Starting GUI Desktop

kaplan71 · 12-02-2003, 08:45 AM

Hi there,

I installed Debian 3.0 for the SPARC platform, and everything seemed to install without problem. After rebooting the system I was presented with a login prompt. After logging in, I would like to be able to start a GUI desktop. I tried startx but that did not work. What command would I use to be able to choose, and after that, start the GUI. Thanks.

whansard · 12-02-2003, 09:17 AM

if startx didn't work, X may not be configured.

xf86cfg
you can try

kaplan71 · 12-02-2003, 02:48 PM

The GUI still isn't appearing although it appears now the problem is with the choice of video cards that I had selected. I had selected ATI from the list, but it does not seem to work. The machine in question is a Sun Ultra 60 Creator 3d workstation.

How would I reconfigure the system to use the correct card, and for that matter what card should I use? I tried running xf86cfg but that did not work. Thanks.

llamakc · 12-02-2003, 04:35 PM

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 will launch the debconf frontend for configuring the /etc/XF86Config-4 file.

apt-get install xbase-clients will get the package with startx included.

If you do dpkg -L xbase-clients | grep startx you'll see it's there. Often, I just install the meta-package x-window-system and then remove anything I don't want later.

You can always try the vesa driver for a short-term fix until you figure out the appropriate driver for your machine. What does the output of lspci -v say?

kaplan71 · 12-03-2003, 12:28 PM

The lspci -v command listed the Bridge, Ethernet Controller, SCSI storage controllers, and Host Bridge data. I also tried several other drivers via the dpkg-reconfigure program but I did not see a vesa driver, unless v41 is what you were describing. After each one was tried, I ran startx but got the same error message for each one:

Fatal server error:
no screens found

XIO: fatal IO error 54 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

The system in question is an Ultra 60 Creator 3d system.

finegan · 12-08-2003, 10:58 PM

Sun Ultra 60!!! yippee, okay, I've got ram envy. They shipped with a number of framebuffer cards possible, you'll probably need to use the sunffb Xserver, these don't work like normal PC gear.

Is the version of Debian you're using have XFree in the 4.2.x and greater series or the 3.3.6 release? If its the later, you just symlink /usr/X11/X to Xsun24

If its an XFree greater then 4.2.0 you should be able to just autoconfigure it with:

X -configure

And it'll sort itself out.

Cheers,

Finegan