Display & Kernel Problem with Sarge on Dell Optiplex GX280

sshiv · 07-21-2005, 01:07 PM

Dear Friends,
I have run into some problems with Debian sarge installation on Dell Optiplex GX280 desktop.

1. The first problem is with the Display. The desktop uses a Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express chipset. I installed the linux driver from the intel website. Now it is accepting my driver config as "i810". But i see only two screen resolutions ie only 800x600 & 640x480. I also added an entry of 1280x780 in "/etc/X11/XF86Config-4". But i still have only two previous screen resolutions to choose from. Please guide me to get higher resolutions.

2. My next peril was in upgrading the kernel to 2.6.x from 2.4. I did apt-get install and it installed without any errors. When i try to boot to the 2.6 kernel i get this error

Code:

cannot open /dev/console: No such file
Kernel panic :  Attempted to kill init!

I dont know if this is related, but for installing Debian i had changed the BIOS SATA setting from normal to combined.

Any help on both of these would be great.
Thanks in advance
Shiv

darkleaf · 07-21-2005, 01:32 PM

1) Did you add it for each color depth? If all's right it should change the resolution immediately to the first resolution in the lines if you have it on all color depths.

Don't know about 2) I always compile kernels manually.

sshiv · 07-21-2005, 01:39 PM

1. Yes, i added the resolution to each of the color depths, still no change. I tried to change the resolution of the boot loader to 1280x780. It works fine till it come to the gdm login page.

2. I found this on the web and i did 'apt-get search kernel-image' and then apt-get install kernal-image-2.6.x-i686. is this wrong ?

darkleaf · 07-21-2005, 01:45 PM

So you're running gnome? There should be an option in the preferences then where you can set it.

sshiv · 07-21-2005, 01:59 PM

Yes i am running gnome. It has "Display resolution" as a menu option, but it has only 800x600 and 600x480 in the drop down menu. :-(

Tons of Fun · 07-21-2005, 02:04 PM

Your kernel upgrade is not wrong. That is how you upgrade a pre-packaged kernel. I did that originally installing kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686. Since then I have compiled a custom kernel.
As for your resolution, as root, try:

#dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

Answer the questions, and with the space bar, add the resolutions you want. Also, remove any resolutions that you do not want. Hopefully this will help you. If not, please post again.

Good Luck!

sshiv · 07-21-2005, 04:12 PM

Tons of thanks- Tons of Fun,
it works !!!!! it now works with 1024x768 resolution. I am still clueless as to why it could not work with higher resolutions. The manual for the monitor says the maximum resolution to be 1600x1200. Well i like 1024x768.

The kernel problem still persists. Hope that also gets solved soon.

Thanks !

darkleaf · 07-21-2005, 04:18 PM

Try google on the exact error. I don't know if this will fix it but here's an example of a site that turns up. It has several ideas on how you might be able to solve it:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/4677

sshiv · 07-26-2005, 12:41 PM

Thanks .......
I don't why it worked ... but it worked....!!

so i did the following...

1. I changed all the entries in /etc/fstab of /dev/hdaX to /dev/sdaX
2. I changed the boot line of /boot/grub/menu.lst from /dev/hda2 to /dev/sda2
3. I had initially changed the SATA operation of the BIOS to "Combined", i changed it back to normal.
................ And ......... it works

note: ;-) any other combination of the above steps .. do not work !

Thanks Darkleaf and 'Tons of Fun'...

Thanks again