I've decided to do a fresh install of fc8 to install mythtv, as my old fc4 install died.

However I can't get a proper display on my CRT TV. It's an old bog standard Toshiba. (outputting from the S-Video on an nVidia 5200)

After a lot of tweaking of the xorg.conf file, I noticed that /var/log/Xorg.0.log wasn't being written to.

The display on the TV is just a plain blue background with a pointer and no icons. Mousing to the edges of the screen doesn't scroll it.

I figured that xorg was somehow broken, so I've uninstalled and reinstalled it, but no dice.

Still nothing being logged to Xorg.0.log. How can I troubleshoot this if that isn't happening?

I can get a display through vncserver, but apparently that doesn't need xorg to function.

When I first installed fc8, I also installed x11vnc, and I was able to get a display up from that, but something I did must have broken that.

Nothing obvious in /var/log/messages. I'm now at a loss. Can anyone give me a pointer or two?

TIA

Hmmm....nothing from what you said jumps out at me too much, so I have no specific advice for you sadly. However I also have NVidia graphics cards and have had trouble getting my X server to work. Usually though I get a huge error message about drivers not being found or a blank screen and then other error messages, all of which points to me not having a proper NVida driver installed.

Do you have the proper drivers installed? You may need to go to NVidia's web site and download the newest Linux driver installer.

I did a "yum install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia" to install the driver.

I know there is also the proprietary nvidia one, but in all the mythtv guides I've seen, xorg-x11-drv-nvidia is the one I need.

I've found where Xorg is logging to though. /etc/rhgb/temp/xorg.log

Also when I do a Xorg -configure, I get the output "missing output drivers"

In Fedora, what starts Xorg? Doing ps ax|grep org yields;

1339 tty8 SLs+ 0:01 /usr/bin/Xorg -br -s off -dpms -v -nolock -logfile /etc/rhgb/temp/xorg.log -extension XFree86-DRI :9 vt8

So I reckon there must be a config file somewhere with that line in it. Is the ":9" referring to display 9, rather than 0?

x11vnc can't connect to display 9 either though.

You cannot push above 800X600 (I think that is the limit) over svhs or it will act screwy (as you described). Post your xorg.conf.