dell inspiron 4000 halt problem
 

hey I'm new to linux... I've been fiddling around with it in my spare time but unfortunately I've been having a lot of aggravating experiences with it.

Right now I'm working off of a Dell inspiron 4000 dual booting with Windows XP from lilo and I really want to start jumping into linux ASAP. However, I think there are serious moniter problems, since every time I halt the system or reboot the entire screen freezes. It kind of splits into two sections and slowly fades away with weird colors and everything...
So I have to shut the computer down and restart. Other than that, linux runs seemingly normally. It just has an unclean unmounting of the root drive and has to go through the process of cleaning it up every time I boot linux up
I think this might have to do with the fact that my moniter setting is not correct

If anyone out there could help me with this I would be more than thrilled, honestly.
THANKS in advance

did you set the display at 1400x1050 or 1024x768. for more about this, see the linux on laptops page
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html
see especially
http://www.paulparadise.com/Inspiron4000/

if you still need help, can you please post the exact error message your recieve?
alternatively, please post the output from

vi /etc/X11/XF86Config (just copy and paste those portions which relate to your video card, monitor and then type escape key, q! and return key to get out of the file without editing)

After playing around more with it, looking at both of those places you mentioned, and trying a variety of different settings, including the ones you mentioned, I still could not get my Redhat 7.0 to work... it's kind of discouraging because this seems to be a really strange problem that I haven't seen addressed anywhere.

so i talked to a friend and he encouraged me to upgrade to Redhat 8.0 which I just did. I figured the compatibility would be better, but when I finished the installation process, although it seemed to identify my hsync and vsync it left my monitor "unprobed" and wouldn't recognize Xwindows at all...in fact when it would boot up linux it would try 3 times to load Xwin but spit back into text...

I checked out /etc/X11/XF86Config
and the output was as such:

Section "Device"
Identifier Standard VGA
Vendor Name unknown
BoardName Unknown

Driver vga

Bus ID "PCI:0:10:0"
VideoRam 256
Clocks 52.2 28.3

Identifier "ATI Rage 128 Mobility"
Driver r128
Video Ram 8192

Hsync 31.5 - 48.5
Vert Refresh 50-70

you have a lot of options. if you are asking for my advice, i'd stick with the install you have and try some of the options below. when it comes to detecting hardware, i haven't noticed a great difference between the different distros. i think your major problem is knowing exactly what hardware you have installed and specifying that exact information for linux. Dell has good documentation and a great website for detailing your hardware based on codes located on your machine. check themt out.

if you have windows installed, go to the start, programs, settings, control panel, and select system to see what hardware windows thinks you have (and while you are at it, check the display in control panel to see what settings windows is using)

if you want a "no-brainer" solution, go to
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
and download a diagnostic disk that will print out all of your hardware (very handy for linux users)


Rage Mobility M3?
Did you notice that there are different possible video cards for your model? One of the linux for laptops pages reported a problem free install on redhat 7.1 but the card was identified a Rage Mobility M3. see http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~maf/Inspiron4K.html
To try this, you might try using the xf86config command detailed below)

ATI Rage Mobility 128 M3 AGP 2x?
If you believe that you have the ATI Rage Mobility 128 M3 AGP 2x (rev 02), your could also try cutting and pasting an xconfig file from a separate successful install on rh 7.0. on this successful install the file looked like the following. An xconfig file provides a lot of options that are "commented out" (ignored) by linux. A line is commented out when it starts with "#." The options that are used by linux have no "#." Note two major differences in your configuration file and the successful ones:

1. the horizonal refresh rate on the successful install is HorizSync 30-60 (yours is Hsync 31.5 - 48.5)
2. the vertical refresh rate on the successful install is VertRefresh 60-90 (your is: Hsync Vert Refresh 50-70)
3. both have the standard VGA selected


# **********************************************************************
# Monitor section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of monitor sections may be present

Section "Monitor"

Identifier "My Monitor"

# HorizSync is in kHz unless units are specified.
# HorizSync may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY. REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

HorizSync 30-60

# HorizSync 30-64 # multisync
# HorizSync 31.5, 35.2 # multiple fixed sync frequencies
# HorizSync 15-25, 30-50 # multiple ranges of sync frequencies

# VertRefresh is in Hz unless units are specified.
# VertRefresh may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY. REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

VertRefresh 60-90

EndSection


# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

# Standard VGA Device:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"

# The chipset line is optional in most cases. It can be used to override
# the driver's chipset detection, and should not normally be specified.

