, processor Athlon 2800+, and 512 MB Kingston RAM. In addition everything about Linux is up to date (kernel 2.6.6-1.435). Anyone got any ideas?

Aww, come on, anyone? Please?

Ok. I am a newbie to so I will just type I what I would do until someone else apears.
on the command line, as root type
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
now look for the "device" section on it you should see an driver field write "vesa" in front of it
that should work in most videocards and will help you for now and to save press Ctrl+x. Also if you can seach for your monitor's vertical and horizontal refresh rates an write then on the "monitor" section. I hope that helps. And for further instructions write down your videocards model, that will help a lot.

Where do you want me to right "vesa"? the line looks like this

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "Videocard Vendor"
BoardName "VESA driver (generic)"
End Section


P.S. HorizSync is 30-70 Kz, VertRefresh is 50-160 hz, these are the settings in fedora, and they are correct for my monitor. The model is R96A.

Does anyone, anyone, have a solution?

I think your video card does not work with the vesa drivers,
Do you have any linux liveCD around? Like MDK move or knoppix or perhaps Kurumin( or am I the only one around???),
Try ou the framebuffer drivers, on the place where it says "vesa" write down "fbdev".
the name of the generic radeon driver is "radeon", you could try that, worked fine with my 8500,

I have had exactly the same problem and have narrowed it down to my Radeon X800 Pro not being supported by either Fedora Ciore one or two. I have no idea how to fix it :-(

Not 100% sure about this but i had a similar problem with my GeForceFX card.

I fixed it by downloading the latest NDIVIA drivers for xorg which where released 30th June 2004, before that i couldn't get it working correctly.

ATI's Radeon 9600 cards do not currently have a driver for xorg only for XFree86 (see ATI's driver installation docs for requirements) and sounds like it does not support the default vesa driver.

Sorry i can't help fix the problem but hopefully this will give you an idea on where to look to find one!

Thats okay everyone, I gave up and installed Fedora 1, which is working fine

Sorry if this is a bit late.

I don't know the specific configuration for your video card, but you may find it easier to have the X server recreate a (non-optimised) configuration file. Xorg is actually quite good at recreating a configuration file in case something happens to your normal config.

(And do try FC2 again, it is a very nice distro)

From the commandline run:

This will cause X to startup and then close, so don't worry that it doesn't stay up. If it doesn't close cleanly you can also do the typical Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. This has created a xorg.conf.new file in your home directory. If you ran this as root then do:

X will startup again and you should be able to confirm your settings.

Then you need to put the (hopefully working) configuration file in your X11 directory:

Hope that helps. Checkout the man page on the Freedesktop web site here .

Thanks, but I already got FC2 working again. I went on a hunch and modified the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file outside of X. My errors looked like the VESA driver wasn't being acknowledged, so I went in and changed it to "radeon". I just guessed, but apparently that must be the name of their driver, because X started now. Of course, the driver is still only partially compatible, so I only barely get 2D acceleration and no 3D acceleration (which really sucks, cause I wanted to try UT2k4 in Linux since it won't run in Windows XP Pro, and I was really hoping that I could get it to run in Linux).

Thanks for this info as it helped me a lot!

Peace...