Slack 9.1 won't boot X
 

I have a shuttle mini-system with an Athlon 1.7+.

I've installed Red Hat 9, SuSE 9.1 and Slack 9.1 on it.

RH and SuSE will start X/KDE fine. With Slack 9.1, however, the screen turns black - even cntrl-alt-backspace won't work (and I can't connect to it over the network) - the machine is hung.

I have Slack 9.1 running on another machine at home (Athlon 1.2ghz - MySQL server for work) and have no issues.

I suspect it's the graphics card - it's a built in SiS 315 (I've seen the drivers at the winischhofer site and I've gotten that driver working under RedHat, but RedHat worked initially with the VESA driver, and Slack 9.1 won't).

Before anyone suggests I stick with SuSE or RH, I'll cut them off:

1) I like the cleanliness of Slack
2) I don't like screwed up kernels (RH9)
3) I don't like the screwy package manager that SuSE has
4) I like Slack.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - this machine is going to be a MythTV box, once I can get it working, that is.

Puppetman.

did you exactly follow the winischaefer tutorials `? because im using slack with those drivers quite well even tv out and second screen .. are supported and working as well as the nice config tool named sisctrl ... maybe you could post us your XF86config so we can have a look if it have differences with mine working one :) also which x version are you using 4.3 i think or?

Ok I have just finished going thru this. When you need to do is install Mandrake on that system. Go into the /etc/X11/XFConfig with emacs(if using Mandrake) and write on a piece of paper, sections for Screen1 and the section for the video card. Also make sure to get refresh rates too. Then go and install slack again and login as root and type xf86cfg. Edit the video card and monitor to the settings you have written down. Make sure to save to /etc/X11/XFConfig. The second file it asks you to save, save it where it wants you to save it. You then should be good to go from that point.

There's an easier way to do the same thing, jrock. Just boot a live CD (like knoppix, gnoppix, morphix, gentoo, etc) and pillage the file that way. No need to reinstall the OS.

Thanks adz where were you earlier :)

Thanks - you guys gave me all the help I needed - xf86cfg was bringing up a screen that exceeded the LCD monitor I've been using, so I checked the man page, and found that there was a text mode.

After a fair bit of fiddling, I got it working, and just got the mouse going.

I guess it was just a bad sis driver??

Thanks again, kasperhans and JRock1980.

Now I need to test it hooked up to a TV.

Puppetman

Wow! The original post could have been written by me! I have the same problem. I was forced to install SuSE 9.0 to get my xwindows working. Slackware would hang on startx. I was told it was likely the monitor (which I think it is, but I haven't been able to fix it).

I looked at the monitor and graphics card configuration in SuSE, and went back to slackware and ran xf68cfg and changed the values to match these.

But now it says "no monitor found" when I try startx.

SuSE 9.0 is nice, but I'd love to run slackware from home. It installed fine on my lab and office computers, and I'm really annoyed that I can't get it up and going at home.

Any suggestions?

EST

It might not be graphics related. Missing a mouse can stop X-windows from starting. What happens if you press ctl-alt-backspace? Does it kick it back to shell where you started X? My computer would hang - couldn't do anything.

What graphics card do you have in the computer? Is it an SiS? If so, then check http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsisvga.shtml to see if those drivers cover your card. The site is pretty professional; you can probably skip reading most of the text and just head to Download, and then Installation instructions. Just need to know your XFree86 version and your gcc version to determine what binary to download (or worst case, compile your own from the source).

If for some strange reason you don't know what your graphics card is, then I believe that in /etc/X11 there is an XF86Config for a vesa frame buffer (think it is called XF86Config-vesa) - that might be generic enough to work. Also check the hsync and vsync for your monitor.

Finally, if you want to get a XF86Config working, but xf86cfg won't work because of your display issues, try

xf86cfg -textmode

It brings up a text-based version of xf86cfg that will let you set your monitor, graphics, card, mouse, keyboard, etc.

Hope that helps.

Puppetman

check the XFree log file in /var/log