Screen goes blank

satlaga · 02-02-2005, 12:23 PM

I'm a newbie to Suse 9.1 personal, but after along time on installation, i have a problem. After loading, on start up, everything looks good until the GUI wants to come up, then the screen turns off. (Literally)
I am using a Compaq Presario 12xl300 laptop, 600mhz Celeron computer. Is there anyway to fix this, or do I need to install another distro?

mjrich · 02-02-2005, 03:26 PM

You probably have an incorrect /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 configuration - thus if you have the energy to edit this file you'll almost certainly get it going sooner or later, and you'll learn a great deal in the process

It will depend a great deal on your monitor and graphic card specs - the first thing I'd do is hunt around the net and find everything you can (resolution, horizontal and vertical refresh rates, graphics card make and model especially). Then switch to another terminal by pressing CTRL-ALT-F3 and login as root (or, just boot up in rescue mode from the start, and login to a terminal from there). You can view your config file by issuing

Code:

cd /etc/X11
less /XF86Config-4

- use the arrow or page up/down keys to navigate, and press q to exit. You can then make a backup of your old config file, and then copy one that you've previously put onto a floppy (or cdrom etc.).

Code:

cp XF86Config-4 XF86Config-4.bak
mount /mnt/floppy
cp /floppy/XF86Config-4 .

One config file you might like to try is this one here http://www.ahpcc.unm.edu/%7Esummers/...380/XF86Config if your model also has an ATI Mobility 128 AGP video card (as does the XL380). You can also read through the manual page for X (man XF86Config-4 and edit the existing file - after backing it up, of course.

Cheers,

mj

satlaga · 02-02-2005, 04:06 PM

Thx for the help, it keeps coming back file not found. I am too new to linux.I will try to reload the distro again, as this laptop is very picky. If this doesn't work, it's back to Windows 98. Then I imagine I might sell it on ebay.
Then there will be no Linux in my house. My work must be done in IE (as I cannot get into my works computers), so my main system is XP, and it crashes everyother day. It used to be Mandrake 10.0, and it crashed 1 time in 1 year.
I like my laptop, and Open office. I hate Microsoft. I don't know what distro to use as most run soo slooooow.

mjrich · 02-02-2005, 05:08 PM

Oops, could be because of my small typo...

After you've logged in as root, it should have read

Code:

cd /etc/X11
less XF86Config-4

I.e, without the extra /. After you've started typing less XF, just press TAB and it should autocomplete the line for you.

If you have a copy of Knoppix around, it may be worth trying that also. It is pretty good at setting up those XF86Config-4 files, and once you've got it up and running you can easily copy it's config file onto a floppy (it will be in the same place in both distros), and then load it into your SuSE installation - overwriting the existing one there (after backing it up, of course).

Cheers,

mj