I have installed FC6 on an older intel 733 machine.
Install in text mode went well until the first time i tried to boot into the gui.
Enter "startx" and a distorted gui comes up then disappears to a black screen, at this point mouse cursor moves freely around the screen.
It then loads the top and bottom bands showing the normal gui with "applications" "Places" etc. The mouse cursor still moves freely.
The Fedora wallpaper then appears and the machine freezes. Mouse pointer disappears and keyboard locks up.
I've had alook at various other posts but they dont seem to quite fit my problem.
You can probably tell i'm a bit of a newb so any help would be most appreciated.

Gary

You need to provide the hardware specs, the graphics interface would be nice to know.

As root create and have a look at the resulting file; /sbin/lspci -v > hardware.txt

In the meantime as root try;

Which is a fairly generic graphics interface and resolution which should work.

What graphics card does this machine have?

It sounds as if the stock VESA SVGA driver that X-Windows tries to use does not agree with the hardware. If it has a NVidia based graphics board, you can load the NVidia driver (downloadable from their site) which might cause the problem to go away.

I had this same type of problem on a very old P3 100MHz machine a few years ago - almost the same behaviour. It had a Trident 3DImage 975 AGP card, and I eventually discovered that it had to with color depths - trying to work in 24bit color killed XWindows each time I tried to "startx" - switching to 16 bit color only solved the problem and I could use the Trident display card with the default XWindows VESA SVGA driver...

The graphics card is a Creative Voodoo Blaster Banshee (pre Noah and his ark)

Tried system-config-display --reconfig --set-depth=16 --set-resolution=800x600 --set-video=vesa
but still the same result. I take it there are gaps before -- so i know i've typed it correct.
Also typed /sbin/lspci -v > hardware.txt but not sure how to read the .txt file now.
Like i said. real newb with Linux

Gary

The resulting hardware.txt file can be read by any text editor (Windows or Linux) by opening the file, for example in Linux; less hardware.txt

Try changing the system-config-display command to;

system-config-display --reconfig --set-depth=16 --set-resolution=800x600 --set-video=tdfx

No still no good
However, i noticed the last line after it ran was:

ValueError: Invalid literal for int():tdfx

Tried rerunning command but with setvalue=vesa and the same thing occured

Thanks for the tip on reading .txt files. Its just claryfying its a Voodoo banshee though.

Anything else i can try?

Gary

Try the system-config-display command once more and use vga instead of vesa and maybe try dropping the resolution down to 640x480

Also as root try; Xorg -config

It's still the same.

Can i confirm that there are spaces between the end of words and the --
eg display_--
Also what does Xorg -config do?
It returns an error:

Fatal server error:
Required argument to -config not specified

The command is as typed, you could cut and paste if possible. Yes it is like;

system-config-display<space>--set-depth=16<space>--set-video=vga

The Xorg -config command should create a new file with a name like xorg.conf.new in root's home folder. Sounds like your maybe missing something, check your installed xorg rpm packages. Do you see;

xorg-x11-server-utils-7.1-4.fc6
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.1.1-56.fc7
xorg-x11-server-Xvfb-1.1.1-56.fc7

The typed command to use; rpm -qa 'xorg*' | sort
(The "|" is the shifted "\" above the 'Enter' key on the keyboard BTW)

Lenard

Thanks for your help with this, i'm away for a couple of days so wont be able to try it straight away. I'll post as soon as i have a chance.

Gary

It just comes back to the prompt again, it doesnt show any additional info.
However, i found something in a SAM's book which said try:

rpm -qa | grep xorg
Not sure if this is any use but it brought back a long list (half of it off the screen, how do you stop it scrolling off the page) one of which is:

xorg-x11-server-utils-7.1-4.fc6

I expanded it a little more with:
rpm -qa | grep xorg-x11-server

and got:

xorg-x11-server-xorg-1.1.1-47.fc6
xorg-x11-server-utils-7.1-4.fc6

gary

To stop the scrolling use less; rpm -qa | grep xorg | less

Would like to see a copy of the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file.

ok, another newb question.

Unles i type it line by line from my other machine, How can i ouput the file and then copy it to a machine that has internet access and therefore to this site.
I've got the usual floppy drive installed if it helps.

Making you work for this one aren't i!
This reminds me of the old urban myth about the woman who calls a support line to fix a pc, but despite all best efforts of the techie he cannot get her to do anything coonstructive. So the support guy tells her to disconnect everything, box it up and send it back cause she's to stupid to fix it!

Gary

Hello,

I have the same problem with an old PC i just installed today with a fresh install of FC6, direct from the fedora project site:
Kernel 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 on an i686

Card is also a voodoo banshee

I have tried what was here suggested i got the same errors as Gary.

logged in as root, in text mode, when i launch the system-config-display utility, I get a nice window, and my mouse is there, and functionnal. I can click and change the resolution to 640*480 and thousands of colors instead of millions.
But as soon as i click on the "harware" tab, the mouse disappears.

Is there at least some way to kill then the Xserver so as to go back to linux in text mode. For the time being I must pull the power cord to regain control...