Hi

Years after I stopped doing any UNIX techie work, I've decided to get back into things and I'm off on my first Linux install (decided it was about time to find out about it :-))

So, after a bit of research I decided on Mandriva 2007. I downloaded CD1 ISO image (only), created a CD and installed it an an old Compaq Evo N610C laptop which has ATI Radeon 7500 graphics. Install worked fine and I can log into a shell, but a graphics environment won't start.

I wanted to look at KDE, but it won't run. Browsing the web, I've tried all sorts ....

kdestart returns "command not found"
kdeinit returns "$DISPLAY not set"

if I set my DISPLAY to ":0.0", kdeinit runs but returns "Can't connect to the X Server :0.0" and DCOP aborts

I tried to locate the kde installation, which the KDE homepage says is in /opt, but

kde-config --prefix returns "/usr"

which is where I presume things have moved to in 2007. I wondered if only having CD1 of mandriva 2007 meant I was missing some packages, so next I tried X.

startx does fire up a window, I get a brief blue screen with mouse pointer and then it bombs out. If I cat .xsession-erros in my home dir it reports

"/etc/X11/Xsession: line 196: xclock: command not found
no terminal emulation
/etc/X11/Xsession: line 206: exec: xsm: not found"

that looked like PATH problems to me, $PATH is currently set to

"/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/usr/X11R6/bin"

not sure if this is correct or not.

xinit runs, but also bombs out. Once again "no terminal emulator detected" appears in the errors.

In /etc/X11 I have XF86Config linked to xorg.conf and when I look at that file, the Screen section reads ....

Identifier "screen1"
Device "device 1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 16

and then several Subsection "Display" entries which list different Dept values and Modes

I have a feeling this is a basic problem, but I can't seem to get at an answer. One thing that's not helping me, what's happened to the man pages in Linux? I thought I could run catman as I used to on Solaris years ago so I could run man -k <string> but that all seems to have changed.

So a few questions to help me start down this road... many thanks in advance for all help.

What do I need to do to get the manual pages running?

Do I need packages from the other CDs (CDs 2,3,4) to get the KDE environment to work?

Is my $PATH correct for KDE and/or X11 on Mandriva 2007?

Is it a ATI Radeon problem that is stopping my graphic interface running?

Does anyone know of a URL that might shed light on getting KDE running on this laptop?

Is this a simple error that someone knows the fix for and can post here?

the command is "man".
I have never tried it with just disk 1, but the symptoms you provide strongly suggest you are missing some things. You'll find, I think, that disks 1-3 contain everything you'll need.

yes

You did not provide that portion of your xorg file, so I can't say for sure (look at the section Device that has some description of your video card, and the section Screen which should refer back to the video card device). However, radeon cards are supported so it should be OK.

U R here.

In the Mandriva installer, near the end of the installation you get a summary screen. It is here that you can configure the system (or tweek the configuration). If you did not do this for Xorg, that could be the trouble. The first thing I would suggest is to log into the console display as root, then runXFdrake is the Mandriva video configuration utility, and it will run in both a console and a GUI.

HTH,

Thanks both for your help. In the end it was as simple as needing all 3 CDs. Teach me not to take short cuts ....

Regards

Happy you got it to work OK. Hope you enjoy Mandriva