Hello.

I've been trying to teach myself some Linux. I have previous success in installing RH Core 1 on a Laptop, and now got myself a new (old) laptop to play with.

This is a IBM 560. It has 2GB disk and 40MB ram and a P1 CPU....This means that I couldn't install Core 1 (not enough memory) and therefore did an FTP install (no cdrom...) of RH9. Due to the small HD, I removed many packages (perhaps too many....) including some window managers (like gnome and kde).

Install went smoothly and at the end I had a working RH9 on my little laptop in text mode.

whenever I tried to 'startx' or 'xinit' the screen would go blank and nothing would happen. looking at the X11 logfile it would seem that X started fine...but I can't see anything....what's going on? the window managers don't show up. When I tried to open an xterm manually (from tty1) I got the response the the display was not found.


First things first, here's the logfile so that we can see if really X was started properly:

www.math.berkeley.edu/~yfarjoun/files/XFree86.0.log (sorry, I'm not allowed to post a URL yet.)

To try and fix this I tried running 'up2date' but it had problems with my time....apparently ntp isn't running properly and my clock isn't synced...this is what up2date says......so I tried running it manually (with ntpdate' but no matter which server I choose it returns:

...... the NTP socket is in use, exiting

I'm at a loss.

Help with either of these two issues will be great....thanks.

I suggest you turn off the DPMI module for X .

usually the place to disable this is by commenting out the DPMI line somewhere in your
/etc/X11/XF86Config file.

It isnt done initting, heres an example. :
(**) Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
(**) Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
(**) Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
(**) Mouse0: ZAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Mouse0: Buttons: 5
(II) Keyboard "Keyboard0" handled by legacy driver
(**) Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
(**) DevInputMice: Protocol: "IMPS/2"
(**) Option "AlwaysCore"
(**) DevInputMice: always reports core events
(**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
(**) Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
(**) Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
(**) DevInputMice: ZAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) DevInputMice: Buttons: 5
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "DevInputMice" (type: MOUSE)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Mouse0" (type: MOUSE)
(II) Mouse0: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(II) DevInputMice: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 0
GetModeLine - hdsp: 800 hbeg: 0 hend: 0 httl: 0
vdsp: 600 vbeg: 0 vend: 0 vttl: 0 flags: 0


Where yours is sticking on PM/DPMS .
If you do have a file, xinitrc locate it and make sure its proper.
Like I said, maybe disable the DPMS : /etc/X11/XF86Config file part below.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "DDCPROBED"
DisplaySize 320 240
HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 140.0
# Option "dpms" <--- add # there.
EndSection

and bingo it may work.

If youll notice, It looks as if its going through an endless loop until the third (and last) try, to initiate BIOS Screen PM.

PM Event received: Power Status Change
(II) Open APM successful
(II) TRIDENT(0): Overriding Horizontal timings.
(II) TRIDENT(0): Shadow off
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing shadow registers: 0x7f 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing registers: 0x7f 0x63 0x63 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing shadow registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x00 (0x08)
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x57 0x00 0x00
(II) TRIDENT(0): Setting BIOS Mode: 5e
(II) TRIDENT(0): Found Clock 40.00 n=249 m=21 k=2
(II) DevInputMice: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(II) Mouse0: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(II) Open APM successful
(II) TRIDENT(0): Overriding Horizontal timings.
(II) TRIDENT(0): Shadow off
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing shadow registers: 0x7f 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing registers: 0x7f 0x63 0x63 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing shadow registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x00 (0x08)
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x57 0x00 0x00
(II) TRIDENT(0): Setting BIOS Mode: 5e
(II) TRIDENT(0): Found Clock 40.00 n=249 m=21 k=2
(II) DevInputMice: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(II) Mouse0: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(II) Open APM successful
(II) TRIDENT(0): Overriding Horizontal timings.
(II) TRIDENT(0): Shadow off
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing shadow registers: 0x7f 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): H-timing registers: 0x7f 0x63 0x63 0x00 0x69 0x7f
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing shadow registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x00 (0x08)
(II) TRIDENT(0): V-timing registers: 0x72 0xf0 0x59 0x0d 0x57 0x00 0x00
(II) TRIDENT(0): Setting BIOS Mode: 5e
(II) TRIDENT(0): Found Clock 40.00 n=249 m=21 k=2

Oh, and also, disable it in your bios also, just to rule out the possibility of it being a bios/X DPMS/Power management problem.

so I disabled dpms like you said. less output in the log file, still no X....