# Chipset "generic"

# The Driver line must be present. When using run-time loadable driver
# modules, this line instructs the server to load the specified driver
# module. Even when not using loadable driver modules, this line
# indicates which driver should interpret the information in this section.

Driver "vga"
# The BusID line is used to specify which of possibly multiple devices
# this section is intended for. When this line isn't present, a device
# section can only match up with the primary video device. For PCI
# devices a line like the following could be used. This line should not
# normally be included unless there is more than one video device
# intalled.

# BusID "PCI:0:10:0"

# VideoRam 256

# Clocks 25.2 28.3

EndSection

# Device configured by xf86config:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Rage 128"
Driver "r128"
VideoRam 8192
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection


# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of screen sections may be present. Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen. A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "ATI Rage 128"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
The above was taken from:
http://theory.gsi.de/~vanhees/XF86Co...l-inspiron4000

thanks for all the help,
well, i've found out what hardware I had, both by means of windows system and by Belarc (a pretty neat little gizmo by the way). I checked out all of the inspiron 4000 stuff but I didn't see much that seemed to exactly hit the problem. For the most part, it looks like Dell and the video, monitor hardware are pretty stable and compatible. but my comp continues to spout out errors.

I edited the /etc/X11/XF86Config as you put and even tried some other stuff. This last time (with the file edited as above) here was the main output:

(==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.O.log"
(==) Using Config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config"

Samsung LTN141P2
Color, Single, TFT
(EE) R128(0): no valid modes found
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration

Fatal Server Error
no screens found

X10: fatal 10 error (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
after 0 repeats (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

Now would be a good time for the moderator to jump in
 

because I'm out of ideas.

Which of the video cards did belarc say that you had?

Try posting that information and your xconfig file here and see if the moderator or someone more experienced will come to your rescue.

This looks more like a monitor resolution problem than a video problem. I have a Inspiron 8200 with the 1400x1050 monitor, and I experienced problems with RH7.3. I eventually found a modeline that would work with my system, through someone else that had the Inspiron 8100 (same as 8200, but with a slower proc).

When you are running Windows is the normal resolution 1400x1050?

I also don't see where you posted exactly what video card you had?

--------------
Jeremiah

According to Belarc my display is
ATI Mobility 128 AGP 2X (DELL) [Display adapter]
That's all the relevant data it gave.

right now i'm in xp and i'm running under 1400x1050 fine.

thanks in advance

Yes, the 1400x1050 was a problem for me in RH7.3, I will see if I can get my modelines from my XF86Config and post them here. Although I had no problems with RH 8 finding the correct modeline.

<edit>
In looking over your posted XF86Config file above, I do not see any modelines defined. check out the resources that rioguia gave you. The modeline shown below was taken from the paulparadise link;

"Modeline "1400x1050" 108.000 1400 1448 1462 1688 1050 1050 1053 1066"

This line would need to go in the "Monitor" section.

okey, I tried adding that to the monitor section as you mentioned, but unfortunately it still doesn't seem to want to accept it...
output:
(EE) non core pointer device specified
(EE) unable to determine the screen layout
(EE) Error from xf86HandleConfigFile()

Fatal Server Error:
no screens found

If you know what's going on and can continue giving me tips, that would be wonderful.
I've tried fiddling around with things, but, as it is now, it certainly doesn't help getting X to work, considering the fact that I have a stone-age understanding of most of what is going on here. Do you know where there are man pages or explanations of the xf86config files?

I am sure that the Xfree86 (www.xfree86.org) web-site would have some information or at least links to other information.

Question 1: Do you have both "XF86Config" *and* "XF86Config-4" in your "/etc/X11" directory? And if so, which one are you editing?

If the "XF86Config-4" file exists, then you need to make any modifications to that one. If it doesn't exist, then this is not a problem until your run the xfconfigurator or whatever that semi-GUI utility is.

Question 2: What kind of pointer (mouse) are you using?

Question 3: What distro did you say you were using? Is the XFree86 the default that came installed?


-------------
Jeremiah

Thanks so much for your time and help; I certainly learned a lot through all of this.

at this point, there's a very good chance I'll go to a different version at this point anyways... The main gist I got from a respectable linux-friend of mine was (correct me if I'm wrong) that Redhat 8.0 has a lot of changes that make linux less and less unix-like and more for a desktop. That doesn't seem too practical if one wants to really dig into the unix world. For that reason, I'm either going to go to Redhat 7.3 or Slackware and start from the very beginning. I've been told there are an infinitude of man pages and documentation for setting everything up. In the long run, so I've been told, this would be the more practical of choices...
Because after I found this out, it doesn't seem very useful now in setting up X for a distro I'll not use anyways. what do you think?