Okay, I'm sorry to be so lame to throw up my hands like this but I honestly just looking for some advice on where to start and how to solve these problems one at a time.

First off, I switched from Debian after a painful install, since I couldn't get XWindows to start, couldn't get my Gigabit NIC to work, etc. I read some great things about Libranet and decided "Hey this might help me get started." (yes, I'm new to Linux at home, my previous experience has been limited to custom RedHat server installs at work).

So this weekend I installed Libranet 2.7, and yes, I'm having many of the same problems. During the X configuartion I ran into the following problems:

- Could id my graphics card as ATI with 128 MB of RAM but no model (it's a 9700 Pro)

- My monitor was mis-id as some Toshiba, it's a Hyundai ImageQuest, so I configured it as a generic monitor with the appropriate resolution and refresh rate

- My sound card was set up as a SoundBlaster compatible, it's actually a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 (this may not be such a problem)

- The integrated GB Lan on my motherboard was recognized as a BroadCOM (which I'm pretty sure it is) but then when I try to select DHCP it says the driver could not be loaded (so in the end I just skipped that part of the config)

Okay, so now X won't start. I read in the Linux reviews section a post under Debian claiming someone had a similar sounding post install X problem and "I wouldn't have been able to fix it without knowing Linux well" or some such. I'm guessing I have a lot of problems to fix, but here's the question, which one do I begin with?

If there is just one causing X not to start then I'd like to fix that one first. I'm guessing it might be several causes though, in which case I'm guessing I should fix the problem with my GB Lan first. I checked the Libranet forums and didn't find much about the gigabit lan.

The following is my machine setup if it helps:
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ASUS A7V8X (KT400) MotherBoard (with GBLan)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
AMD 2500 Barton
512 MB Crucial RAM
Plextor PlexCombo
MS Intellimouse Explorer (USB)
Qwerty Keyboard

Libranet is installed on it's own Western Digintal 60GB (2MB buffer) hard drive (I have a cold swap kit so I just plug the drive with the OS I want to use).

I think I found a Linux driver for the GB LAN card on the CD that came with my MB, problem is, how do I install it and replace whatever (nonworking) configuration there is?

I found that ATI has an RPM version of its Linux driver, they mentioned a conversion program (forget the name temporarily) to covert it to .deb, how would I get that program and install that without a network connection (I do have a Debian Woody CD set)? My understanding is that you do most everything with apt-get in Debian/Libranet. Is there a way to install a general .tar.gz file?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...n&pagenumber=1


I will try this out when I get home.

There is a install script at the Libranet Support Database that may help for your network card, but it is for version 2.8, but it might work for 2.7.
You might have to upgrade to XFree4.3, but the ATI 3d drivers are a pain to get working at best. I have yet to get it working on my laptop, but the 2d radeon or vesa driver works fine.
You may need to install ALSA to get your sound card working. That is easier to do in 2.8, but I think if you use apt to install alsa it will walk you through configuration, but I don't think ALSA is in stable.
Remember 2.7 is based on Debian stable, so any packages you install will be a bit outdated. 2.8 is based on sarge, which is also testing, but it is scheduled to become the new stable soon.

Well, I was able to install the driver for my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro last night (I think). I found that the "alien" tool was already installed by default so I:

alien <ati_package_name>.rpm

and then:

dpkg -i <ati_package_name>.deb

This gave me an error, something about a broken pipe so I tried:

dpkg -i --force-overwrite <ati_package_name>.deb

This seemed to overwrite an already installed file (not sure what effect this will have, the ATI README suggests it was likely part of the xlibmesa3 package), but the installation completed.

However, when I start X it still fails. Looking at the log file in /var/log/ I see something along the lines of "ATI card unknown ... 128 MB ... failed". So evidently I have not configured X to use the newly installed driver? I'm not really sure. What files to I edit to do this manually? If I rerun the autoconfig tool after manual changes will it destroy my changes?


Okay, as far as the GB Lan driver goes, I tried to compile it from src (as per the documentation). Apparently I need to get my kernel src and put it in a specific directory. Sorry to be such a newbie, but I just went to kernel.org and downloaded 2.4.19 (the version distrowatch.com claims comes in Libranet 2.7) from a mirror, do I just put this in some directory (like /usr/src)? Or does it have to go someplace specific? How do I verify my kernel version to make sure I got the right source? Also, it looked like I got a PGP signature for the file, can I verify this like a hash? What tool do I use (so I can read the man page)?

There should be a copy of the kernel source in /usr/src all ready. Use Adminmenu to restore defaults which will untar it and copy in the config file.

Adminmenu is part of X (isn't it?) and X won't start until I get all this solved.

There are 2 programs Xadminmenu and adminmenu. The second will run without X.

As mentioned in another thread, there is a procedure for installing the ATI drivers in the Libranet support database

Thank you both, uteck and tal.

I will try out adminmenu tonight.

And looking at the Libranet support document you sent, I made it about half way thorugh this by reading the ATI docs. Now to try the rest of it! I'm assuming this will work as well for Libranet 2.7, n'est-ce pas?

Well, it took longer to get around to this than I thought and when I finally did I didn't spend as much time as I'd hoped (spent too long watching the extended edition of Two Towers this weekend I suppose).

I ran adminmenu and restored the default kernel configuration. Trying to compile the Broadcom gigabit driver or trying to run the ./make.sh command for the ATI driver installation both resulted in a message claiming my source was incomplete. On a whim I recompiled the driver (using adminmenu, I left the configuration of everything at default) and rebooted. Now trying both commands I was successful. Does anyone know why? To me this is bizarre behavior, however I'm guessing there is a good explanation that might help me better understand how Linux works.

Where I am: 1) I can load the Broadcom driver by typing
insmod bcm5700.o
What does this do? I notice the driver is not loaded on boot, how do I add this to my system (the README.TXT didn't go over that part). I am assuming somewhere on this site I will find info on DHCP so I will save those questions for later if I still have them.

2) X still doesn't start. I thought the fglrxconfig program and the ./make_install.sh command would've configured this as the driver to use every time. If this is not the case, please tell me why. Of course this could be due to some other driver problem. Is there a good way to track down exactly what the problem is? I admit I found a log file, but it seemed fairly unhelpful. Oh yes, and if I rerun the XConfiguration will I wipe out the install of the ATI driver?

The first thing you shoud do is make a copy of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, just in case.
cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.works
Then rerun adminmeu befor you start X, if the automatic detection does not work try manually selecting the drivers.