I replaced the logfile from before with the new one...

http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~yfarjo.../XFree86.0.log

and also put my XF86Config file

www.math.berkeley.edu/~yfarjoun/files/XF86Config

and my .xinitrc (since I changed it....perhaps this is the problem).

www.math.berkeley.edu/~yfarjoun/files/.xinitrc

---

I'm not sure what you mean by "disable it in the BIOS'....can you elaborate a little more?

I"m not even sure what DPMS is....

thanks for the swift response...

Y.

One more thing,

What's the "correct" way to (re)start the x-server? After I do an xinit (or startx, i've tried both) I don't have X but I have some X-related processes running....I kill them (kill -9 ...) and rerun xinit...I'm not sure that this is the correct way...is there a better way?

Thanks for your time.

Y.

CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to re-init the Xserver.

Try turning off Power management or sleep for the monitor. from the bios.
If you look around in ther it would help so youd know what Im saying.

Do you know what the BIOS is?

Shoot, this is unfortunate, something like this might need a more in depth look at, remote help may not be possible for some things relating to the X server, X session manager, and desktop enviornment binaries(gnome-session&startkde) .

Ok.

Shoot man , the XFree86.0.log usually has an error that can be definetely troubleshot, in your case it looks like the X server is grabbing the screen but DPMS/Power Management is preventing it from displaying, or is initializing incorrectly, setting your monitor to not display at all.

Try turning it off in the BIOS.

OH, shit, when you look at your processes, you should have a process called X .

Thats the backbone of the X windowing system.
Thats the problem, Check to make sure you have an X binary or sym link, to other binaries.

Ahoi

just my first advice (as a newbie..but writing this from a TP560..with Debian although)

-> just make sure you're running on xserver-svga (not any 4.* version)
-> you'll have to tweak the video-driver identification (will not work on Trident)
just check out neilvandyke.org for further details

hth

-danu

In that case,

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "trident"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "Trident TGUI9660 (generic)"
EndSection

change the dRIVER line to read "svga" or "vga" if those generic drivers work, then you know its the server driver issue.
I wasn't aware of trident not working properly.
I do know some S3's Trio64 don't work with the S3 driver. cause they aim towards the higher end video chips, not the low 801's or 754's.

hmm. thanks for all the advice.

I put it to work:

1. I can't disable the power management in the bios, there is no such option.

2. I used "vga" as a driver and it worked! but only at 320x240 resolution....my screen is a 800x600...so I'd really like to use those extra pixels....any ideas?

3. "svga" as a driver doesn't work....but when I use trident it does seem to recognize the chipset....and the startx doesn't terminate...the screen just goes black and stays that way.....

I tried tweaking the trident settings but am not sure what to do...I'll go look at the vandyke site....


and danu, I didn't understand this:

can you explain?

thanks guys,

Y.

I understand that I need part of the older X system for the svga driver.

I'm not sure exactly what part of it I need and how to have both systems intalled at the same time.....

I have RH 9 installed and as you noticed it's using version 4.* of X.

Thanks,

Y.

Finally!

I installed XFree86 3.3.? and put the basic SVGA driver with the

specialized 800x600 mode that danu had in the Xconfig file. since
I have the 560 and not the 560E I have only 1024M of video RAM and
therefore I could only put 8bpp depth (I think) attempts at larger depth failed.

Thanks AutOPSY and danu!!

yfarjoun.