LinuxQuestions.org - black and white strips after install of ubuntu

Quote:

Originally Posted by dnz

hi all,

i'm a complete newbie to linux but really want/willing to learn . i've just installed ubuntu 64 . when the install finished i was asked for my username and password which was rejected i think i sorted that( mounted my hd in rescue mode, found my user name then changed passwd)

but when i try to boot ubuntu now im NOT asked for a user name or password and the screen just has black and white horizontal lines across it and the mouse arrow is just a white square!it did this on the live cd but not in safe graphics mode ! i know fedora has a problem with nvidia graphics cards ,as i have a nvidia geforce 6600gt i was wondering if this was a problem and how to slove it? i was also wondering if it was possible to update the kernal from cd as i dont have internet on this computer as yet!

a8n5x mobo
amd athlon 64x2 3800+ processor
1 gb ram
nvidia geforce 6600gt graphics card
1x confused user :)

p.s im dual booting with xp home

can anybody help thanks???????

Well I'm guessing that the white stripes/lines thing is that your X server is mis configured for some reason. The nvidia thing is to do with the fact that the actual nvidia driver is proprietary (although free to use). Hence some distro's won't ship with it - unless you have a "paid for" version. It's not too problematic to install it - though again, some distros do have their own way of installing it.

Ubuntu should, in theory, install with the generic "nv" driver (or possibly the "vesa" driver). You'd then have to install the nvidia one afterwards.

I'm think you'll find that you'll have to sort out the X server thing first.

Kernel updates/upgrades ? It will only install a kernel if it's on the disc or if you have a friend who might check the ubuntu site(s) to find the latest version and then burn it too disc (you'll need both the kernel and the kernel-sources a.k.a. kernel-headers to be able to install the nvidia driver, which you could also burn to disc).

So maybe it's worth checking whats happening.

If it was my system, I would boot it into the Ubuntu, if I saw the stripes etc, I'd do ctrl+alt+backspace together, which should kill the X server (or at least try to restart it - you may need to do that key combo a couple of times).

That should, if the system has installed ok except for the X server, drop you into a CLI login. Put in the username and password.

I don't know what editor it might have installed by default, so I'll presume VI. To look at the files the command is (for example, the xorg config file on my system needs)

Code:

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

as you're using Ubuntu (which uses a facility called sudo) you'd do

Code:

sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

to look at that one.

to make any changes/edits with VI you need to hit the "Insert" key. You use the arrow keys to navigate around the file. To just close it, you'd then hit the Esc button and then do :q (thats colon followed by the letter q), if you have edited a file and need to save it and then quit, instead of the :q (colon q) it's :wq (colon followed by letters w q).

So, files to see if you can work out whats going on, might be /var/log/messages or you could look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log (the info is marked as (II) for info, (ww) for warnings and (EE) for errors - it's errors that you'd look for).

As you must have net access somewhere (and I can only keep up this typing for so long ;) ) you should do a search for X server problems here at LQ to start with, then google for Ubuntu forums (theres some of those here and there are "official" ones).

Hopefully that should point you in the right direction (sorry I can't be specific, I've never had any 64bit kit, and I no longer use any of the *buntu's)

regards

John